Shots Fired

”Written in the wake of Ahmaud Arbery's murder, 'Shots Fired' is a clarion call to any and all people to resist apathy and join in the fight against injustice.” (Phillip Joubert)

SHOTS FIRED
Written by Phillip Joubert (ASCAP), Vincent Charlow (BMI)
© 2020 Common Hymnal Publishing (ASCAP), Zero Dynamite (ASCAP), Common Hymnal Digital (BMI), Soul Lore Creative (BMI) (admin by IntegratedRights.com). CCLI 7165626.

VERSE 1
If you're consuming Black art and streaming Black music,
benefit from Black inventions, but ignore Black weeping, then you a hypocrite.
We been through this cycle so many times that I'm sick of it.
Cellphone footage telling stories, we in the thick of it.
They killed Ahmaud in broad daylight with a shotgun,
point blank range, and left him to die in the hot sun.
Tell me how I'm supposed to respond other than screaming in pain,
shaking my fist at his grave.
Do you understand that, if that was me in a white shirt and them tan shorts,
I'm not expecting y'all to ask about what I'm there for,
or why I was jogging, or who started it,
pardon my French, but what hell does that have to do with the conversation
when a person is dead?
That's why my hand don't pledge, that's why my knees stay bent,
three months with no arrests don't make no doggone sense.
"Let’s make America great" but who was it great for?
We're sleeping in the bed that my ancestors was raped on.
And even to this day we’re endangered.
I walk around my country, but treated like I'm a stranger,
no record, still clutching on your purse when I walk in the elevator.
You love my entertainment, but can't stomach my anger.
Shots Fired

VERSE 2
This is sickening, we hit the streets picketing,
the cameras make it viral, politicians get their snippets in,
the news calms down with it, and we all move on,
until we see the same scenario again, and then we all get on the merry-go-round.
That’s our reality, hard to trust the courts
with six months for Brock Turner and life for Cyntoia Brown Long,
bullets for Amadou, spine fractures in Freddie Gray,
Sandra Bland’s mugshot is haunting people every day.
Can you respect our pain? Can you believe our facts?
You fitting to raise your fists, or you gonna turn your backs?
Who defends the undefendable?
How can you tell me the law’s dependable when my life is expendable?
Deafening silence from evangelical brothers,
unashamed of the cross but ashamed to talk about race?
Y’all make us look ridiculous, ineffective, insipid, irrelevant
and overall a mockery to the marketplace of thought.
Yes, I’m coming hard, our witness is in jeopardy.
Where’s your heart when jogging could be the death of me?
Some of y’all afraid that speaking up would cause a riot.
You need to be concerned with who left the faith from your silence.
Shots Fired.