This song was inspired by the story of Leonard Peltier, Native American activist who is languishing in prison under two life time sentences.
Here’s the Wikipedia brief:
Leonard Peltier (born September 12, 1944) is a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM). In 1977 he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for first degree murder in the shooting of two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents during a 1975 conflict on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Peltier’s indictment and conviction have been the subject of much controversy; Amnesty International placed his case under the “Unfair Trials” category of its Annual Report: USA 2010.[1] [emphasis mine]
We are all connected and injustice affects us all. This song is about that.
Thoughts?
Please click the arrow to play:
If It Happens To You, It Happens To Me
Song #196 | 9/23/1993 | CD: tbd
[Tuning: DADGGD]I dreamed I saw you last night in your cell
It was all concrete and bars but the roof was open sky
You looked at me and then you started to cry
And when it happened to you, it started happening to me
And it won’t go away…
So what if I grew up in suburbia?
So what if I am white and middle class?
When I first heard about Wounded Knee
I felt as if it somehow had happened to me.
And it won’t go away
Why do you keep looking over your left shoulder?
Do you think someone might be following you?
But that’s impossible! This is the land of the free!
When it happens to you, man, it happens to me
And it won’t go away…
You’ve done your time for living out what you believe
Now you’re caught in the system that’s like a culvert clogged with leaves
When they refused to let you go free
In some small way it happened to me
And it won’t go away…
“Freedom is another word for nothing left to lose”
Freedom is another word for daring to choose
I know someday they will have to set you loose
And when it happens to you it will happen to me
And it won’t go away
What happened to you is not unique to America
This shit is going on all over the world
From the Cambodian death camps to the Euphrates Valley
And when it happens to these, well it happens to me
And it won’t go away.
This is all about prophecy and power and truth that reveals
This is about pain and fire and a love that heals
It’s about bullets and flags and how slow starvation feels
And when it happens to you, well it happens to me
And it won’t go away.
I dreamed I saw you last night in your cell
It was all concrete and bars but the roof was open sky
You looked at me and then you started to fly
And when it happened to you it started happening to me
And it won’t go away…
Copyright 1993-2015 by Mark Shepard. All Rights Reserved.
Photo – Copyright: peefay / 123RF Stock Photo
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