Black and brown
We’ve got to turn this thing around
We’ve got to end the violence.
It doesn’t make sense.
We need to put our differences aside
We don’t have to take sides.
In actuality, we are all warring against violence and poverty
It is destroying all of our communities.
In Watts and in East L.A.,
People are dying every day.
We are all trying to break our fall,
Robbing Peter to pay Paul
Barely getting by.
When it comes to disappointments and heartache,
We have a tie
The hearse rolls through our communities every day.
We’ve got to stop blowing one another away.
We are the ones crowding the prisons and the cemeteries
So why are we knocking one another to our knees?
When it comes to opportunities,
We are all doing without.
We are all doing without.
We’re in the same bag trying to work our way out.
If you’re looking for a fight,
Fight to turn the wrongs into right.
Fight against your real enemy,
Drugs, violence, alcoholism, substandard schools and poverty.
Fight for programs to keep our children off the street,
Fight for those homeless men and women without food to eat.
Better education should be the topic of conversation between us,
But there can be no discussion where there is no trust.
If we expect to advance,
We both need to be given a fighting chance.
It’s time to conquer the great divide.
Latinos and Blacks need to stand together, side by side.
United, we can stand but divided, we will fall.
It is our call.
In a world that keeps stacking the deck against us, and counting on us to fail,
We can still prevail.
We can reverse the statistics.
Our children don’t have to be gang bangers and convicts.
When it comes to living on our streets, no rules apply
It’s only do or die.
If we don’t want them to succumb to that trap
We’ve got to help them find their way back
By showing that with determination and the willingness to sacrifice,
They can live a purposeful life.
copyright by P. Newman-Harris
They can live a purposeful life.