Across the land,
a disease of man,
powered by corporate hands,
is driving up the prices of once-forgotten sand.
They’re grabbing up homes,
that they've never seen,
and piecing together equity funds,
that feed the rich and leave the working-class lean.
You can exploit a person,
year after year,
but you touch their home,
and you’ll quickly find they have nothing left to fear.
“We lived in the shadows,”
Alejandro told the newspaper man.
“But now they’re trying to take,
the one thing that we were able to make.”
Ale was born in Chiapas,
but now he lives on the Westside,
where Durango’s working-class men and women,
reside.
You wanna know more?
Head just west of town,
to where the forest kisses the road,
and dilapidated trailers and affluence converges.
Roll on past,
the Westside rides,
and you’ll speed by,
like a tourist in disguise.
But take the time to stop,
and lower your shades,
and you’re in for a surprise,
over on the Westside.
You see,
the folks who cook, build, clean, and paint,
just staged a protest,
before it was too late.
Born amidst foreign plight,
they all came in search,
of a faint golden,
light.
The park manager took em in,
gave em a lease,
then tied em to a plot,
where they were left to rot.
Over the years,
the owner raised the rent.
Ale and his neighbors bulked a bit,
but they gave the man every last cent.
They looked around,
for other places to go,
but their trailers were stuck,
to old tow.
Now, they ain’t got no potable water,
and their drainage is a muck.
But they got a whole lot of heart,
and plenty of revolutionary spunk.
Some come from Colombia,
displaced by revolution and war.
Others, like Ale, are from Mexico,
and left fleeing narcos, poverty, and gore.
They marched through the desert,
so their children could get ahead,
and when they rest at night,
they dream of the next generation’s light.
Others at Westside simply fell hard on their luck,
working three shifts just wasn’t enough.
So, now they’re renting the American Dream,
and going into debt beneath a corporate Ponzi scheme.
You see,
the owner of Westside is from the Big Apple,
he wet his chops on Wall Street’s trading floor,
but he’s made his real fortune playing monopoly with the nation’s poor.
He wanted to sell Westside downstream,
to a bigger corporate dream,
a group called Harmony Communities,
that ups rent just to make the people scream.
But Westside fought back,
screaming, “¡Si se puede!”
while selling posole and tamales,
and fundraising on the daily.
Now, Ale and his neighbors,
own their trailers and their land,
and they’re committed to helping others,
draw their own line in the sand.
Westside’s secret,
was the power of the people,
which stood up with grace,
and beat the corporate rat in his own race.
So, the next time you roll by Westside,
stop in to let the gente know,
that you’re down with their fight,
and committed to standing for what’s right.
