Chicken Farm

Anyone remember a band called The Dead Kennedys? I was feeling nostalgic so I was listening to them this morning. I know they were a secular band but they had a lot of political lyrics. At one time I could sing this entire album word for word . Anyway I felt this song was relevant with the immigration controversy going on today. It seems this song is about immigrants from Vietnam. Anyway it just makes me question do we have compassion and help them or do we send them back home?



Another rainy morning mingling at the market
Bartering for food for another day
Rifle shots ring out behind the crumbling buildings
Executions have begun

Sprawled in the square are today's broken bodies
Lots to pick clean if you're first and quick
Rift through their pockets, peel off their clothes
To wear or sell when you wash out the blood

Run my little brother
Run to the chicken farm
Opportunity is calling
You might even find a watch

We're going down
To the chicken farm
We're going down
To the chicken farm

We're going down
To the chicken farm
We're going down
To the chicken farm

Napalm rains no more but the war goes on
Little brother died playing at the dump today
He found a new toy and held it up proud
Then it blew him to bits

How many more children
Will be killed or die at birth
Deformed by Agent Orange
In our food chain forever more

We're going down
To the chicken farm
We're going down
To the chicken farm

We're going down
To the chicken farm
We're going down
To the chicken farm

This time we'll buy our way out
I've got a plan, you wait and see
I smuggled you this map
In the gash I sliced in my thigh

I hope I'm there to join you, love
We're blown to pieces one by one in this camp
We crawl shaking through the fields at gunpoint all day
To defuse leftover land mines

By hand, hand, hands

We shiver on the deck and stiffen for the worst
If the pirates come around we might as well be dead
We'll be thrown in the sea or butchered if we're women
All in the name of gold

One foot in a land, we barely understand
Can't speak the tongue of Yankee hospitality
Our kids at school get beat up
To the tune of, "Boat people, go home"

Sliced with a machete
From the breast of our homeland
Our new world tries to spit us out
But it sure beats the chicken farm

We're going down
To the chicken farm
We're going down
To the chicken farm

We're going down
To the chicken farm
We're going down
To the chicken farm

Farm, farm, farm

America already has too many people here, and some of us don't even get helped. So how are we supposed to help immigrants? Send 'em back to Nam. You cannot help EVERYONE.

This entire album discussed a lot of thought-provoking issues. There was one track entitled jock O Rama in which it discussed how schools put way too much emphasis on sports. I'm not Downing Sports because it teaches teamwork and discipline but at the same time when you go somewhere to apply for a job, they are not interested in how far you can throw a football.

Another track entitled This Could Be Anywhere discusses inner-city poverty and how we have become conditioned to hate and distrust each other. I was a huge fan of this band in the nineties and in my opinion this is their best album

if one can accept the truth, be faithful, be brave, choose the chicken farm,,,,,