All I see are photos of my brothers and sisters with shock headlines
Calling them looters, coming out of stores with food and diapers
I saw one photo of White folks carrying, according to the caption
What they could “find,” not “loot,” but “find”
In a grocery store, and you could check Yahoo or pay me no mind

And I don’t understand how Bush is on vacation, and all the predictions
Were for pure devastation, governor calling for evacuation
Several days before the storm raged
And all who could afford it got the hell out the place
But what about the people with no way to escape?
The poor and Black, their class defined by race
Were herded into a big holding cell: the Superdome
3 days of suffering later, moved to the Astrodome

But where were the buses, and where were the trucks
When there was time to get them out? I guess no one gave a fuck!
Not the feds spending money on the war in Iraq
Like it’s only in the army that they want you if you’re Black
And if I was a survivor of the storm in New Orleans
Lived my whole life in the 9th Ward projects
Knowing all the odds stacked against me from the get-go
Maybe I’d break into Walmart and grab a pistol
And take the opportunity to get to clapping back
After seeing friends and family floating face down
On a street turned river that’s oil-slicked black
You need to read Earnest Gaines to get all the facts
Of the deep south plantation named Louisiana
Where there’s no irony in a prison named Angola
That’s where they put field niggers that are left over
Now that slavery is over, or so they told you
In this technological era, less need for forced labour
They can get it from Hispanics who are running cross the border
Africans are redundant in this new world order, and
white supremacists are out the closet more than ever
They’re on the Internet calling us savages
Too divided into tribes to ever fight back again
But after so much lynching, Willie Lynch will stop applying
I wonder if what we’re seeing is wonders and signs
Some of what we’re seeing feels like Watts reprised
Or the 92 King verdict, LA riots
Or New York City in the sixties blackouts
Why is anyone surprised when ghetto-dwellers mashout?
Especially backs-to-the-wall, marooned to die, left ass-out
After 72 hours, they dehydrate, starve, and pass out

Cuz in the Delta, remember, there were countless rebellions
Like 1811, right down through reconstruction
Nat Turner martyrs, and the reverberations of
Revolutionary change won by the Haitians
Storm clouds of freedom sweeping from the Caribbean
And now instead of chains it’s handcuffs that lock
The wrists of a brother like the one with dreadlocks
In one of the scenes that I saw from New Orleans
In front of three White officers with rifles aiming for him
While other scenes remind me of the fight for desegregation
Bullets, dogs, and hoses turned on crowds of Black civilians
Apartheid wars with armoured cars spitting shots
Civil Rights workers, bodies riddled with shots

And just days ago, the jazz preserved for tourist money
Played Dixieland-style in the cold heart of Dixie
Where Mardi Gras bands mimic slaughtered Black Indians
Land taken by the spaniards, redcoats and cajuns
With biological terrors and superior weapons
Resulting in plantations and bordellos ragged by Joplin
Po boys with crayfish and creole sauces
And levees neglected by Washington bosses
All sinking under the senseless fury of Katrina
Bodies piling up in the 72 deadly hours
In a toxic soup drenched in sewage and disease
Big Mac wrappers, submerged cars, and debris
All of which profit Texas oil companies
Bush and company, in their gas-soaked madness
Desecrate Nigeria, attempt to assassinate Chavez
The response is gunshots that ring from rooftops
So the governor is moving troops from search and rescue
To guarding Canal Street and French Quarter shops
In chaos: How many in search of food will get shot?

And while the way that he acted seems like criminal negligence
This jackass president can only call for zero tolerance
This same boy-king with a record number of executions
Known to glance at pleas for clemency and laugh at them
The brown-skinned poor who pack the jails privatized
With no one to give them a lesson before dying
Thinking slave biographies sum up their bloodline
But now its more than just a gathering of old men
And N-double A-C-P kids schooled in non-violence
But the distilled wrath and street math of a nation of castaways
Raw material for incarceration industries
The desperation of four centuries catalyzed
When abandoned to die from a category 5
Storm on August 29th, and less may have died
But 72 hours are up, and they have run out of time

So, I could give a damn about fame or the fans

Fashion or a trends, I just need to call for injustice to end
Cuz there’s too little time, to bother my mind
Bout what I need to do to drive an audience wild
Win a competition when people are dying
72 hours was their window to survive
My people in the Easy have run out of time.

copyright A. Bansfield, 2005