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Ellis Island
04:32
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Standing at the turnstiles, queuing in a line.
Guards inspect your papers as they pass through
After everything that happened, all that you tried to leave behind
The war, the sea, the night still come to haunt you.
You're waiting here for hours, as minutes turn to years
Your children standing hand in hand beside you
It hits you like a hammer as the seal comes crashing down
After all you’ve seen and after all you’ve been through
But you know that going home means walking right into your doom
Back to a country set on fire
You take a glimpse out of the window of your detention room
And see Miss Liberty exposed as liar.
I see your heart break at Ellis Island
Haunted by the ghosts of persecution and decay
I see your heart break at Ellis Island
And the Promised Land was just some miles away, just some miles away.
We worship law and order and teach the grace of charity
Tell our children that all life is sacred
But every chance we get to exercise humanity
We react with racism and hatred.
It’s been like this forever, we push our agenda through
As presidents philosophy statistics
We occupy the moral high ground, based on our revenue
And mask ourselves in whitewashed linguistics
And in our national ivory tower, high up on a hill
Where heavy weather surely cannot reach us
We outrage at inequity and when everything goes still
We grief publicly by changing profile pictures.
And I see your tears touch ground at Ellis Island
As you grab your children’s hands and bravely smile
One day you might return to Ellis Island
But it’s a long time coming until then.
And I see our grace torn apart at Ellis Island
So much could be done, yet there’s so little that we do
One day we might pay for our sins at Ellis Island
And start praying for forgiveness when we do.
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John Allen Hamburg, Germany
German singer, songwriter, piano player, guitarist and human being.
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