Iggy Pop’s video “We Are the People” is based on a poem written in 1970 by the late, great Lou Reed. Of the poem, Pop told the BBC last year, “My God, this is the country today as I understand it, or at least one legitimate portrayal of the country today.”  He recently performed “We Are the People” with Reed’s widow Laurie Anderson at Carnegie Hall for the Tibet House Benefit .

[Verse 1]
We are the people without land
We are the people without tradition
We are the people who do not know how to die peacefully and at ease
We are the thoughts of sorrows
Endings of tomorrows
We are the wisps of rulers
And the jokers of kings

[Verse 2]
We are the people without right
We are the people who have known only lies and desperation
We are the people without a country, a voice, or a mirror
We are the crystal gaze returned through the density and immensity of a berzerk nation
We are the victims of the untold manifesto of the lack of depth
Of full and heavy emptiness

[Verse 3]
We are the people without sorrow
Who have moved beyond national pride and indifference
To a parody of instinct
We are the people who are desperate
Beyond emotion because it defies thought
We are the people who conceive our destruction and carry it out lawfully
We are the insects of someone else’s thought
A casualty of daytime, nighttime, space, and God
Without race, nationality, or religion
We are the people, and the people, the people