Version française
Freedom 250
Freedom 250
Langue : anglais
Texte : paroles originales
À travers les feux d’artifice d’un anniversaire national, Freedom 250 interroge la part d’ombre que la célébration voudrait dissiper. La fumée, les portes restées fermées et les monuments de marbre révèlent une liberté longtemps refusée aux peuples autochtones, aux personnes noires et aux femmes. Le texte oppose ainsi le récit national figé aux voix de l’abolition, des droits civiques et des luttes populaires. Son refrain ramène la liberté à une exigence simple et toujours inachevée : elle ne peut porter ce nom que lorsqu’elle appartient à tous.
English Version
Freedom 250
Freedom 250
Language: English
Text: Original lyrics
Set against the fireworks of a national anniversary, Freedom 250 asks what remains hidden beneath the celebration. Smoke, closed doors, and marble halls expose a freedom historically denied to Indigenous peoples, Black Americans, and women. Against a polished national myth, the lyrics summon abolitionists, civil-rights marchers, students, and workers whose struggles continue to reshape the meaning of the country. The recurring question becomes the song’s moral measure: freedom is not a possession or a monument, but a right that is incomplete until it belongs to all.
한국어 버전
Freedom 250
Freedom 250
언어: 영어
가사: 오리지널 가사
국가적 기념일의 불꽃놀이를 배경으로, Freedom 250은 화려한 축제 뒤에 가려진 역사를 묻는다. 하늘에 남은 연기와 닫힌 문, 대리석 기념물의 이미지는 원주민과 흑인, 여성에게 오랫동안 허락되지 않았던 자유를 드러낸다. 가사는 정제된 국가 신화에 맞서 노예제 폐지 운동과 시민권 운동, 학생과 노동자의 목소리를 불러낸다. 이 노래에서 자유는 소유하거나 숭배할 대상이 아니라, 모든 사람에게 보장될 때에만 완성되는 공동의 약속이다.
Freedom 250
Two-fifty candles in the sky,
but smoke still writes what flags deny.
They say freedom.
I ask: for who?
Freedom 250, fireworks in the night,
everybody waving, but not everybody’s right.
Freedom 250, tell me what it means,
if the dream got borders and the truth got screens.
We don’t need a shrine, we need history clear,
not the loudest anthem, but the voices we hear.
Freedom 250, still the question calls:
it ain’t really freedom till it’s freedom for all.
They wrote big words with a feather and flame,
said every human born with an equal claim.
But the ink dried fast on a paper throne,
while the field had chains and the land had bones.
White men talking ’bout the right to decide,
while another man’s life got pushed outside.
Native roads erased by a border line,
Black hands building up a borrowed shrine.
Women at the doorway, waiting for a name,
outside the promise, inside the pain.
A nation can rise, still carry a scar,
you can leave the crown and keep the czar.
So I don’t bow down to a myth made clean,
I read the dark in the golden scene.
If freedom is a mirror, then look, don’t hide:
who was standing out when the doors opened wide?
Freedom 250, fireworks in the night,
everybody waving, but not everybody’s right.
Freedom 250, tell me what it means,
if the dream got borders and the truth got screens.
We don’t need a shrine, we need history clear,
not the loudest anthem, but the voices we hear.
Freedom 250, still the question calls:
it ain’t really freedom till it’s freedom for all.
Independence sounded like breaking a chain,
but westward hunger had another name.
From the mountain line to the setting sun,
they called it destiny when the taking begun.
Freedom for me, but removal for you,
one man’s dawn is another man’s blue.
A flag can fly where a village stood,
and call that progress, and call it good.
They left an empire across the sea,
but the empire’s grammar stayed underneath.
If I won’t be ruled, then I must confess:
I have no right to rule the rest.
That’s the law that the soul must learn,
or every revolution takes a darker turn.
You can shout “liberty” from a marble hall,
but it breaks in half when it’s not for all.
Freedom is not what I own.
Freedom is where I stop my throne.
Freedom is not just my voice.
Freedom begins with another one’s choice.
Freedom is not a sacred place.
It is a wound with a human face.
Freedom is not the past made bright.
It is the courage to revise the light.
Now the mall got lights and a leader on stage,
turning memory into a campaign page.
He says freedom, then points at an enemy,
turns a public word into private property.
Who belongs? Who’s the threat?
Who gets named, and who gets debt?
Old ghost talking with a new red tie,
same old fear in a modern sky.
But there’s another country in the same refrain,
marching through fire, singing through pain.
Abolition voices, civil-rights feet,
students and workers in the summer heat.
Not one America, not one face,
but a struggle over time and space.
The dream survives when the excluded stand,
and knock on the door with a human hand.
Freedom 250, fireworks in the night,
everybody waving, but not everybody’s right.
Freedom 250, tell me what it means,
if the dream got borders and the truth got screens.
We don’t need a shrine, we need history clear,
not the loudest anthem, but the voices we hear.
Freedom 250, still the question calls:
it ain’t really freedom till it’s freedom for all.
The fireworks fade.
The smoke stays tall.
History asks
who carried the wall.
Freedom 250, answer the call:
it ain’t really freedom
till it’s freedom for all.
English 
French