Some mornings you need a slap in the face

That’s what this Friday was like. It was the morning after the election the night before. Shock ruled. Disappointment bordered on despair. Mornings like this you need someone to help you snap out of it.

Someone to tell you that you don’t have to take this crap. You can actually try changin’ it.

A clear blast of perspective. A sound and a message that is nakedly partisan and brazenly positive. A source of energy and maybe even hope.

Something to channel the spirit in the dark — the momentum of Curtis Mayfield’s Move On Up (“remember your dreams are your only skin, so keep on pushing”) — and apply it to your world as it is right now.

To remind you that sometimes governments crack and systems fall, ‘cause unity is powerful.

Some mornings you need to remember that darkness brings the brightest light.

Art that is more angry. Music with greater truth. Writing that can create more change. Something to say you never know until you try, how things just might be if we came together so strongly.

When lights go out, walls come tumbling down. Yes they do, yes they do, yes they do.

Some mornings you can’t believe that people don’t get that unity is threatened by those who have and who have not, those who are with and those who are without.

Is it really just because they dangle jobs, like a donkey’s carrot,
until you don’t know where you are?

And why don’t they get that the public enemies, No 10 don’t really care. They play the power game, they take the profits, you take the blame, when they tell you there’s no rise in pay.

Some mornings this is what you find yourself thinking.

But it’s good on some mornings to hear that someone else understands that the competition is a colour TV, and that we’re on still pause with a video machine that keep you slave to the H P. And though the tools have changed, the effect remains the same — someone else understands that there’s a bigger fight still to be fought.

And it’s good, too, to hear someone challenge you. To have someone say, you can’t give up. To ask of you, really, when it comes down to it, are you gonna be threatened by them?

Some mornings you ask yourself, what should I do now?

Because it would be easy to spend your days down in the dirt. But, you see, things can change.

Walls can come tumbling down.

‘Cause unity is powerful.

Some mornings to have to ask yourself, are you gonna try to make this work?