Give a Damn

If you'd take the train with me
Uptown, thru the misery
Of ghetto streets in morning light
It's always night
Take a window seat, put down your Times
You can read between the lines
Just meet the faces that you meet
Beyond the window's pane

And it might begin to teach you
How to give a damn about your fellow man
And it might begin to teach you
How to give a damn about your fellow man

Or put your girl to sleep sometime
With rats instead of nursery rhymes
With hunger and your other children
By her side
And wonder if you'll share your bed
With something else which must be fed
For fear may lie beside you
Or it may sleep down the hall

And it might begin to teach you
How to give a damn about your fellow man
And it might begin to teach you
How to give a damn about your fellow man

Come and see how well despair
Is seasoned by the stif'ling air
See your ghetto in the good old
Sizzling summertime
Suppose the streets were all on fire
The flames like tempers leaping higher
Suppose you'd lived there all your life

D'you think that you would mind?
And it might begin to reach you
Why I give a damn about my fellow man;
And it might begin to teach you
How to give a damn about your fellow man