Claiming the City
 作曲 : Ben Haggerty
Life moves pretty fast,
You don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.
Look, I've been away from my city, the city's changes aint pretty
Babies still playing in ditchy
Forgotten corners, the city's forgotten its warriors, who died young
Eyes hating the sun that’s shining before us
How rotten bodies fertilizing the forest of concrete and glass
Foul hearted police aiming their gats
My head hangover beats, I hope my ghosts stay in the past
And days I couldn't play to the pad
We the same kids they'd be sending to invade Iraq, and “make it safe” with crack.
I got that Gray Goose and OJ in a glass
The last day before my cousin hit the pen down to swing
I came back to the town just to be down with the king
And love is surrounding it seems,
Just then he find out it his baby cousin fell off a balcony.
Images of violent paradise is drowning me
Lost souls and I can't let go or tell no
The same scenario that rules South Othello
Black, browns and yellow
Southsiders tell the devil “hello”
And heaven “bye”. And it hurts too much to ask why.
From the places with plenty to the space with no pity. The force is changing our city.
One day at a time
If I don't change whats been given
What can I say to my children who gonna be claiming this city
One day
I grew up on Capitol Hill
With two parents and two cars.
They had a beautiful marriage, we even had a swing set in our yard.
My mom didn't have a job, because my dad made enough money that we could live comfortably and he could support us.
Now, he commute to Tacoma, so we knew we’d be good.
But then I realized everybody looked just like me in my neighborhood.
I’d go to school, which was diverse.
But indeed us, I got sandwiches and Capri-Sun's, and my friends ate the free lunch.
It's crazy trying to look back, cause when I was growing up
I didn't understand the fact was: There’s something called a social status.
And my black friends weren’t in my financial bracket.
And then my city's divided,
From neighborhood to neighborhood
We're polarized but we claim we're progressive.
The police shoot in the hood but never once in my residence.
Has a white person been shot or even stopped in a Lexus?
And to think that we claim that so much has changed
Since Brown verses the Board of Education and Roe verses Wade
But around my way it all stays the same,
They just figured out a way to septate the black and white face
From the places with plenty to the space with no pity, the force is changing our city.
One day at a time.
If I don't change what's been given
What can I say to my children who gonna be claiming this city
One day
From the places with plenty to the space with no pity the, force is changing our city
One day at a time
If I don't change what's been given,
What can I say to my children who gonna be claiming this city
One day
Say it's the richest city in the world, right?
Images of Tent City in the shadows of Amazon's office site
In the jungle down the slide in Jose Rizal’s park
There’s this part in the gate, with a trail to a place over I-5
Where families survive, most my early life we've known about it
Called development?
They kicked them folks out and moved them around every chance they can since so sacred of homelessness but ignoring them aint goin to change it
And tearing down the jects aint gonna make your ass safer.
For all that paper wasted just to build up Safeco
While Garfield High School still remains like a slave boat.
We gave up on hope, a long time ago, so
I wake on this floor, after pacing hours before. Mind racing like a child torn in war zones
With every side challenged, needing to manage and understand this balance. I can't fall or falter.
Brother, I'm just an author and no amount of words offered has ever been enough to alter this system. Swallowing souls broke, my own folks roam upcoast.
Holding dreams close of what America was supposed to be.
But works for the rich only. This Southend in reality.
Took my family back to what they were running from before, when they left that war.
Same ****, different continent.
Home doesn’t exist anymore.
Home doesn’t exist anymore.
The 206 that raised me just ain’t the same, yo