This Is The Way - [A Mandalorian-Inspired Protest]
A creed for those who hold the line
This song borrows from the Star Wars series The Mandalorian and is inspired by the many ways Americans are saying hell no to authoritarianism.
Lyrics
They came back wrapped in flags and hubris,
Selling fear like it was faith,
Told the judges bend the language,
Told the weak to know their place.
But the robe and gavel answered,
Not every line can be undone,
There are still a few bright outposts
Holding steady in the sun.
And when they say bow your head,
When they say fall in line,
We raise our eyes to one another,
Say not this time, not this time.
This is the way
We keep the faith where the fear begins,
This is the way
No crown survives where the people dig in
Hand in hand, town to town,
We don’t scare easy, we don’t obey,
Love is the shield around those they’d cast away,
This is the way
Some are marching in the daylight,
Some are filming in the dark,
Some are cutting up the credit cards
That fed spineless market gods.
Some are singing from the stages,
Calling tyrants by their names,
We are filling out our ballots
To stop their shameless games.
And they can buy another network,
They can flood another feed,
But they can’t buy our nation’s promise,
They can’t buy what we believe.
This is the way
We keep the faith where the fear begins,
This is the way
No crown survives where the people dig in
Hand in hand, town to town,
We don’t scare easy, we don’t obey,
Love is the shield around those they’d cast away,
This is the way
They want fear to be the language,
Want exhaustion to win out,
Want the decent and the quiet
To forget what hope’s about.
But we’ve seen too much to swallow,
We’ve got too much left to save,
And the line keeps getting longer
Every time they say behave.
From Minnesota’s mourning winter
To the heat on city streets,
People done with all the whispering
Put their bodies in between.
Not for glory, not for cameras,
Not to hear their own names ring,
Just to say we will not take this
While there’s breath in anything.
This is the way
We guard the small and tell the truth when they would look away,
This is the way
We turn their rage to stubborn grace and meet them day by day,
Vote by vote, name by name,
Song by song, state by state,
We are not the silence they were betting on to seal our fate,
This is the way
This is the way
This song gave me chills, David, like so many of your songs, especially the Appalachian version. 😄👏🏼🎶🤘🏽💙