RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: TRUE HISTORY
A Long Hard Road Part IV
They came to California on a promise of jobs
Where there was fruit on the vine and peaches
on trees just ripe for the picking
But there was way more refugees than
there was jobs
And there was a whole lot of people with skin
a shade darker working those fields of plenty
long before the dust bowl migration
They gathered together in sprawling camps of
makeshift shelters and worked like slaves of labor
Long hard hours for little pay
Kicked and spit at like stray dogs
When the boss man came up short on his payroll
Or got a little greedier than he usually was
He’d call the immigration bulls
The Mexicanos would go a running
Those who weren’t fast enough or were
Just too tired to run would be rounded up
Like cattle and took down to the border
Sometimes they took em in planes
A man name of Woody sang about it:
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges piled in the creosote dumps
They’re flying em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mes amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won’t have your names when you ride
the big airplane
and all they will call you will be deportee
You might wonder how the poor white folk
couldn’t see that what happened to them back
in Oklahoma is what happened to the
Mexicans here in California
Cheated out of their homes and pushed off
their land
You might wonder how they couldn’t see that
What happened to them happened to the
Cherokee a way back in Tennessee
It ain’t about the color of your skin
It’s about how much you have in your pocket
It ain’t about how you talk or where you’re from
It’s about greed
It’s about never being satisfied with what you
have but always wanting more
It’s about not caring who you have to cheat or
abuse to get what you want
It’s all connected
One long hard road
It’s all the same thing
And we’re all in it together
This land is your land
This land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the redwood forest
to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for me and you
(for Alan Arnopole and Woody Guthrie)
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