I don have to tell u things r bad. 
Everybody knows things r bad. It's a depression. 
Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. 
The dollar buys a nickel's worth; 
banks r goin bust; 
shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; 
punks [bad word] wild in the street, 
and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. 
And we sit watchin our TVs while some local newscaster tells us 
that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, 
as if that's the way it's supposed to be!

We all know things r bad - worse than bad - they're crazy.

It's like everythin everywhere is goin crazy, 
so we don go out any more. 
We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're livin in is gettin smaller, 
and all we say is, 
"Please, at least leave us alone in our livin rooms. 
Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, 
and I won say anythin. 
Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not goin to leave u alone.

I want u to get mad!

I don want u to protest. 
I don want u to riot. 
I don want u to write to ur Congressman, 
because I wouldn't know what to tell u to write. 
I don know what to do about the depression and the inflation and [bad word] and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, u've got to get mad.

U've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"

So, I want u to get up now. 
I want all of u to get up out of your chairs. 
I want u to get up right now 
and go to the window, open it, and stick ur head out and yell,

"I'm as mad as [bad word] 
and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"