"Prisoner In Clinton" (for David Gilbert)

(chorus)
Oh, people locked in jobs
Or locked in middle-class minds
Oh, people locked in sects
Since when is love a crime?

(verses)
There’s a prisoner in Clinton in Upstate New York
The Murdoch press, it tried him
The judge wouldn’t let him talk
Like John Brown at Harper’s Ferry
He put his life on the line
To fight to free the slaves, since when is that a crime? (chorus)

There’s a prisoner in Clinton who resisted their brutal war
Who was with you on their campus
Who never forgot the poor
Like John Brown at Harper’s Ferry
He emerged from the Underground
To fight to free the slaves and bring the System down. (chorus)

There’s a prisoner in Clinton, his sentence is our shame
Betrayed by those who realize
That the guilty smeared his name
The ones who sat out the Sixties
Alone came to his aid
His case got lost in dogma, though he fought to free the slaves. (chorus)

There’s a prisoner in Clinton separated from the woman he loves
While she’s tried before the judge
That sentenced her husband
What kind of law is this
That deals with us all this way?
And convenes an all-white jury to put Black rebels away. [chorus)

There’s a prisoner in Clinton whom the brutes labeled “terrorist”
But no civilians were killed
By the prisoner now locked up
A prisoner of war
Obvious to you and me
And like Lolita Lebron and the rest, people now wish him free. (chorus)

The Prisoner In Clinton protest folk song was originally titled Prisoner In Auburn and was written in the early 1980s when David Gilbert www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/davidgilbert/ was imprisoned in Auburn State Prison. Since this protest folk song was written, Columbia SDS founder Gilbert has continued to serve time at Attica State Prison, at Comstock State Prison and at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, where he is still imprisoned in 2007.

To listen to the Prisoner In Clinton, you can click on the following music site links:

http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/Biographical+Folk+Songs/Prisoner+in+Auburn+%28for+David+Gilbert%29

http://www.mp3.com/artist/bobafeldman/songs/

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