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In early November 2011, Makana wrote/recorded and shot a video for a protest song in the style of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan called “We Are The Many”. The song expresses the sentiment of the current Occupy movement through a succinct, penetrating socioeconomic commentary on corporate corruption in banking and governance.

Makana performed for the Obamas at the Whitehouse in 2009 and they invited him to perform at the APEC summit in Honolulu on November 12, 2011. Makana accepted the invitation, and decided to perform his song “We Are The Many” at the APEC dinner, where the Obamas and 20 world leaders were present. Following the performance many of the major news outlets picked up the story, resulting in features on CNN, Democracy Now!, Sean Hannity, ABC, BBC, WIRED, etc. For 2 days Makana’s performance at APEC was the No. 1 news story on Yahoo News. All of this resulted in over half a million views of the various videos of his performance and music video, with Rolling Stone magazine (Dec 2011) calling his song “The Occupy Anthem”.

lyrics:

We Are The Many
Lyrics and Music by Makana
Composed 10.19.11

Ye come here, gather ’round the stage
The time has come for us to voice our rage
Against the ones who’ve trapped us in a cage
To steal from us the value of our wage
From underneath the vestiture of law
The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw
At liberty, the bureaucrats guffaw
And until they are purged, we won’t withdraw

We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

Our nation was built upon the right
Of every person to improve their plight
But laws of this Republic they rewrite
And now a few own everything in sight
They own it free of liability
They own, but they are not like you and me
Their influence dictates legality
And until they are stopped we are not free

We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

You enforce your monopolies with guns
While sacrificing our daughters and sons
But certain things belong to everyone
Your thievery has left the people none
So take heed of our notice to redress
We have little to lose, we must confess
Your empty words do leave us unimpressed
A growing number join us in protest

We occupy the streets
We occupy the courts
We occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

You can’t divide us into sides
And from our gaze, you cannot hide
Denial serves to amplify
And our allegiance you can’t buy
Our government is not for sale
The banks do not deserve a bail
We will not reward those who fail
We will not move till we prevail

We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

We’ll occupy the streets
We’ll occupy the courts
We’ll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

We are the many
You are the few

Released 11.11.11
Vocals and Guitar: Makana