3:09
Fifth Album, 1965
Written by Malvina Reynolds and Barbara Dane
This is a defiant folk ballad, sung live in New York with note-holding gusto by Collins. The song proclaims that when you're fighting for freedom, you can't be "nice" or play by the usual rules. "It isn't nice to block the doorway / It isn't nice to go to jail / There are nicer ways to do it / But the nice ways always fail." The song mentions the injustices and crimes inflicted on those fighting for rights, like the killing of Medgar Evers and the Mississippi Three. "Now you say that we're not nice / But if that's freedom's price / We don't mind." These are sentiments that are sadly, relevant sixty years later. You can't fight intolerance with tolerance. You can't play nice with Nazis.
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