Activism

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Protest Music

The Power of Music to Create Social Change

HERE ARE SOME PROTEST SONGS AGAINST GUN VIOLENCE...

Scroll down for lyrics, sheet music, and demo to Enough Is Enough and lyrics to The Kids Go Marching

After the Parkland shootings, an activist friend of mine got in touch with me for help with music for the March For Our Lives. (You can see the sheet music to This America by Judy Young  and listen to a demo of This America by Judy Young). That got me thinking about the Women's March, and how important music had been to my experience there. I was on the mall, far from the speakers, standing for hours before finally, slowly shuffling along the march route. Everyone in my group was getting cold and tired and thirsty and hungry, and everyone had to pee. Then we got within earshot of some drums and brass instruments, and it was electric: everyone's energy brightened, in a wide radius around us. I realized then that, in that moment, we needed music more than we needed food, more than we needed shelter, more than we needed water, more than we needed rest, and more than we needed a bathroom.  Now, in March 2018, I was inspired by  the words from the student walkout, and I couldn't get the refrain "Enough Is Enough" out of my head. So I tried to come up with a song that would be easy and fun to learn to sing on a bus or on the ground at a rally.

You can listen to a demo of Enough is Enough (love and thanks to my young choir friends, especially Ana for singing the lead and Rick for beatboxing) I wrote this song for the March For Our Lives, with words from the student walkout in March 2018. All are welcome to sing it, and to make up additional verses and harmonies. You are welcome to download the sheet music of Enough Is Enough for free

You might also enjoy singing these lyrics to The Kids Go Marching, to the tune of The Ants Go Marching

1.Listen to the young---Enough is Enough

Protect kids not guns--Enough is Enough

We will not be silenced--Enough is Enough

End gun violence--Enough is Enough

 

We will go and vote

Like no generation in history

We’re just getting started and 

We won’t stop!

 

2. We want to read

Books not elegies

It’s a school zone

Not a war zone

 

We will go and vote

Like no generation in history

We’re just getting started and 

We won’t stop!

 

3. We demand that children’s lives

Be prioritized

One child is worth

All the guns on the earth

 

We will go and vote

Like no generation in history

We’re just getting started and 

We won’t stop!

 

4. Kids miss feeling safe at school

More than you will miss your guns

Seventeen, how many more

Will I be next on the floor?

 

We will go and vote

Like no generation in history

We’re just getting started and 

We won’t stop!

 

5. This isn’t right or left 

This is life or death

Politicians

Our blood, your hands

 

We will go and vote

Like no generation in history

We’re just getting started and 

We won’t stop!

 

6. This is a movement

Not a moment

We have lived in fear too long

From walkouts we march on

 

We will go and vote 

Like no generation has in history

We’re just getting started and

We won’t stop!