Manifest the power

June 5, 2010
Issue 

Put Rudd on a boat so that he can see
what it feels like to be a refugee
trying to run from imperial slaughter,
on a leaky boat in shark-infested waters

How can these arseholes be so heartless?
— lock people up in bureaucratic darkness
They say they're Christian, but where’s the compassion?
They put Aboriginal people back on rations

It’s the Lib-Lab; hypocrisy reigns supreme,
they've got their redneck corporate Australian dream
they want to
make you think you're playing on the same team as them
as they are skimming off your share of the cream

They say refugees are a waste of water
while grazing cattle to send to the slaughter
and putting lots of water up the steaming stacks
of coal power stations that are completely “whack”

You wanna save water? Shut down the mines
Stop undermining rivers with these longwall designs
They're killing the planet, its a corporate crime
we need to nationalise, cause they won't pay the fines

we need to tax that shit, not just 40%
we need to take it over
that’s how we can pay the rent
and paying the rent means shutting it down,
with renewable jobs for every mining town

Any coal worker should be able to say
“I wanna get retrained, and do it on full pay”
As if you wouldn't quit a job down in a hole
to get a job in a factory under workers’ control,

making turbines, heliostats and solar panels,
mirrors, ball bearings and saddles for camels (jokes, comradesJ)

* * *

Its time for the rollout:
the transit from dirty to clean
the transition from obscene to green
the revolution that'll
take power off these corrupted fiends
and see eco-socialism "getting up in the scene"

Let’s make Australia the capital of baseload solar
with modern turbines and modern grid controllers

Renewables are not just doable, no, they are essential
so let’s imprint this into the Lib-Lab mentals:

one hundred per cent, by twenty twenty
cos when it comes to wind and sun, Australia has got plenty

Put Abbott on a boat so that he can see
what it feels like to be a refugee
trying to run from imperial slaughter,
and smuggle his budgie through shark-infested waters

Bit of a pyramid scheme, this redneck Australian dream
and it’s about to fall off into a deep ravine
they just wanna make you think you're playing on the same team
as them
as they are skimming off your share of the cream

Now look.
There is one thing that I need to say
It's no one’s business but his if David Campbell is gay
It’s not the business of channels 7, 9 and 10
and look

I've said it before
and I’ll say it again
Can you be gay and in love?
Yes I believe you can.

So if same-sex & trans couples wanna get married
Who is the state to deny them of the "horse and carriage"?

and who is the state
to create this ugly thing
where you can go to the shops out there in Alice Springs
and there’s a queue for black people and a queue for white

they've got these cards
just like the star of david in the third reich

Aboriginal people are a national treasure
but the Lib-Lab are killing off their culture together

Trying to take back Land Rights since '76
forcing kids to learn English, it’s making me sick

Aboriginal people are the traditional owners:
Land Rights
shouldn't just be confined to the territory

Let’s scrap the intervention
and spread land rights instead
with a
mass movement
as our political weaponry

No no, I'm not interested in oppressing minorities
I wanna
manifest the power of the working majority
they treat traditional owners like rats in a laboratory
we need to STRIP THEM from their positions of authority

[Zane Alcorn is a member of Resistance and a hip hop artist. He performed Manifest the power to open the NSW Socialist Alliance conference on May 22.]

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