Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti
Joan Baez
LYRICS
Father, yes, I am a prisoner
Fear not to relay my crime
The crime is loving the forsaken
Only silence is shame
And now I’ll tell you what’s against us
An art that’s lived for centuries
Go through the years and you will find
What’s blackened all of history
Against us is the law
With its immensity of strength and power
Against us is the law!
Police know how to make a man
A guilty or an innocent
Against us is the power of police!
The shameless lies that men have told
Will ever more be paid in gold
Against us is the power of the gold!
Against us is racial hatred
And the simple fact that we are poor
My father dear, I am a prisoner
Don’t be ashamed to tell my crime
The crime of love and brotherhood
And only silence is shame
With me I have my love, my innocence,
The workers, and the poor
For all of this I’m safe and strong
And hope is mine
Rebellion, revolution don’t need dollars
They need this instead
Imagination, suffering, light and love
And care for every human being
You never steal, you never kill
You are a part of hope and life
The revolution goes from man to man
And heart to heart
And I sense when I look at the stars
That we are children of life
Death is small.
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian-born American anarchists who were convicted of murdering a guard and a paymaster during the April 15, 1920 armed robbery of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts, United States. They were executed in the electric chair seven years later at Charlestown State Prison. Both men adhered to an anarchist movement that advocated relentless warfare against a violent and oppressive government.
