`Poison In The Air'

“There’s poison in the air
Right near the factory!”
And children start to die
And mothers start to scream
And fathers start to weep
And workers start to shout:
“The Union Carbide plant—
Its gas is pouring out!”

It went to India
To use the cheap labor
And thousands it did kill
When its poison gas did pour
“Safety, it costs too much”
The bankers all did say
And the silent spring of death
Won’t affect the USA.

The pesticide for insects
Murdered people now instead
The methyl isocyanate
From the storage tank it fled
Morgan Guaranty Director Brown
And Chase Manhattan Director Ferguson
Directed Union Carbide
To use the cheapest gas.

Each day another horror
Or a new atrocity
There is no regulation
As they destroy the air we breathe
Today they poisoned India
Tomorrow your city
A monument to profit
A tribute to corporate greed.


To listen to the "Poison In The Air" folk song, you can click on the following music site link:

http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/Protest+Folk+Songs/Poisin+in+the+Air

The Poison In The Air protest folk song was written shortly after the late 1984 disaster at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. Since that time, Union Carbide was purchased by Dow Chemical in 2001; and in the 21st-century there’s a Students for Bhopal group (www.studentsforbhopal.org) which is still fighting for justice for the victims of U.S. corporate greed in India. Coincidentally, a member of the Dow board of directors in recent years, Jacqueline Barton, apparently also used to sit on the board of trustees of Barnard College (whose board of trustees currently includes Columbia University President and Washington Post Company/Newsweek media conglomerate board member Lee Bollinger).

Next: Columbia University’s Washington Post Company/Newsweek Link and Newsweek Magazine’s Historical CIA Connection—Part 1