Rip It Up By The Roots
Lyrics written by Neil O'Brien.
In a town called Jena there grows a certain tree
Which was thought to have died out in the 20th century
And the remarkable thing about this tree is it's fruit
It doesn't sprout nuts or berries, but it grows the hangman's noose
It's favoured habitat is the American South
Where rumours of it's revival have spread by word of mouth
You see it has a certain power, it's a symbol to be harnessed
And one day soon we'll have to gather it's harvest
But in the meantime it's a season for fires
For rumbling thunder and lightning striking the spires
Of small town churches in this divided nation
Power spreads through pews, electrifying the congregation
As it did in the days of Martin Luther King
See the crisis and tension, is this history recurring?
Cos I see deprivation and I see segregation
But what I don't see is the powers that be making reparations
Chorus:
Break it's branches and shear it's shoots
Tie a chain round it's trunk and rip it up by the roots
This dead and rotten wood is an ugly anomaly
A throwback to the days of racial inequality
Break it's branches and shear it's shoots
Tie a chain round it's trunk and rip it up by the roots
This white tree of bigotry is a disgrace to the nation
It's time distinctions of race were made to face extinction
How can you justify wrecking six young lives
With the stroke of a pen across their personal files
Conspiracy, manslaughter, the law pushed to the max
The real conspiracy in Jena is grinding down all the blacks
You can't have one rule for some and another for the rest
Grab the gun from your attacker and he does you for theft?
That's a crazy situation and it makes no sense
It's a willful distortion of your right to self-defense
But things are no better when it all comes to court
With a jury so biased they might as well have been bought
And how's about a lawyer so lacking in fitness
The defence never got a chance to call a single witness
A lot of people thought that this was yesterday's fight:
Are your rights conditional on your skin being white?
But that's the situation in the town of the white tree
And in a town with no justice there can be no peace