A Pragmatist’s Guide to Revolution

[Verse 1] I’m fightin’ on ‘til my life is gone Even when my version of health insurance is orange juice and tiger balm Even when my attention is so divided Between rappin’ and writin’ and activism and survivin’ And at any given time so many of us are new to this But you ain’t gotta stop listening to ludacris And you ain’t gotta dress a certain way Ride your bike in wintertime, shop at the co-op or ever turn away From who you really are… this movement doesn’t need perfect It just needs us to start workin’ Radical means you have hope And sometimes ya vote for it, most of the time, though, ya don’t So this is for the ballot, the bullet, the bulletin and the boycott For the hand to hand, and the door to door More and more, it’s growin’ in popularity We don’t say peace, we say solidarity [Hook] We don’t care about the clothes you wear Don’t care about the kind of car you drive We don’t need any more heroes We just need to organize Don’t care about the books you read Or the revolution in your head Don’t put your fists in the air, use ‘em To build something real instead [Verse 2] Fuck a conspiracy theory that ain’t right The worst they do is always in plain sight I ain’t concerned about black helicopters It wasn’t the illuminati who shot sean and oscar I ain’t looking for symbols on dollar bills and monuments Or reading nostradamus’s prophecies of apocalypse I got enough problems in my neighborhood .unemployment, schools underfunded so take a good Look at the books it doesn’t add up so what’s up It doesn’t take a new world order to fuck us …so flip that switch off I don’t think 9/11 was an inside job And even if it was suspicious, our mission is the same Resist, revolt, rebel, remember every name We live, we vote, we yell the pressure doesn’t change Whether on republicans or democrats or space lizards [Hook] [Verse 3] I got a friend who ran for city council and he got elected Got a friend who ran for school board and got rejected But in the process, learned about the process Wrote a couple grants, now she runs a non-profit I got a friend who never went to college But knows the first and last names of everyone in his housing project …it starts with the basics I got another friend who throws parties in his basement And basically that’s just a baseline Power’s a hundred people in the same place at the same time …right but what you gonna do with it? I got a friend who knows what the revolution is And knows that though the music is beautiful It’s the people that it brings together who are better And the senators and representatives only bend To the will of the real change-makers, my friends [Hook]