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I don't have to tell you things are bad.
Everybody knows things are bad.
The dollar buys the nickles-worth.
Banks are going bust...
shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter.
Punks are running wild in the street,
there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do...
And there's no end to it!
We know the air is unfit to breathe...
and our food is unfit to eat,
and we sit watching our TV's
while some local newscaster tells us that today
we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes,
as if that's the way it's supposed to be.
We know things are bad - worse than bad.
They're crazy!
It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore.
We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller,
And all we say is:
Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms...
Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything.
Just leave us alone.
Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone!
I want you to get mad!
I don't want you to protest.
I don't want you to riot.
I don't want you to write to your congressman,
Because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write.
I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.
All I know is that first you've got to get mad.
You've got to say:
I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it!
My life has VALUE!
Man walks along the railroad track
He's goin' someplace, and there's no turnin' back
The highway patrol chopper comin' up over the ridge
Man sleeps by a campfire under the bridge.
The shelter line stretchin' around the corner...
Welcome to the New World Order.
Families sleepin' in their cars out in the Southwest.
No job.
No home.
No peace.
No rest.
NO REST!
The highway is alive tonight...
Nobody's foolin' nobody as to where it goes.
I'm sitting down here in the campfire light.
Searchin' for the ghost of Tom Joad.
He pulls his prayer book out of his sleepin' bag.
The preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag.
He's waitin' for the time when the last shall be first and the first shall be last.
In a cardboard box 'neath the underpass.
With a one way ticket to the promised land...
With a hole in your belly
and a gun in your hand.
Lookin' for a pillow of solid rock.
Bathin' in the city's aquaduct.
The highway is alive tonight...
Nobody's foolin' nobody as to where it goes
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light...
With the ghost of old Tom Joad.
Now Tom said,
Ma':
wherever you seein' a cop beatin' a guy...
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries...
Wherever there's a fight against the blood and hatred in the air...
Look for me Ma, I'll be there.
Wherever somebody's strugglin' for a place to stand...
For a decent job or a helpin' hand...
Wherever somebody's strugglin' to be free...
Look in their eyes, Ma'...
You'll see me...
The highway is alive tonight
Nobody's foolin' nobody as to where it goes...
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light...
With the ghost of old Tom Joad.