Lyric discussion by rosalyre 

Others have covered it, I'll just add that in Reed's short film, "Red Shirley," he interviews a cousin whose parents were killed in the Holocaust, and ends with her reminiscing about the civil rights march on Washington. There were a lot of Jewish civil rights activists, probably because someone like Shirley would have been in a good position to sympathize with any oppressed group. So to see a black civil rights leader making antisemitic remarks must have struck Reed as bitterly ironic. I think that's what he meant by "what about people right here right now who fought for you not so long ago?"

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