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The Ballad Of NAFTA

Ryan Harvey
Language: English



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They're fighting for your freedom
Just to keep it for their own
To slide you further into poverty
And work you to the bone
They'd rather steal your labor
Than watch you in peace
And they're all laughing proudly
As their salaries increase

They're moving all the factories
To northern border towns
Where the poor will work for pennies
While their homes are falling down
And the trucks take all the products
To sell them at higher rates
Right over the border
Into the United States

Maquiladoras
Is the name they often use
To describe these prison labor camps
That probably made your shoes
They're just below this border
Hidden in plain view
They're not working for themselves
They're making shit for you

So pay attention
To the labels in the stores
Take note of all the products
That are made on foreign shores
So greedy corporations
Can maximize their pay
Busting unions in the sweatshops
They're creating everyday

It all didn't begin like this,
But times are getting tough
Farmers used to farm their fields
Until the rich had had enough
They passed a trade agreement
Claiming it was for the poor
They named it NAFTA
And it's economic war

Now NAFTA took the land away
From the peasantry
Gave it to the corporations
With their heavy subsidies
And they sold their own corn back to them
As they took their jobs away
And sent all of the money
Back to the USA

NAFTA took said that company's
Have the right to what they need
So they allowed them to pollute the land
With no accountability
So the fields, now full of poison
Can't grow what they used grow
So they were offered GE seeds
Made by Monsanto

Theses seeds grow for one season
Then you gotta buy some more
So so company could profit
From the poorest of the poor
Now the farmers are all struggling
And giving up their land
While the CEOs are happy,
It's all part of the plan

These farmers then move north
As they sell off all their farms
Where they find Maquiladoras
And and a border with armed guards
Seeking job security or maybe better pay
They are stuck inside this rat race
As their rights are stripped away

Now their farms are all bought up
By these giant companies
With their chemicals and fertilizers
Mutating the seeds
Plus they higher less employees
And unions are denied
By these giant corporations
With NAFTA on their side

Now the border towns are plagued
By pollution in the streams
Their drinking water covered
By chemical debris
Because the factories don't need to follow
Laws anymore
After all they've got to keep their profits
Higher than before

So the factories appearing
Are coming from above
Where there's union workers striking
To hold on to their jobs
Where there used to be good wages
There's rising poverty
And the homeless rate is rising
Unlike the economy

It's NAFTA that allows these groups
To take just what they please
And dump their chemicals into the land
The local people need
It's NAFTA that's destroying
Mexico's self-dependency
Because it was made not for the people,
But for the companies

Now we've got FTAA,
CAFTA, PPP
And the World Trade Organization
To spread the fallacy
Free Trade is a lie,
It's a weapon used by few
To gain the wealth of many
And that's exactly what they do.

Contributed by adriana - 2006/8/18 - 15:01




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