Singing The Message In San Jose: Meet Deborah Levoy

Deborah Levoy is a Climate Messenger based in California, and she’s doing some great original songs which directly address environmental issues — always tricky, since polemics can turn people off.

I’m impressed with how she’s managed this particular balancing act. I’m also impressed with her musicianship and her finely produced voice…

Happened in Alaska, California too
Now it’s down in Louisiana, what’re we gonna do?
Rising to the surface, spreading out wide
Across the Gulf, in a thick black tide

Drill, baby, drill
Spill, baby, spill
Kill, baby, kill
Drill baby. . .still?

Flipper’s infected with a nasty rash
Birds’ feathers are tarred, the beaches all trashed
Boats in dry dock, shrimpers gone broke
Their hands are empty, dreams up in smoke

Drill, baby, drill
Spill, baby, spill
Kill, baby, kill
Drill baby. . .still?

We all complicit in this illicit game
Drinking up oil and feeling no pain
Gotta sober up and break the addiction
Stop believing in twisted up fiction

Stop living on a mental vacation
A nation of fools dropping bills at the station
Blowing smoke in the air until the end of creation
Burning up the earth in a pit of damnation

BP be pointing the fingers
But they won’t plug the holes they made there
I know they’re busting out the lawyers
But we stand up as eco-warriors

Cuz the time is now
The Gulf is in critical and spreading out
But if we stay cynical and drowned in doubt
Then we’re being suicidal on a cowardly route
So what are we waiting for, another tragedy?
Another war on the poor?
Another storm with calamities?

If you got a dream
You gotta make it a reality
We can be the change that we really wanna see
Rearrange humanity’s mentality
The personal is political
People power, everybody let’s go
Let’s go

If you’ve got a dream
Make it a reality
We can be the change we need

Calling all mamas, daddies, teachers,
Leaders, all the youth
This happened on our watch
This happened in our world
The clock is ticking, the time is now
Time and tide wait for no man
What we waiting for?
We gotta be the change we wanna see
It happens with us

Millions of us are upset by what is happening in the Gulf.
Let’s send a message to our leaders.
A message made from a mosaic of pictures in the shape of our country.
Take a picture of yourself holding your homemade sign
With the message “Clean up the mess. Start building our Green Economy Now.”
And upload it at our Facebook page: www.drillbabystill.com
We’ll deliver our message to our leaders.
Together, we can make our voices heard.
Let’s flip the script on the BP oil disaster.
And start building our green future now.

© 2010 Richard J. Nevle, Deborah Levoy
AshEL Seasunz, Doug Pohorski

If you’re making music that reflects on or directly addresses our ongoing environmental crisis, I would be pleased to feature it here at the Climate Message.

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