My City of Ruins (Introduction) [Live in Manchester, May 14, 2025]

Now, easy, Roy

There's some very weird, strange and dangerous shit going on out there right now

In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent

This is happening now

In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world's poorest children to sickness and death

This is happening now

In my country they're taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers

They're rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society

They're abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom

They're defunding American universities that won't bow down to their ideological demands

They're removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons

This is all happening now

A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government

They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American

The America that I've sung to you about for fifty years is real and, regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people

So we'll survive this moment

Now, I have hope because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said

He said, "In this world there isn't as much humanity as one would like, but there's enough"

Let's pray