A Song for Laurel

As you’re heading back to the UN
Hoping to see the time when
The state might admit the guns in the troops’ hands
Were following an officer’s commands
Who fired on the crowd
Who were afraid to die but still unbowed
Standing up against a war of genocide
Compelled to take a side

How many lives destroyed or lost forever since that day
When they gunned your sister down on the 4th of May

As you make your journey with Allison’s ghost
From your home that she brought you to, on the west coast
What if the soldiers were not sent
For the rest of us, what would that have meant
What victories might we have won
Were it not for all those cops and soldiers with their guns
If we hadn’t just come so far
That now they either shoot us or run us over with a car

Chorus

As you go to issue your report
Speaking to the judges of the world’s courts
I know you’ll be telling them how
So little has changed til now
The mayors of Portland, Kenosha, Chicago
Call us the same things as fifty years ago
Proud Boys are encouraged to run us down all the while
It’s the anarchists they say they want in jail, on trial

Chorus