Hustle for Life (2016)

"Hustle for Life" is a song that was written to address some very real problems in perceptions that people in the United States have about people who are without homes and who are compelled because of their circumstances to have to live on the streets. Often what happens in American society is a phenomenon of "victim blaming," whereby other people who are very quick to negative judgment ignore, overlook, forget, or outright dismiss the conditions of people's lives. The people of this society have a very short memory and most have never heard of red-lining, or understand precisely what gentrification is and how the two are interrelated. Many people forget the hardships of recessions, or understand the social and economic impacts of the War on Drugs and the rise of the Prison Industrial Complex, or how the two coincided with globalization and outsourcing. With "Hustle for Life" what I sought to flesh out were the underlying social and economic conditions that have motivated and at time necessitated particular behaviors and plans of action that this country and many of the people in it so ardently shun. The goal is to help people to develop an empathetic and critical understanding of the situation that is much more complex than the simple victim blaming method is capable. Without such an understanding there can be no resolution to the issues we face, and certainly no equitable resolution.