By Zevi K. Southeast PA Healthcare Rights Committee
Put People First! PA
I adapted the song “If I Were A Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof… So many of us learn to believe all our problems would be solved if only we, as individuals, had more money. But really, that won’t save us and we need a bigger understanding of what “wealth” is. This song is me imagining what it could be like to be “rich” in a way that includes all of us….
If I were a rich man
Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum
All day long, I’d biddy biddy bum
If I were a wealthy man
I wouldn’t have to work hard
Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum
If I were a biddy biddy rich, yidle-diddle-didle-didle man
I’d build a big health clinic with rooms by the dozen
Right in the middle of the town
Doctors, nurses, techs went to school for free
And there’d be workers whose one job is to check
On you if you haven’t been around
Co-pays and deductibles are banned!
We’d all have jobs that don’t make us want to die
Because they’d value human life
Instead of squeezing profits for billionaires
And we’d find ways to stop destroying the Earth
Because that’s a thing we could just do!
Can you feel the breeze of that sweet air…
If I were a rich man…
I see my kids, my children, looking like a rich man’s kids
With their bellies full of food
Getting the care and attention that they need
I see them putting on plays at cultural centers,
Learning how to cook and how to swim,
Singing, there’s a future still for me…
The politicians of the land would come to call on us!
They would ask us to advise them
Like Solomon the wise
What do you see, my people?
What do you need, my people?
When they told us we were powerless they lied!
Yabba dee die die…..
And it won’t make one bit of difference
If you’ve got money to pay
When we’re all rich
We all really own
If we were rich we’d have the time that we lack
To heal from centuries of pain
Even if we don’t know exactly how
Because the poor have always had to know
How to make a way out of no way
Can’t you see we’re doing it right now?
If we were a rich man! Yabba dibby….
Lord who made the planet and the stars
You decreed we would be what we are
Give us strength to carry us that far!
Till we all are a…wealthy… man !!!!