Lyrics By: Marcy Matasick

Tune: Folsom Prison Blues

A couple million people
and many innocents
are doing time, and lots of time –
time and time again.
What a waste of their potential
to make them waste away.
Seems like justice never was just
in the American way.

Involuntary labor
is slav’ry — that’s no lie.
‘cause slavery wasn’t ended;

it was only corporatized.
Big business makes big profits
when people work for free
But the cost is 80 billion:
paid by you and me.

The pipeline to the prisons
starts with kids in school.
Locks ’em up like criminals

for breaking minor rules.
Moms, hold onto your babies,
if they are brown or black.
‘cause the system’s rigged against ‘em:
you might not get them back.

We love to punish people
and strip them of their worth.
We’ve got the largest

prison population on the earth.
We keep filling up the prisons
just to watch them grow.
We’re incarceration nation:
How low can we go?