Texas singer/songwriter (and regular performer at One Eyed Jacks) James McMurtry has made his song “We Can’t Make it Here” available for free download. The seven-year-old song dramatizes income disparity, and people are encouraged to use it as the soundtrack for videos supporting the Occupy movement, the best of which will be posted on McMurtry’s website.

He writes:

We quit playing “We Can’t Make It Here” for a year or two. We’re playing it again because it seems to still be relevant, and that pretty much sucks for everybody but us. I know the song is still relevant because people are camped out along Wall Street and in front of City Halls around the country and around the globe, demanding a solution to the problems I tried to give light to when I put my song out seven years ago. They are mixed in age and economic status. Some are young and idealistic. Some are old enough to have had their ideals trampled upon a time or two. My son goes to school in the New York area and some of his friends have been involved in the protests. One was detained for nine hours without charge. This is not supposed to happen in our supposedly civilized nation. These people are getting roughed up, but the press only seems to notice when a victim of police brutality happens to be an Iraq war veteran. I’m guessing there are a good many vets in the crowd and the poor fellow in Oakland won’t be the only one hurt. I suppose the cops think the protesters are breaking the law. Seems to me, the Bill of Rights guarantees the right to peaceful assembly. Meanwhile, the one percent, safely ensconced in the tall glass towers, does not have to break the law, because they get to write the law. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around, in a democracy. I think maybe my fourth grade teacher lied to me.

Here’s McMurtry performing “We Can’t Make it Here” in 2006:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcBWlblRDjg[/youtube]