10 Help Me Mama, I Can't Breathe 3:04 MATURE

6 sec lead-in MATURE
Containsthe following phase
“Thoughts and Prayers, That "SH*T" ain’t working, We’ve got to find another way

Angry, Fed-up, Disgusted

An old white guys feelings about the death of George Floyd and BLM.

Credits:
Jeff Wall - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar
Evan Campfield - Bass
Aaron Cummings - Drums
Tom Troyer - Electric Guitar

Words and Music - Jeff Wall

This is a very difficult song for me to play live as it tears me apart and drains me emotionally.

Have you ever stopped to take a look at the history of being Black in America? It's not pretty.

People of Color were treated the same, or worse, than livestock. Once slavery was abolished, the abuse and hatred didn't stop. It became a part of White culture for us to look down upon anyone who wasn't also White. We needed to feel like we are somehow better than those other people, especially Black people.

We created monuments to remind Black people of their place, that as far as we were concerned, the War Against Slavery never ended. We claimed to have outlawed slavery, but that was just empty words. Jim Crow. Sundown Laws, Miscegenation Laws, Equal but Separate. Lynchings are something that took place during my lifetime.

White people as a whole should be ashamed of ourselves. While you and I may not have directly participated in any of this racist bullshit, we have damn sure benefited from it. White Privilege is real.

The Black people I know are not asking for their mule and 40 acres. They want nothing more than a level playing field. They want the same things as any other American wants: Opportunity, A safe place to raise their children, some common respect. The same things that so many of us take for granted.

If you woke up Black tomorrow morning, if the roles were reversed, how would you feel? How would you respond? Having to teach your children how not to get shot by the police. Being followed by Loss Prevention when you go into a store. Being pulled over by the Cops simply for being Black. Having to teach your kids to be deferential to Whites, no matter what they say or how bad they treat you, so that you don't end up like Emmett Till?

I wouldn’t make it as a Black man very long. Just as soon as I started to feel like I was being looked down upon or was denied solely because of the color of my skin, I would have rose up and would have tried to burn this **** to the ground.

I think that the one thing that scares White people more than anything is that Black people might start treating us the way we have been treating them for the last 400 years.

Why do we want to turn a blind eye to the numerous contributions that people of color have made to America? We want to ignore the fact that most forms of American Music – Jazz, Country, Rock, Bluegrass, Blues, all trace their origins back to Black Music. The Black Fashion of today will be White Fashion of tomorrow. And NASCAR and Hockey are the last two sports to not be totally dominated by people of color...and thanks to Bubba Wallace, Dustin Byfuglien, Kyle Okposo, and Joel Ward, that’s changing too. Samuel L Jackson is now the highest paid actor in Hollywood, and if Halle Berry is in a movie, I want to see it.

Things are changing, but not enough, and not fast enough

The death of George Floyd sickened and enraged me. I don't care if he was ex-felon. I know lots of ex-felons who are now upstanding members of society. I don't care that he was a drug addict. I know a lot of former addicts as well. Regardless of his past sins,whether real or imagined, he was still a human being. He had a Mama, he was someone's son, someone's brother, someone's friend. Somebody, somewhere loved him and mourned his death.

And it was the police who did this. The very people who are supposed to protect