Here’s To The State of Trump’s Child Killers
(In 1965, Civil Rights activist, singer and songwriter Phil Ochs wrote and performed one of his most powerful songs, “Here’s To The State of Mississippi”. Ochs, who volunteered for the Mississippi Caravan of Music in conjunction with Freedom Summer of 1964, the campaign to register Black Voters in Mississippi. During that summer, three civil rights workers — James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were beaten and shot to death by local Mississippi police officers working with the KKK. Ochs was so upset and outraged by the murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner and the systematic battering of Blacks in Mississippi, that he wrote one of his most controversial songs, calling for “Mississippi to find another country to be part of.” Today, a similar inhumane outrage is occurring on the US border with Mexico, with the Trump Administration’s Family Separation policy, which rips children from their parents, and the unconscionable mistreatment of infants and children in cages, known as Trump Camps. With acknowledgment to Phil Ochs musical scream as my inspiration, I offer my own modified lyrics to any singer who will deliver this message with the same intensity and passion that Ochs brought to his indictment of previous crimes against humanity, committed by another Government.)
Here’s to the state of Trump’s Child Killers,
For underneath their faces, the devil draws no lines,
If you drag their muddy mem’ries, nameless bodies you will find.
Whoa, the corridors of power have hid a thousand crimes,
The calendar is lyin’ if it reads the present time.
Whoa, here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of,
Trump’s Child Killers find yourself another country to be part of.
And here’s to the mouthpieces of Trump’s Child Killers
Who say that folks with conscience, they just don’t understand,
And they tremble in the shadow of the Nazis and the Klan.
The sweating of their souls can’t wash away the blood from off their hands,
They smile and shrug their shoulders at the dying of a brown child
Oh, here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of,
Trump’s Child Killers find yourself another country to be part of.
And here’s to the homes of Trump’s Child Killers
Where they’re teaching all their children that they don’t have to care.
All the rudiments of hatred are present everywhere
And every single family is a factory of despair
There’s nobody learning such a foreign word as fair.
Oh, here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of,
Trump’s Child Killers find yourself another country to be part of.
And here’s to the cops of Trump’s Child Killers,
They’re chewing their tobacco as they lock the Trump Camp doors
They’re bellies bounce inside them when they knock children to the floor,
They’d rather not take prisoners in their private little war,
Behind the broken badges there are murderers and more.
Oh, here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of,
Trump’s Child Killers find yourself another country to be part of.
And here’s to the lawyers of Trump’s Child Killers
Who cover up their hearts as they crawl into the courts,
They’re guarding all the bastions of their phony legal forts
Oh, justice is a stranger when the immigrants report
When the Black man is accused the trial is always short.
Oh, here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of,
Trump’s Child Killers find yourself another country to be part of.
And here’s to the government of Trump’s Child Killers
In the swamp that they created, they’re always bogging down,
And criminals are smirking as they hold the babies down
And they hope that no one sees the sights, and no one hears the sounds,
And the speeches of the President are the rantings of a clown.
Oh, here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of,
Trump Child Killers find yourself another country to be part of.