What did the alcohol **** Besides all of your friendships Your liver and will to be healthy It killed your desire to fight Left you in a puddle of **** Covered in money You smell like **** But you're rich That alcohol made you weak You dropped your picket signs Your ability to organize Went straight for the paycheck Whiteness kept you sheltered Your class status kept you fed You replaced fighting for the people With drinking for no purpose
This is about my fear of becoming complacent in life, of losing my desire to struggle for the working class. I've seen radical friends become complacement alcoholics bent more on getting a fat paycheck than in making radical change in their community and world. Alcohol is not the root cause of this, but I think it aids complacency. When you become OK with a constant paycheck at a meaningless job, when you become OK with choosing to dedicate most of your time to drinking rather than organizing, when you become OK with growing up to become just like your depressed, defeated, hopeless parents. THAT is complacency.