Ashanti Spears performed this amazing spoken word piece at the Topeka, Kansas Mass Meeting of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival on August 21, 2017. Here are the words:
The poor will inherit the Earth.
The poor have inherant worth
The poor will inherit the Earth
The Poor have inherant worth.
I call this poverty a government handout
When crumbs from the table of so called joy fall get stuck on the way down in the mouths of the
preying
the bottoms eats us alive
Laces tied up but we
Running out of time.
We trying to survive but.
People in charge ain’t got no souls.
NO good ground to walk.
Tell me. When do good intentions do us enough harm?
Our stomachs are empty like misleading headlines that make the world more Black and White
Listen. Will the poor be believed one day. This month. It’s a choice between the lights and the water.
Next month might be between going to work or going to school.
And uh. Aint nobody tell me that in college
Cuz It come from this lens of rich
got a hole in beneath this well of resources
got a system that was set up to fail every time
but hey. There will always be a job.
Just gotta work my body into the emergency room
gotta drag my sac of bones to the doctor’s office if I can afford to be healthy
if Obama gave us Romney care. What can trump that?
Don’t nobody wanna single pay
Government don’t wanna ‘give nothing away’ and
Anyone can get a 45 locked and loaded put in the hands that fire off rounds like the bowels of hell into
crowds
We Got money for that tho
Largest military force in the world tho
Biggest portion of government spending tho
People always been property over here yo
From the Atlantic, to prison, to war, poverty, to the bottom,
can’t be free.
Can’t buy food to eat
Bernie Mac won’t buy us lunch
But expect us to pay his way
Wall Street just fine
But we die. We get charged up with crimes
When we fall victim to our neighbor it’s called ‘the other side of the train tracks’ (BLACK ON BLACK CRIME)
War on drugs
Senseless violence.
MONEY HAS NEVER BEEN INNOCENT.
THE POOR ARE LEFT DEFENSLESS.
THE FIRST CAPITALISTS INVENTED THIS PROBLEM AND NOW ALL OF US HAVE TO
SOLVE THIS.
REASEARCH YOUR CONSTITUTION.
REVISE YOUR MORAL CONSTITUTION.
Poor People’s Campaign bringing forth the Revolution.
