"Give A Damn" was banned from many radio stations for its incendiary message of urban strife, but for the same reason was later picked up by New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay as his official campaign song in the 1968 election. An episode of Merv Griffin was devoted to the campaign, with appearances by James Brown, Muhammad Ali, Gladys Knight and Burt Lancaster, and Spanky performed.
John Lindsay was a Silk Stocking District Republican who dubbed New York as "Fun City," while the transit and teacher's unions went on strike and West 42nd Street was called "the Deuce." Lindsay marched in Harlem, incurred the outrage of outer borough middle-class, and initiated the Mayor's Office of Film & TV, which gave economic breaks to making movies in New York.
The lyrics indict a jaded society who ignore the miserable realities of the inner city, one year before Elvis Presley would release his tepid lefty ballad "In The Ghetto," and Frank Sinatra would record the psychedelic manifesto, "My Way."
If you'd take the train with me
Uptown, thru the misery
Of ghetto streets in morning light
It's always night.
Take a window seat, put down your Times,
You can read between the lines,
Just meet the faces that you meet
Beyond the window's pane.
And it might begin to teach you
How to give a damn about your fellow man.