There is a daughter who speaks about her father
As democracy once spoke for the people
Who are not deficient
They are not absent from their freedom
We live for purposes
And dreams like Chinese democracy
We were not born this way
We were moved by the world
To speak about injustice, human rights violations
We witnessed sacrifices for unspeakable courage
We are not martyrs, we are still fathers
Though imprisoned we dwindle in time
That spirit lives on like 1989
Whispers that China will shed One-State party rule
Warnings that the U.S. will reinvent tyranny
We are from both worlds, hospitable and ruthless
Male and female, politics is in everything
There’s no escaping corruption, revolution
Law, and the will for freedom is a will to power
And freedom is never free from inequality
There is no promised land of perfection
Only rudimentary ideas of what should be
There is a daughter who speaks of justice
And I cry for all the ways which we are
Enslaved, imprisoned, not free.
Ti-Anna, you are not a dissident
You are the heir to the new world
And it speaks Mandarin, and it’s free
Free in a patriotism of being global citizens
Free in the hope that our lineage leads
To a place where there are no dissidents
There is no abandonment, only people
Living and loving the only way they know how.
Wuji Seshat 