The Fighting 44s

It’s been one year now since we first gave it a name. One year since we took that big, ugly, seething, yellow thing inside our souls and gave it shape and life and form.

That thing inside, so heavy when we didn’t dare look it in the eye, when we thought we were the only ones in the world who knew it, we gave it a damn name and we shoved it out into the world. We called it 44.

But we didn’t do it alone. We needed the help of two motherfuckers who gave it a face.

We needed two rednecks from a redneck town full of pick-up trucks and chicken wings to show us what this world is. We needed them to splatter a man’s brains onto the sidewalk and laugh: to take a bat to the head of a man with our eyes and our skin and our hopes so he could die in front of his mother and fiancee.

So here’s to you, Ebens and Nitz. Drink up, because you earned it. The Fighting 44s wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you. We should be thanking you.

We should be thanking you two drunk-fuck autoworkers for showing us our true face.

Congratulations, you sons of bitches, You made Vincent immortal.

To all of you out there, this is our message: you think you can touch us. You think you can taunt us and hurt us and ignore us. You think you can kill us. You are wrong. And you will know that you are wrong for the rest of your days. In all the time to come in this world, in all the months and years and centuries yet to be, you will find out just how wrong you are.

You cannot touch a Fighting 44.

You cannot kill a Fighting 44.

But even in death, a Fighting 44 can touch you.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 16th, 2005 at 7:01 pm and is filed under Advocacy & Activism, Opinion, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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