6 - present past tense

A man and a woman,

A boy and a girl,

Looking for a new life,

Seek the new world,

A journey of two thousand miles ends in the back of a van,

Caught by Uncle Sam

Children ripped from parents and thrown in a cage,

Thirsty and cold, at this tender age,

The tired and poor concentrated under lock and key,

In the land of the free

(We patrol the borders, We just follow orders,

Move on, move on, move on,

These so-called refugees just bring crime and disease,

Move on, move on, move on, move on)

A nation shocked by headlines but the weeks become years,

Another new day, a new trail of tears,

We look to our leaders who signal something true,

They really don’t care do you?

Clashes with fascists, racists, and classists,

Profits for prisons, paid with our taxes,

Big business has found a new source for its human grist,

Making money hand over fist

(They really shouldn’t be here, there’s nothing to see here

Move on, move on, move on,

They ask us for asylum, single-out and single-file ‘em,

Move on, move on, move on, move on)

We thought it was our human right,

Maybe if our skin was white?

1904 - Theodore Roosevelt declared the right of the United States to exercise international police power in Latin America

1954 - a covert operation named PB Success was carried out by the CIA, and overthrew the democratically elected Guatemalan President, ending the Guatemalan revolution

1964 - The United States intervened in Chile to prevent Allende from winning the presidential election

1964-1970 - The CIA set up the “Office of Public Safety” in Uruguay to train police in the art of torture in order to supress rebels who embarassed public officials and exposed corporate corruption

1973 - September 11th, the CIA assisted the Chilean military to oust Allende in a coup

1981 - President Reagan gave authorization to the CIA to support and train the Contras in Nicaragua, a right-wing militia using guerilla warfare and terrorist tactics to overthrow the established government, using money from illegal weapon sales to Iran to fund them

1980s - Honduras was used to house thousands of US troops and used as a supply center and refuge for the Contras from Nicaragua

1983 - Granada, the Reagan administration used destabilization tactics and ultimately invaded

1989 - The US invaded Panama, killing thousands, leaving many more wounded and homeless, in order to capture Manuel Noriega, a previous ally of the US

1994 - The Clinton administration begins a policy of prevention through deterrence at the border, which forces border crossers to cross deeper into more dangerous and harsh desert, resulting in heat stroke, exhaustion, hypothermia, injuries, dehydration, and death

2002 - Venezuela, Bush Administration officials acknowledge meeting with the planners of the attempted Venezuelan coup in the weeks leading up to it, but deny encouraging the failed coup itself

Present Day - The government prosecutes humanitarians for leaving life saving supplies in the desert as a felony, preferring to allow people to die in the desert rather than apprehend them and give them due process. Border patrol actively seeks and destroys food and water rations that would otherwise save lives

If it seems like this list is going on and on, that’s kind of the point

If it seems like this list is going on and on, that’s kind of the fucking point

And we haven’t even mentioned the Mexican and Central American drug violence fueled largely by United States drug consumption, the artificially low price of food in the United States enabled by the exploitation of cheap, undocumented labor, or the propping up of our tax and social security systems by people who work under false tax ID’s and never claim benefits.

If it seems like this list is going on and on, that’s kind of the fucking point