Ballad Of Hurricane Katrina Lyrics

the ticketseller's terrified

haunted by his dreams

of half-empty trains

rolling out from New Orleans

and the hundreds who came begging

but were harshly turned away

how many of them died

'cause they could not afford to pay?

three days warning

the suburbs turned to ghost towns

second cars left locked in driveways

while in the city people drowned

because they had no escape

from the fury of the sea

what happened here was murder

it was no simple tragedy.



good morning america

how did you get this way?

averted eyes and centuries of chains

here comes the story of the hurricane

and the thousands dead in the city by the sea

murdered by our greed in new orleans



if you're black then you're a looter

if you're white you're finding food

i ask myself what i'd have done in any of their shoes?

would i have thought about my neighbors in the other part of town

would i know any of their names? would i have dared to stick around?

you can blame the president

or you can blame the sea

but they were murdered by the culture

of this economy

murdered by our fear

and our apathy

they were murdered by you

they were murdered by me



we lay in your bed naked and we watched it on tv

as the soldiers and the cops marched past the dead bodies

they were only there protecting private property

i felt sickened by the sight and sickened by my memory

of the miles that i'd driven and the gasoline i'd had burned

of the love songs that i'd written, and the money that i'd earned

how can we go on living our lives the same way?

how can we keep pretending that we are not part of their game?