I can hear you crying Detroit

What happened to our dreams?
Are they all dying?
A car in every drive,
A chicken in the oven and apple pie.
Now I’m down here in Missouri
But I can hear Detroit cry.
Their dreams are torn to sunder.
All they’re hard work lying in foreclosure.

You hear the congressmen say
The problems lie on the welfare line.
What about the jobs we rely on?
Can they guarantee those?
Congressmen show me the jobs
I’ll happily step aside right out of this line
I went to college to better myself
To give my children a better life
Where are the jobs I dreamed of?
Can you hear me Congressman?

I work at a Wal-Mart for a little more than minimum wage.
The hours keep me below the poverty line.
But they’re a big corporation
They can fire me and hire someone else the same day.
Now tell me Congressman could that be the real reason
That line grows longer every day?
I guess that money that pads your pocket
Blinds you to the truth of those who earn less than you.

I can hear you crying Detroit.
I hear you every day.
You want a hand up not a hand out.
You devoted your life for a corporation who wasn’t devoted to you.
You chased a white rabbit to a world
Where stability was masked with a living wage.
That Cheshire Cat Corporation is still smiling at your pain
Long after they’re gone.
Leaving an asphalt desert where dreams once breathed.

The cars you built were quality.
They kept me warm all those long nights
I slept in my car to afford going to college.
It at least blocked the wind
From cutting to the quick
But at the time I never thought to say thank you.
I was too busy crying
Dreaming of a better life.
Where I had a job
That paid enough to sleep in an actual bed.

I voted for a president who gave me hope
That my dreams were not dying.
He said things would get worse
Before we saw improvement
And he wasn’t lying.
Somewhere on the horizon line
We’ll all see a better day.
If our congressmen
Will meet the president at least half way.
They forget the simple man voted them into office.
We lack the funds to afford their attention.

Detroit is crying
But so is everyone else.
No one can survive on minimum wage.
Try to prove they can congressmen
By lowering your wages to that line.
Then maybe you can see
What a living wage needs to be
Just to barely get by.

I never thought the car in every drive
Would be a home to survive.
If that’s where you reside tonight
Dry the tears from your eyes
And thank Detroit for your unexpected habitat of steel.
We will all rise back up again.
While the corporations blow away in the wind.
They can never take our American pride.
It’s all we have when our homes and savings are gone.