Not For Want Of Trying

Everybody knows things are bad, It's a depression
Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job
The dollar buys a nickel's worth
Banks are going bust
Shop-keepers keep a gun under the counter
Punks are running wild on the street and there's nobody
Anywhere that seems to know what to do
And there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe our food is unfit to eat
We sit watching our T.V.s while some local newscaster tells us
That today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes
As if that's the way it's supposed to be!

We know things are bad; worse than bad
They're crazy
It's like everything, everywhere is going crazy
So, we don't go out anymore
We sit in the house and slowly the world we're living
In is getting smaller and we say
Let me have my toaster and my T.V.
And my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything
Just leave us alone.

But I'm not gonna leave you alone
I want you to get mad!

I don't want you to protest and I don't want you to
Riot or write your Congressman,
Because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write
I don't know what to do about the depression and the
Inflation and the Russians or the crime in the street
All I know is that first you've got to get mad
You've got to say: I'm a human being
Goddamn it, my life has value!

I want you to get up now
I want all of you to get up out of your chairs
I want you to get up, right now, and go to the window
Open it and stick your head out and yell:

I'M AS MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS
ANYMORE!