The Dying Firefighter

    I saw the plane hit the building
    The flames and the billowing smoke
    I saw the glass, paper, metal and stone
    Everything shattered and broke
    I was there with my people
    Engine Company 24
    We rushed into the building
    Got as far as the 35th floor.

    The black smoke and the heat was like nothing
    I'd seen in all of my years
    With each step in that blazing inferno
    You could feel destiny near
    In the midst of the falling girders
    The sheet rock and God knows what else
    I tried to find the survivors
    Those who made it to the stairwells

    I carried the wounded to safety
    If that's what you might call the street
    With bodies and boulders and metal
    All crashing down by your feet
    As #2 was collapsing
    When only ten floors still stood
    Everything was falling around me
    Like it was made out of cardboard and wood

    It was just then I heard someone
    Trapped underneath the debris
    I started pulling at something
    And that's when the fire got me
    I was pinned 'neath the rubble
    And the flames were licking my coat
    And the pain, the unbearable agony
    And then that was all that she wrote

    But I just wish I could tell you
    Before I am taken away
    That I've seen a lot of this world
    And there's something that I gotta say
    I don't believe in politics
    I believe in the human race
    I believe in the goodness of people
    In New York or some far-away place

    I believe in my daughter
    And I believe in my wife
    And may nobody's father be taken
    To avenge the loss of my life
    People may call me a brave man
    And this may very well be
    But the firefighters of Kabul
    Are just as brave men as me

David Rovics
    P.O. Box 995
    Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 (USA)
    (617) 747-4460 (voicemail)
    (203) 901-3306 (cell phone)
    DRovics@aol.com: email
    Web: davidrovics, or drovics/home
    See also, Rovics at Folkweb and Rovics at mp3.com.

David Rovics has a new CD out, mid-November, called Living In These Times. If you'd like a promotional copy of the CD, please just email him and give him your mailing address. For everyone else, you are hereby encouraged to pre-order a copy of the CD! Ordering information and other such stuff can be found on his website.

From January through March he’ll be doing a big loop around the US and parts of Canada. Details can be found in the "gigs" section of his website. If you want to be involved with setting up and/or promoting a date, please contact him, and feel free to peruse the "booking" section of his website.

Here's a radio-friendly run-down of the CD contents. Complete lyrics to all the songs can be found in the "song lyrics" section of his website. The sheet music to most of these songs can also be found in his songbook.

1. "The Dying Firefighter" – September 11, 2001, World Trade Center.
2. "From Kabul to Khartoum" – US foreign policy ("we're gonna bomb our way to freedom").
3. "St. Patrick Battalion" – 202 Irish-American deserters from the US Army joined the Mexican Army during the Mexican-American War.
4. "Who Will Tell the People" – A song about why we need the alternative media, and what the corporate media isn't telling us. Specifically dedicated to the show, Democracy Now!.
5. "The Rinky Dink Song" – About a marvelous contraption called the Rinky Dink. A sort of traveling bicycle/solar/wind-powered radio station/sound system.
6. "Shut Them Down" – Generic protest song for shutting down the evil financial institution of the day (IMF, World Bank, WTO, etc.).
7. "Behind the Barricades" – A kiss behind the barricades. Love, community and revolution.
8. "Song for Basra" – A song for the besieged, starved, bombed, humiliated people of Iraq's second city.
9. "International Terrorists" – For all the terrorists, big and small, independent and state-sponsored.
10. "Trading With the Enemy" – Named after Jesse Helms' 1996 act of congress, dedicated to the good people of the Republic of Cuba.
11. "No One Is Illegal" – A song about borders, immigration, and globalization.
12. "My Daughter" – A song for a little Iraqi girl.
13. "I Remember Warsaw" – About the great Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, April, 1943.
14. "Children of Jerusalem" – The song that got my tour of Israel cancelled. For the Palestinian children still daily getting gunned down by the IDF.
15. "DU" – A song about the substance known by the misnomer of Depleted Uranium. 16. "Polyamory Song" – A little ditty about the joy of open relationships. 17. "The Jewel of Bucharest" – A love song.

"The Peace Research Institute in Oslo has studied the major wars of the 1990s (overwhelmingly civil wars, not inter-country wars) and found that they share certain characteristics: they have taken place in countries with high levels of poverty and land degradation, low fresh water availability, high external debt, falling export income from primary commodities and a history of vigorous IMF intervention - all conditions heightened, if not totally caused, by the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO."

From the book Global Showdown, by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke