I don’t have to tell you things are bad.
Everybody knows things are bad.

The dollar buys a nickel’s worth;
banks are going bust;
shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter;
punks are running wild in the street,
but 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.
we sit watching our TVs
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 all know things are bad –
worse than bad –
they’re crazy.

It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy,
so we don’t go out any more.
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 going to 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.

All I know is that first,
you’ve got to get mad.
You’ve gotta say,
“I’m a human being,
god dammit!
My life has value!”