WEBVTT

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Summary from the--

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I'm gonna read this
poem that I never read.

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And partly you know,
I like this book.

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But I think I'm biased.

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But I'm always, I'm frequently
now confronted with the reality

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that a lot of people actually
haven't read this book

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because it's a few poems
that I think challenge

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the dominant perception
of what people

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think about the war on drugs.

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And either they've read the
book and haven't read this poem,

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or they haven't read
the book at all.

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But it's always interesting
to be in a situation

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where you feel like the only
way you can make sure somebody

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hears a specific poem in your
book is if you read it to them.

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And so this one's a challenge
because it's a bit long,

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but I'm, we'll see what happens.

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"The Invention of Crack".

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One.

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Dark Alliance.

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Crack smoked over this
backdrop: CIA seal,

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Contras, so much heavy weight.

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How birds fly?

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How millions turn
into guerilla props:

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AK 47s, and everything else.

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White smoke.

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Rocks.

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The dead and dying.

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Gary Webb's tale of two
horrors: contra and crack.

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Mr. Speaker, what is most
frightening about crack

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is that it has made
cocaine widely available.

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Mr. Speaker, I am afraid that
the crack epidemic will only

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get worse.

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Parenthetical, the speaker is
black, close parenthetical.

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I wish to bring to the
attention of our colleagues

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an article, extra potent
cocaine use rising sharply

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among teenagers.

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Parenthetical.

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This is the motherfucker
predicting, Dilulio.

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Close parenthetical.

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Confirms what many
of us in the Congress

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who have the responsibility of
reviewing federal drug abuse

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policy have known for some time.

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Parenthetical, niggas will pay.

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Close parenthetical.

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The availability
of crack cocaine

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in its purest state
at low street prices

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will only expand the abuse
of cocaine nationwide.

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This Black man says
crack will ruin.

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Senator Black Elect say
scourge and scourges

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and look behind
the words and you

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know he knew there
is a prison for them.

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This post Rockefeller,
after Carmona

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got laced with a life sentence
for $100 worth of heroin.

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Ain't many black
folks in Congress.

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Keep saying Reagan did it.

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Black man say Reagan did it.

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Reagan say look at the paper,
the bodies in the street.

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Rangel says scourge and you
vote for him again and again

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and again, and the pen is
still filled with the bodies.

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Ain't no conspiracy here.

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Hand to hand scared him.

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Black man watching the
projects turn into a war zone.

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Probably thought if no one
notices the carnage, he should.

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Probably thought
if no one notices

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the zombies in the
street, he should.

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Don't tell me he trafficked
in The New Jim Crow too.

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Rangel said scourge all
these years, all these years

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and the bodies in
prison, and we don't

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stop counting but I know
what he told the papers.

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We stopped counting.

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Stopped counting how many babies
lost their mothers to the pool

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of smoke running from aluminum.

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We had stopped counting.

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Mr. Senator was
out to ruin ours,

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it seems except he
called it about.

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You think we counted our lost?

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Lost pounds?

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Lost brothers?

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All the women who bartered?

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All the men who bartered?

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All the things they lost?

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The newest scourge
on the streets

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is a frightening low cost
substance called crack.

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This form of cocaine,
which uses freebase,

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has been proved
lethal time and again,

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and it's responsible
for an alarming

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number of episodes of death
and injury in recent weeks.

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Parenthetical.

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When it's heroin and it's in a
rural town, we won't say this.

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Close parenthetical.

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Two.

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Nickel bag, dimebag,
eight ball--

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we invented a way for
brothers to be good at math.

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Call me crackhead,
call me fiend,

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but I know my daddy's name is
what I tell the young boys even

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as they wave me on to the spot
where a kid my son's age passes

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out the rocks that will make
me see God one more time.

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Jesus, some of us
still be praying

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with aluminum between our lips.

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All our music reduced
to something clever

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to say about dope.

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Call it white lady.

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Call me snowman.

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Say I move avalanches.

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I drought the city.

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From the 1st to the
5th I got it all back.

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Crown me rap star if I ain't
a hustler what you call that.

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I was just trying
to feed my babies.

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These motherfuckers
called this shit

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these fools saying classic.

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Move weight.

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Fly birds.

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Call me Ricky Ross.

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Call me dopeman, pusherman.

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He who moved bricks.

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Move that dope.

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This, all of this, the
abyss where men go to die,

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and the rest of
America goes to watch.

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Where Rangel at?

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Yeah, I know you laughing,
and they still saying

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whitey did it.

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I've been had my
money on the man that

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stays in the office,
that gets in office,

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that suits up to go prosecute,
that suits up to go defend.

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I say they did it.

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What?

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Watch when the
city went to ruins.

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Inheritance ain't
nothing but memory.

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When a mayor and a
reporter smoking too,

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while we're the
only ones in jail?

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Where all those
men were dreamed?

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They keep saying in the 80s
a Smokey, Teddy, Luther would

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have crooned to a crack pipe.

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We pray that thou
will grant, O Lord,

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whatever will that will
bury what brought smoke,

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crystalline, white
rocks to our streets.

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Rayful.

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Freeway Ricky.

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Supreme.

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Everyone wanting to be Escobar.

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A proliferation of bodies
enlarged by cameras.

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Philargyrist: lover
of money, antecedent

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to Andre three stacks, to all
those pockets full of stones.

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They say where the Earth has
no water there is a man craving

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the shining glimmer of a
nickel, or the ragged end

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of a pipe in their mouths.

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1980 something.

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Corposant and corpse.

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Or fuck your hearse.

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Three.

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It takes a nation of
millions to hold us back?

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Well they got that.

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We got that too.

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Hands around our throats.

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Before you suffocate your
own self, father forgive.

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And so the penitentiaries
are barrels

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full of children running
away from Jake, Bodine, 5-0,

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all these names
for the same dance.

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On the run.

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And watch when the researchers
come, notebooks in hands,

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writing about the dispossessed.

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About the clean and dirty.

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Their idioms of
death and whatnot.

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King me motherfucka, they
say when the research drops.

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Expert on the Negro problem.

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They become Oracle and insight,
and we got all the dead bodies

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around us.

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Say so many people
died one year,

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the district was
worse than Vietnam.

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Per capita they say.

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Per capital, meaning all
the capitals in the world

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was better to be
in than here where

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Sam did go to college no
matter what the news say.

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And he came back and paid
rent like all these good folks

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with their dogs and shit do now.

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Talk about the victor
writes history.

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The Reagan era, the cocaine
era, than boys from Dunbar

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could hoop is what
I mean to say.

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All the dope gets
in the way though.

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Me remembering that
story a bag at a time

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and ain't none of
them kids get high.

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My uncle caught touchdowns
for Bladensburg high school,

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where his story.

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My aunt ain't get high,
my mom, where their story?

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All their history buried in
the narrative of the shooter,

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or the one pitching them kilos.

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We buried a nation inside the
lungs that filled with smoke,

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and the smoke
smothers the nation,

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and the nation is the small
child crying in the corner,

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and the barrels are
filled with crabs.

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Joseph E Lowery, president
of the Southern Christian

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Leadership Conference, urges
blacks to turn in drug pushers

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regardless of race.

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Parenthetical, he knows blacks
only know black drug pushers

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and drug dealers, but so what.

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Close parenthetical.

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We are devastated
spiritually and emotionally

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by what crack and other drugs
are doing to our people.

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Parenthetical, not as much as
we are devastated by racism.

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Close parenthetical.

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He says drugs
represent the new lynch

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mob that is more effectively
killing our people

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than the old lynch mob.

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Parenthetically.

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Close parenthetical.

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Always that same
hurt, you think a man

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don't know what a high can do?

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Flattened an entire city
block a few guns did.

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I tell my shadow we
made it all possible.

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You know getting
high ain't the move,

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but ask someone
who's been there,

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shit feels like coming
for days, that's

00:08:59.330 --> 00:09:01.260 align:middle line:90%
what they said about heroin.

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Crack, it feels like God has
dropped the piece of heaven

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behind your eyelids.

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After that, all you want is
to be that close to an angel

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again.

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