[Verse 1] A quarter freedom And narrow the terms They judged every name Before it was heard They saw my faith And decided my lane Catholic on paper Became something to blame Protestant nation Was the story they sold Like one former worship Made America whole APA formed in 1887 No Catholic hide Was the promise they carried Two million members By the mid-Nineties came False takeover rumors Kept feeding the flame My family fled From the hatred back home Came for a country Where hope could be grown But antisemitism Followed that flight The new land promised freedom But denied us the right Owners and schools Could reject my name Employers and landlords Could do the same Eastern Europeans Were labeled too strange For customs and language They wanted us changed [Chorus] Who gets to be long Who gets to be long If liberty is real Then the line is drawn wrong Different place, different place, different place we came from Same rights, same rights, same light, we all belong [Verse 2] Chinese workers got blamed When the wages ran low Bosses set the pay But we carried the load Chinese exclusion in 1882 Closed the national gate Based on who we were too Japanese workers came searching for pay Westward expansion It opened the way California laws Kept land from our hands Other western states Repeated the ban Gentlemen's agreement in 1907 Cut immigration Through political tension Chinese and Japanese Face different laws But breaker is power The policies they saw [Chorus] Who gets to be long Who gets to be long If liberty is real Then the line is drawn wrong Different place, different place, different place we came from Same rights, same rights, same light, we all belong [Bridge] New sound, same nation New voice, same discrimination New sound, same nation New voice, same discrimination [Verse 3] Slavery ended But equality stalled Basic rights promised And denied by the law North, south, west Discrimination remain Different locations But familiar pain Sharecropping fields In the low-wage street Separate schools made The injustice complete Plessy in 1896 Made it stand Separate but equal Became law in the land He equal was fiction Beneath the disguise One phrase made injustice Look legalized Those moving north still face Barriers to pay Locked out of unions And pushed away The Klan rose again in 1915 Spreading terror and fear In black communities Mob terror stole thousands Of lives through the ages A national injustice History must name Native communities Faced hardship, ignored Poor living conditions And resources too short Education was limited By federal command White union spread quickly Across native lands Society of American Indians Took form Improving conditions And challenging harm Dr. Carlos Montezuma Exposed the abuse Sec. of Government control Had no valid excuse Indian Bureau And give us the reins Native communities Mad is their aims We were here first But were treated as gone Still we organized And carried on [Chorus] Who gets to be long Who gets to be long If liberty is real Then the line is drawn wrong Different place, different place, different place we came from Same rights, same rights, same light, we all belong [Verse 4] Like Mexican families Came north through the strain Conflict in a hard time Made people seek change Population grew In the early new age But discrimination Followed each page Mutualistas brought protection, dear Insurance and legal Help year after year Alliances Hispanic Or American stood strong Orden Heroes day America carry rights along Labor camp workers And families in barrios Face crowded housing And services too low When the system shut doors And ignored every call Communities united To provide for them all Catholic and Jewish Chinese and Japanese African-American Native communities Mexican-American Each story, its own Different forms of injustice One country called home Rights mean nothing If they only protect a few Freedom must belong To everyone of you [Chorus] Who gets to be long Who gets to be long If liberty is real Then the line is drawn wrong Different place, different place, different place we came from Same rights, same rights, same light, we all belong A nation grows stronger When exclusion is gone Different roots, different routes Still building as one, oh, oh [Outro] Same rights, same light, we all belong Ah, ah, ah [Outro] Same rights, same light, we all belong
