Instrumental is Shark Attack by Limp Bizkit

[Intro]

Violence isn't just physically attacking someone, it's anything that endangers survivability.

Withholding basic human needs - food, healthcare, housing - that's violence.

Making basic human needs contingent upon exploitation is slavery. Slavery is violence.

Violent action against a violent system is self-defense. It is self-preservation.

[Verse 1]

In the days of sixteen hour shifts

When the factories only paid out in scrip

Workers lived in corporate housing, quick

To be homeless if their boss had a power trip

So hundreds gathered at Haymarket Square

Peaceful workers with arms to bear

The owners of the lumber yards were scared

And sent police in with arms prepared

A bomb went off, no one had the true source

But it gave an excuse that they had to use force

Arrested eight leaders and bagged a few more

Tried by business owners in kangaroo court

They were sentenced to death by the ruling class

Intimidation was the system of abuse they planned

Only free from labor as a hanging man

'Cause we know a slave state has to stay on brand

[Hook]

When they beat us with a stick

The deceit cannot persist, what they preach is all a myth

Just a steaming crock of shit so that we do not resist

Now it's seen for what it is we know peace does not exist

[Verse 2]

Mining companies had more aggressive intentions

Sending private military in to settle dissension

Workers took up arms but needed better protection

To survive the airstrikes and chemical weapons

Violence is how we got eight hour workdays

Weekends, and fire escapes at our workplace

Claim reform is the way to assert change

When the system made us unsafe in the first place

Over time they destroyed the cause

We let them turn us into boiled frogs

But if you want justice when crimes are caused

Send police to Wall Street to apply the law

When we push reform to make change and amends

They manufacture loopholes to degrade the intent

So my message to the lobbyists paying the feds

We're not here for reform, we came for your head

[Hook]

[Interlude]

The police do not protect the public

They are there to protect the ruling class FROM the public

So all this rhetoric about police abolition is pointless

What we need is to abolish the corrupt system that needed police to protect itself in the first place

[Hook]

[Verse 3]

They use gerrymandering to fake an election

Misrepresent the map like a Mercator projection

When only petty criminals are facing detention

We gon' make the system crash like a fatal exception

Even when the poor win we ain't been blessed

The rich don't lose, they just win less

Lie low for a few, then they inflict debt

Let's see them try to feud with a slit neck

You took advantage of our peace, now we're past that

Call your own deeds peace and get laughed at

Tranquility's the opposite of getting silenced

The closest thing you know to peace is the implicit threat of violence

The solution's kill 'em on sight

No surprise retribution is a thoughtcrime

So if the feds are watching me it's all fine

They can put me on a list 'cause they're already on mine

[Hook]

Peace does not exist

Peace does not exist

[Outro]

We were already at war. You just couldn’t see it because they were killing us slow.