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I've seen these stress position cages, as a tourist in Lebanon, visiting a prison that Israel later bombed. My friend Keith McHenry was held in one, repeatedly, for days on end, by the San Francisco Police Department.

lyrics

There Is A Cage

You can listen to our leaders talk on TV
Imagine you know your democracy
Where people have rights, in a nation of laws
A right to a trial, just cause
Do something illegal, you might be detained
This is part of the way the system's maintained
But there's a special place where they take
Certain people whose spirits they want to break

There is a cage about three feet square
They hang it from the ceiling and put a person in there

Wherever you find them, it's a tell-tale sign
Of a society's precipitous decline
When the people in power feel they must resort
To conditions too confined to be sanctioned by the court
They keep prisoners in them for hours, days, weeks
As long as required for the end they seek
No marks left on the victim, what a perfect crime
No evidence of torture after all that time

Chorus

At the bombed prison of Khiam, in Holman Square
How many, how long, tortured in there
In Abu Ghraib, in Bagram
After all the mortars and bombs
You can hear about them and marvel at the plight
Of those souls disappeared into the Black Sites
It's where Turkey keeps the Kurds, and it's where you just might go
If you feed people in a park in San Francisco

Chorus

credits

from It's Been A Year, released May 28, 2021

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David Rovics Portland, Oregon

Singer/songwriter, writer, podcaster (on Spotify, Substack & Patreon), anarchist, dad, lover of life.

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