Here in New Orleans, about a year ago, I was sitting in the Treme Coffee House reading my newspaper and eating a bagel, when a woman walked in and sat down at the piano. Now, usually the only people who use that piano are kids from the school next door, and none of them can play well, they just come in and mash the keys and make a hell of a racket. But as this woman began to play and sing, I realized she was not just much better than the kids. She was downright exceptional. I was the only other person in the coffee shop, and so I got essentially a one-person concert. Her music was so beautiful and soulful, her playing raw and emotional. She was still playing when I left, and the next time I went in, I asked the owner who she was.

“Paris Flowerz,” he said. “She sings in the French Quarter.” Well, I found Paris and we went for coffee, and I asked her where I could find her work, and the answer was nowhere. She just busks. No professional recordings. Sometimes, people will come by and take a video of her and upload it to their social media. One of these videos has over a million views on TikTok. It doesn’t even identify who Paris is, so she got no money from it. She finds it tough to even keep a roof over her head, living entirely on tips. Most people who listen don’t tip. Even people who take videos sometimes don’t tip. 

Anyway, Paris and I became friends, and I’ve wanted to find a way to share her wonderful voice with the world for a while. We started recording tracks in my office at Current Affairs, using the magazine’s podcasting microphone. It turns out that with Logic Pro, a decent microphone, and a super talented singer, you can make music that sounds damn good even in a magazine office. We just need the right song, I thought. Since then I’ve been on the lookout for a song for Paris.

Then I heard “It Isn’t Nice.”

“It Isn’t Nice” is by Malvina Reynolds, a folk-blues singer who also wrote “Little Boxes,” a satire of suburban conformity, and “What Have They Done To the Rain?” about nuclear testing. “It Isn’t Nice” is about the Civil Rights movement, and the importance of nonviolent direct action, even when such action is disruptive, possibly against local ordinances, and “not nice.” It’s about those who scold protesters for their methods but don’t do anything to stop injustice. The version I heard first was by Barbara Dane (herself another great protest singer) and the Chambers Brothers, with a new tune written by Dane and Judy Collins. It contains the lines:

When we deal with men of ice

You can't deal in ways so nice

Well, hell, I thought, there couldn’t be anything more relevant than advice on how to deal with “men of ice” using confrontational civil disobedience! So I took the song to Paris. With a few updated lyrics, we recorded it in my office, I worked up a backing track, and Current Affairs musician-in-chief Danny Bradley added a light dash of acoustic guitar. And we had ourselves a highly topical song, in Paris’s incredible voice. 

Between starting work on the song and recording Paris’s vocals, Renee Good was killed by ICE, so I adjusted one line to be about “blocking the roadway” (the original song has “block the doorway”). We didn’t originally intend for it to be a tribute to her, but now it is.

We filmed a video for the song in the French Quarter, at one of Paris’s typical busking spots. I edited the video to include shots of ICE’s recent horrifying brutality, the efforts of Americans to resist the encroachment of ICE thugs, and footage of the original Civil Rights movement that Reynolds wrote the song about, showing the parallels between those who weren’t “nice” then and those who aren’t “nice” now. If you look fast you’ll spot Malvina Reynolds herself in the video, as well as Congressional candidate and former Current Affairs podcast guest Kat Abughazaleh, who like many others was brutally thrown to the ground by an ICE agent. 

There could not be anything more important than resisting the lawless aggression of Trump’s ICE. They are tearing families apart, harassing and brutalizing people, and it is only going to get worse now that the organization is on a hiring spree after having been flooded with new funding. People are risking being blinded or killed trying to protect their neighbors. This is heroic. 

I hope you’ll listen to Paris’s new version of “It Isn’t Nice” and share the video widely. It documents ICE’s abuses of power, but also offers hope and encouragement to the movement that will ultimately defeat fascism. The video of “It Isn’t Nice” is available on YouTube. You can also listen to it on Soundcloud. We’ll be getting it on the other platforms soon. 

Like I said, Paris makes her living singing on the street. So if you enjoy her performance, please consider giving her a tip. She’s $parisflowerz504 on CashApp. Don’t be like the tourists who listen to her performance but then don’t even toss in a few bucks to help her keep doing this. You can follow her on Instagram @parisflowerz. She’s going to be releasing more music this year.