Written & performed by Mars, “That Revolutionary Sister”
Federal Plaza, Chicago
November 2, 2005
Unspeakable
I. When did you first cry?
When you saw toddlers wander alone the streets of Baton Rouge
Airlifted from New Orleans rooftop
Parents left behind?
When you saw a man
Refuse to board the No Pets Allowed bus north
Clutching his tear-soaked best friend
Who yesterday helped him save dozens of lives?
When did you first speak of horror unspeakable?
After seeing the stranded, rooftop after rooftop,
Waving white shirts at those safe overhead?
White flags of rescue and surrender
Please, have mercy on the children
We surrender, America
When did you begin to speak of what was truly unspeakable?
A president swinging a golf club as thousands waited for water
We walked the streets of Old Nawlins via footage
Saw unnamed dead and refrigerator trucks everywhere
In 98° heat holding not food for the starving
But the bodies of their loved ones
Too difficult to digest
We saw hospital wards in airports, tents, parking garages
Move the dying to the morgues so they could die in peace
We lay awake at night seeing images of
Bodies floating, a doctor explaining they soon will burst open
Hundreds of them
He turned deaf ears to scientists predicting such a
Global warming-spawned storm and
Sent Cheney to stand near safer rubble to
Tell the dying they’ll be okay
We heard of the corpse-strewn feces-filled Superdome
A week without water, food, medicine, word from family, electricity
His lapdogs sent National Guard not to rescue but to circle like
buzzards
Guns trained towards the doors
And the brothers who broke out to get food to bring back to fellow survivors
Of this free land, Dachau and Auschwitz rising to their lips
We blocked the TV with our bodies so our children wouldn’t see
What we dared not turn away from
He blocked a dead soldier’s mother from view
And turned away from the cries of a million
Our bodies grew cold in shock, in simpatico, in futility
Our breath grew hot as truth emerged, as real criminals were
discovered, as righteous anger
Spread countrywide like wildfire
In our silence they defined the unspeakable
We believed everyday horrors done by a minority were suddenly the
actions of the majority
We cringed at cries of lawlessness
And donated to the appointed saviors entrusted with the lives of a million
II. Now, voices returned, we define Unspeakable:
Blueprints designed to favor tourist sections attractions over life Cold
calculations years before of acceptable loss of life
Decisions to call off, just before they reached the poor part of town,
The search for and counting of the dead
In whose honor we speak, shout, march, fight
In whose honor we take aim at every executioner, judge and jury
Who signed policy death sentences,
Believed oval office opening arguments,
Recklessly trusted the nature of this system.
The Houston Astrodome eventually provided food and water
to thousands who survived first poverty and then a predicted natural
disaster.
The President’s mother said of those sheltered there,
It was working out quite well for them.
When the government gave out lists of relief organizations
That everyone should donate to,
Right wing Fundamentalist Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing was in the
top 3.
Apparently, this is working out quite well for him.
When real estate leaders discuss how to carve up and sell
The new and improved New Orleans
It seems this is working out quite well for them.
Celebrities spent thousands of dollars on relief supplies for shelters I
can imagine the profits made by bottled water companies and
department stores
It probably is working out quite well for them.
They’ve lowered the minimum wage down there
To make it easier for construction businesses to rebuild
Business owners likely still make the same
Which probably works out quite well for them.
III. Newscasters grimly wondered aloud
What horrors receding waters would reveal
Mothers, grandfathers, lovers never to be held
Have melded into earth
Unnamed, uncounted
Horror, it seems, is washed away
By TelePrompter script and
Well-timed stories of a few families’ happy endings
Truth, unlike horror, is tougher to disperse.
It lurks inside floodwaters, under apologies and lies
It is our partner in the rescue effort
To save our human dignity and
Our future freedoms
Let Truth march beside us
Let it amp our voices in demand
Let it steel our hands as we reach for the sky
And take the power back.