If the people beholden to soup kitchens, food stamps, etc., ever get fed up, anyone in power would be wise to remember that, as Marley sang, “A hungry mob is a angry mob.” Marley looks at the different angles of a citizen uprising, simultaneously reveling in the destruction, understanding the motivations, expressing disgust at the violence, and weeping for how far things had to fall to get to this point: “We gonna be burning and a-looting tonight (To survive, yeah)/Burning and a-looting tonight (Save your baby lives).” You might as well be reading the accounts of those who saw the shameful rioting and looting during the Ferguson, Missouri protests. Like “Sheriff,” this song reflected the frustration and anger of the people who felt suffocated by the curfews and corrupt police force in Kingston. And given the causes for the anger and some of the violence that it’s led to, against citizens and police alike, it’s a reminder that there’s been too much tragedy, with little progress to show for it. Given today’s tensions between law enforcement and citizens, especially the #BlackLivesMatter movement, it’s easy to see why people would identify with the sentiment. One of the all-time great, universal protest songs, it’s worth noting that probably the best line belongs to the Wailers’ most aggressive member, Peter Tosh: “You can fool some people sometimes but you can’t fool all the people all the time.”Īfter witnessing police oppression in Jamaica, which was violently divided along political lines, Marley fantasized about the justifiable killing of a corrupt cop on this single while swearing he spared the life of the innocent deputy.
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