Bad cops who use capital punishment as their primary response to the potential of danger are weak cops and shouldn’t be institutionally protected from the consequences of their misdeeds. Further, they sully the very honorable and brave policemen and women who put their lives on the line to protect all people, regardless of guilt or innocence, in the name of justice. This song is my response to watching too many undeserved men and women die. Some people in authority would rather bend the truth over backward to justify homicide than admit this culture has a pervasive problem with racism. It’s time to come clean and affirm that black lives matter too.

This was the last song that I demoed for the Peoples Punk Band. It was around the time that Ferguson and Baltimore were exploding. We were looking for a tune that we could pour into everything that we were feeling about the situation. That said, it wasn’t a good fit for the band. In the end, Tim and I agreed it was mrmoth song and not really a PPB tune. So it got filed away and then, obviously, everything changed quite a bit. Flash forward a year, and the same problems are still with us and I was back to feeling the same frustration. Posting and tweeting what I felt about it didn’t really feel like enough. So I returned to the song as a meditation on the subject. The lyrics are the product of a couple years of thinking so hard about it.

These lyrics aren’t typical for me with mrmoth. I normally don’t do politics as subject matter with this project. That said, maybe that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t made many mrmoth tracks lately. I wasn’t interested in profiting by the song/subject matter, so anything anyone wants to pay for it will go to the national ACLU organization.

The cover art is by Areej Adel. She’s a brilliant Saudi artist and my friend.