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Is This Land Made for You and Me?
Over the next few weeks, on the air and on our new website, BillMoyers.com, we’ll be talking a lot about “winner-take-all” politics and how economic inequality – the vast gap between the rich and everyone else– isn’t the result of market forces and Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.” It has been deliberately, politically engineered.
But first, as they used to say on radio, a musical interlude. The traveling medicine show known as the race for the Republican presidential nomination has moved on from Iowa and New Hampshire, and all eyes are now on South Carolina. Well, not exactly all. At the moment, our eyes are fixed on some big news from the great state of Oklahoma, home of the legendary American folk singer Woody Guthrie, whose 100th birthday will be celebrated later this year.
Woody saw the ravages of the Dust Bowl and the Depression firsthand; his own family came unraveled in the worst hard times. And he wrote tough yet lyrical stories about the men and women who struggled to survive, enduring the indignity of living life at the bone, with nothing to eat and no place to sleep. He traveled from town to town, hitchhiking and stealing rides in railroad boxcars, singing his songs for spare change or a ham sandwich. What professional success he had during his own lifetime, singing in concerts and on the radio, was often undone by politics and the restless urge to keep moving on. “So long, it’s been good to know you,” he sang, and off he would go.
What he wrote and sang about caused the oil potentates and preachers who ran Oklahoma to consider him radical and disreputable. For many years he was the state’s prodigal son, but times change, and that’s the big news. Woody Guthrie has been rediscovered, even though Oklahoma’s more conservative than ever – one of the reddest of our red states with a governor who’s a favorite of the Tea Party.
The George Kaiser Family Foundation has bought Guthrie’s archives – his manuscripts, letters and journals. A center is being built in Tulsa that will make them available to scholars and visitors from all over the world.
Among its treasures is the original, handwritten copy of this song, Woody Guthrie’s most famous – This Land Is Your Land. The song extols the beauty of the country Guthrie traveled across again and again; its endless skyways and golden valleys, the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts. Yet his eye was clear, unclouded, and unobstructed by sentimentality, for he also wrote in its lyrics:
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
“Is this land made for you and me?” A mighty good question. The biggest domestic story of our time is the collapse of the middle class, a sharp increase in the poor, and the huge transfer of wealth to the already rich.
In an era of gross inequality there’s both irony and relevance in Woody Guthrie’s song. That “ribbon of highway” he made famous? It’s faded and fraying in disrepair, the nation’s infrastructure of roads and bridges, once one of our glories, now a shambles because fixing them would require spending money, raising taxes, and pulling together.
This land is mostly owned not by you and me but by the winner-take-all super rich who have bought up open spaces, built mega-mansions, turned vast acres into private vistas, and distanced themselves as far as they can from the common lot of working people – the people Woody wrote and sang about.
True, Barack Obama asked Bruce Springsteen and Woody Guthrie’s longtime friend Pete Seeger to sing This Land is Your Land at that big, pre-inaugural concert the Sunday before he was sworn in. And sing they did, in the spirit of hope and change that President Obama had spun as the heart of his campaign rhetoric.
Today, whatever was real about that spirit has been bludgeoned by severe economic hardship for everyday Americans and by the cynical expedience of politicians who wear the red-white-and-blue in their lapels and sing “America the Beautiful” while serving the interests of crony capitalists stuffing SuperPACs with millions of dollars harvested from the gross inequality destroying us from within.
But maybe – just maybe – the news that Woody Guthrie, once a pariah in his home state, has become a local hero is the harbinger of things to come, and that all the people who still believe this land is our land will begin to take it back.
65 Comments so far
Show AllI am happy to know about the center in Tulsa honoring Woody Guthrie. Many, many years ago I used to drive on the highway and pass Okemah, Guthrie's home, but did not stop in Okemah because of the negative attitude about this great son of Oklahoma by many Oklahomans.
If Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen stoop to promoting Obama's re-election campaign they will need to change the lyrics to THIS LAND WAS MADE FOR PRIVATE EQUITY.
Don't forget Michael Moore and Amy Goodman. They were in love with the big-eared empty suit.
Just think of all the money the one percent can have when the republicans give them our Social Security, Medicare, retirement programs and all the social programs for the elderly and poor.
We don't have to worry about the Republicans giving our Social Security benefits to the 1% because our "fearless leader" Obama has offered it up three times already! The first time was when he said that "entitlements" needed to be "reformed" before he was even elected, The second time was when he formed the Catfood Commission and placed it under the control of Simpson and Bowles; both enemies of Social Security. The third time was when he offered to cut benefits as part of his Grand Bargain during the debt ceiling debacle. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Absolute nonsense.
Amy Goodman never had an Obama campaign representative in any kind of sympathetic interview throughout 2008. She did, however, have Ralph Nader on the program st leat 5 times, often for much of the hour. Her coverage of the Obama campaign was unvaryingly critical.
And while Moore did get caught up in the Obama inagural mania for a while. He, like so many, has wised up and has not advocated for any Democrat candidates since.
We used to sing that song in grade school but for some reason we never sang this verse from the song:
As I went out walking
I saw a sign that said No Trespassing
The other side it said nothing
That side was made for you and me
I've also seen this verse:
There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
The sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing;
That side was made for you and me.
Exactly, mtdon! As with Martin Luther King, who is often portrayed these days minus his radical pacifist and populist attributes for which he was murdered, Woody Guthrie might be presented in Tulsa without mentioning that he was a communist, a union organizer and a veteran of the Merchant Marine, the most dangerous service in WWII (one in three died), organized by a communist-dominated union. By the way, I don't use "communist" as a pejorative. Perhaps some day those folk will get the credit they deserve.
Tony Vodvarka
There don't seem to be many like Woody now. I guess they all sold out.
Hello Ezeflyer !
I'll re-post this. It seems appropriate, and I really liked Woody Guthrie's song:
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Here is what I have learned the hard way, for what it's worth:
If you speak from a safe place - you cannot understand.
If you would understand - you must needs get yourself into an unsafe place, and burn your bridges behind you.
Then will you understand - and only then.
The proper place for a man is on his feet - not his knees.
Yet most of us make the Faustian bargain - and live ever after in abject submission to our religions - to our corporate overseers...
But seldom do we follow our own star - traveling life's road "for to admire an' for to see" (I can never remember which phrase comes first).
We are the seagulls in The Circle of Conformity -
There are so few Jonathans amongst us -
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Take care,
Mike
You may climb summits, but you're no J. Livingston Seagull, if in the 21st century, instead of using the word "person," you negate the experience of half the population by identifying BOTH under the heading of the masculine pronoun "man."
I am tired of sexism largely because the constructs of war and hierarchy ensue from, and began when the central dyad was cleaved into two, with the masculine half holding itself in greater esteem ever since. It's shifted the balance of all things down to endangering the sustainability of the natural world (along with our own).
Fly higher... by understanding that the reconciliation between both gender polarities is part and parcel to the healing process humanity requires, maybe The Livingston Song will sing between your wings.
You said:
"The proper place for a man is on his feet - not his knees."
Are you so sure of that Siouxrose?
And what does it matter anyway?
One of my climbing partners was a radical feminist, and a vegetarian to boot.
The first geologist I hired when I ran my own show in the wellsite consulting business was a woman - and I wasn't trying to "fly higher", she was simply head and shoulders the best applicant - and she proved her worth in the almost exclusively male dominated oilpatch.
That article on "Whither Environmentalism" was by a woman, Jenifer Browdy, and it really got me thinking - and writing.
Naomi Klein's "Capitalism vs. The Climate" takes first place in my special Apache Binder, and Maude Barlow is a close second - they simply make more sense than us men.
But I am compromised, being a man - and I simply refuse to speak in ways meant to appease those who believe there is no fundamental difference between the sexes.
There is much talk of getting real - yet we adamantly refuse to do so, believing in fables, either religious or otherwise.
Beside Big Ben, in the town of Londinium (London), there is the magnificent statue of Boudica in her war chariot, hair streaming behind her - who razed this Roman town a long time ago, and far far away. She was a Celt, like me - and like the Apache, like the "desert Bedoween" of Edward Gibbon, there was no impediment in either of these truly free and independent tribal organizations which prevented a woman from leading in war - but it was rare, because women who wish to lead in war are rare.
Don't be so hard on me Siouxrose, or on men - and I will return the favor by trying to see the world as it is.
Mike
Nicely put.
Was pleased to see mention of my life-long heroine, Boudica.
On the matter of womens' standing, I agree with both you, Michael, and Siouxrose. But I believe it won't be until women stand united, and demand to be counted, that we'll ever get the recognition, or equality we deserve. Boudica didn't wait for another man to come to her rescue after her husband king was killed. She took the reins and made a difference.
What does it matter?
Every time you look at a book now, imagine that the vast majority of pronouns are female. Imagine that the phrase Womankind means you. No one said there was no difference between the sexes (um, among the sexes? Are we leaving LGBT out of this?). What makes you jump to that wild conclusion?
I once had a teacher who said there are two kinds of people. One kind divides everything by one of two genders: hen, rooster. Ship, hammer. Man, woman. The other divides by kind: chicken, tool, human.
Hello? Kind first, gender second. That's all I'm saying.
All that instead of basic sensitivity, like OWNING the verbiage and saying, "You know something, I will not use the pronoun MAN again, to directly pertain to both genders."How would you like to be referred to as "Ladies," in an assembly?
Your whole post is the type of sidebar nonsense the typical racist uses to avoid the issue of his racism, by stating the likes of: "I happen to have several Black friends."
You're like the guy who won't ask for directions because he refuses to believe he's lost.
Dont be hard on you? I'm amazed by the thin skins of some guys in this forum. You want to talk in phallocentric terms, and then when a woman points it out, you turn the subject to irrelevant side issues.
This is about basic sensitivity.
After my cousin completed divinity school and received her Doctor of Theology degree, I asked her what was next upon her career agenda. She had been a wife, a mother, and a divorce-eh?.
"I'm going to be a ball buster for Christ," she answered.
Advice to men: if you live in or near Louisville, wear a cup.
Trylon
Don't forget Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine. He stands up for justice!
z
Legend is that Woody composed "This Land Is Your Land" when he grew sick and tired of turning on his radio and hearing Kate Smith sing "God Bless America". He was less ticked off when he heard, over and over, "When The Moon Comes Over The Mountain".
The moon does not actually do this. Our planet rotates beneath it. Like everything else, its an illusion paid for by the Koch brothers.
Trylon
Won't charter schools soon be telling the students the earth is flat ?
Other than the military, who needs to know the earth is spherical and orbits the sun ?
Creatures.
First the tide, rushes in, plants a kiss, on the shore -
Then rolls - out to sea. And the sea is very still
once more.
Ebb Tide
"As I went out walking
I saw a sign that said No Trespassing" posted by mtdon
as i went out walking...
from our r.v campsite at keystone lake just outside of tulsa, i saw such a sign courtesy the u.s. government.
'hmm,' i thought, 'we the people--so? who's that sign for?
Infrastructure is crumbling because the amount of money collected through property and income taxes is less than the cost to maintain it. This is due to a combination of federal subsidies for housing, which results in larger dweller units, which results in lower population density, which is more costly to provide services; federal subsidies for capital costs of infrastructure, which implies that the smaller jurisdictions don't have the capacity to provide the maintenance and operational costs of this infrastructure; property taxes based mostly on buildings, rather than land, which encourages low-density housing rather than building upward on the most valuable land (downtown); the overfunding of roads, highways and bridges and underfunding of rail and public transit.
DEH: Just as the fundamentalist preacher can locate scripture to support his contentions, however amoral or ridiculous, your use of numbers is likewise offered as a smokescreen since the most important aspect--that of MOTIVE (added to priorities favored by those charged with the management of those sums) has not been addressed. WERE the nation not giving massive tax benefits to the very rich, losing its blood and treasure on unnecessary foreign wars, subsidizing huge corporations like big oil, AND giving the banksters phenomenal sums... the discussion about property tax numbers to cover infastructure would be both moot and irrelevant. THAT is the real core issue that warrants discussion... not your neat, convenient way of blaming it on reduced local property tax allotments!
Well...Nicely put.
You forgot the biggest source of road, bridge and public transit funding - the federal and state motor fuel excise taxes. The federal tax, 18.4 cents a gallon, has not changed in 2 decades, and neither have many state taxes, and so, as a percentage of the retail price of fuel, gasoline and diesel fuel taxes are lower than any time since the 1930's.
In fact, when adjusting for inflation, gasoline is not a lot higher than it cost in the 1930s.
It is definitely time to raise the federal gasoline tax.
Which brings to mind a lesser known Woody Guthrie song is about "sitting on a rock by the Bonneville (OR) Lock" with "Gasoline going up[river], wheat coming down[river]. I recall he also sung a song praising the Grand Coulee Dam. He liked big federal public works and infrastructure projects.
Ugh.
Just looked up the lyrics of "Roll on Columbia" - which has a lot of variations to it. It was as written as a propaganda song for the Bonneville Power Administration. In it, he fairly attacks those concerned about the dams impact on the salmon.
This was the late 1930's early 1940's and environmentalism and conservation was definitely not a part of the US left.
In the words of BB King, you have to suffer before you can sing the blues, I doubt Willard Mitt Romney will be able to sing the blues. Unless firing people makes him suffer, perhaps he is suffering, from mental illness.
this land was stolen, raped, pillaged and profoundly desecrated for you and me.
You said it right, starkraving. That's exactly how it happened.
Stark & Truth: I am NOT apologizing for the plunder, yet I think you'd find it true that the same historical legacy met most lands. So long as the ethos has been one of pillaging under Mars rules, most nations saw their original occupants conquered by more warlike tribes. It is the blood-stained legacy of the Age of Aries, that of Mars' rules... and while it wiped out, or nearly so, the Tribes here... similar savagery took place in Asia & Europe. Until the causes for war that go deeper than economics and narrow elite's abuse of power begin to be understood (and spoken about), the disease remains in place. In fact, given the investments in modern tools of warfare, I think it can be argued that it has worsened. The U.S. leads the pack literally arming the world with ever modernized,more efficient tools of mass destruction.
Just as Haiti, the impoverished island next door provides the PERFECT opportunity for the earnest practice of collective compassion, the hungry and homeless in our own land do likewise. In spite of these glaring examples, nothing slows the war machine... every crumb that should go towards the support of life, instead gets fed to the death machine that calls itself "Defense." It's the greatest, most devious Protection Racket ever envisioned, no less obscenely supported!
no, we're not unique in the history of humankind in all our ill-gotten gains. part of longstanding traditions of fear, brutality, domination.
but when journalists decide to borrow the words to a catchy tune written by a lately christened folk hero which gets everyone feeling warm and fuzzy, but which also perpetuates a truely loathsome myth, i find myself heading for the exit.
who exactly is the "you and me" this land belongs to? and if it does indeed belong to some collective "us" defined as the u.s. of a. and is being treated like excrement, what does that say for our vaunted "ownership society"?
that maybe "this land" should be returned to those who were its previous caretakers.
I remember when I finally looked up all the words to "This Land is Your Land" and was surprised that they didn't teach us ALL the lyrics back in grade school. So typical. Woody Guthrie is a big American hero and I only wish I could be as courageous and free-spirited as he.
I've got a few songs in the vein of what he wrote, though they undoubtedly aren't as good and also probably won't see the light of day except in a few spots here and there. If I were more computer savvy, I'd upload some of them, like "Liars and Thieves."
"In the halls of Goldman Sachs, they count their loot from the People's tax, got all the politicians bought and paid, man them Wall Street boys sure got it made...... America it's time to wake up, wake up, don't you know we've got some time to make up, make up, now's the time to shake it up so shake it up, don't you know it's time to WAKE UP."
We need a lot of Woody Guthries right now, and something tells me there may be a lot more folk protest singers and songwriters out there than we realize. Their voices are needed now more than ever.
Happy Birthday, Woody, and thanks.
---"...economic inequality – the vast gap between the rich and everyone else– isn’t the result of market forces and Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.” It has been deliberately, politically engineered."---
Unfortunately, this starting premise is entirely wrong. Market forces applied to everything, particularly labor, if left on their own, DO lead to enormous economic inequality. So, the root cause of inequality is "free markets". The "political engineering" was a contributing factor, specifically the deliberate dismantling of government measures to reign in the most vicious aspects of "free markets". Sure, powerful corporations practically own the government. But they only aquired the power to buy the politicians by acquiring enormous wealth and power in the relatively unregulated "free market" first.
But, Moyers and Wislip are hand-wringing liberals, and will allow no such obvious truisms into their discourse, lest they be smeared as "socialists". So, it is not suprising that there is no mention from them that Woody Guthrie himself was a socialist - and I'm sure any mention of such will be left out of this Woody Guthrie museum. Heck, you even have to look hard for mnetion of the s-word in the Eugene Debs house/museum in Terre Haute, Indiana.
"Moyers and Wislip are hand-wringing liberals"
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A little harsh - but to the point.
Churchill once said something to the effect that:
~ you can make the news - or report it ~
We need newsmakers - the time has come.
Manysummits
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pjd412
"Market forces applied to everything, particularly labor, if left on their own, DO lead to enormous economic inequality."
Absolutely correct. Unregulated capitalism and unregulated markets bring you to exactly the same destination that Communism, Socialism, Autocracy. Fascism, etc deliver us to. Most of the wealth and all the power concentrated in a small percentage of the population.
Unregulated capitalism and unregulated markets are just as much a poison for free people as the other's are.
Can you give an example where socialism has concentrated wealth in few hands?
I don't recall even Krushchev, Brezhnev or Gorbachev being very rich. But boy oh-boy, following the end of the Soviet Union, when the assets of the former state owned enterprises were were distributed equally to all Russian individuals, it wasn't more than a couple of years before it was all of it got concentrated in just a few gangster-capitalists hands, Yeltsin was firing on the Russian Duma with tanks for having the temerity of opposing the gangsters, and the great majority of the Russian population faced grinding poverty like thy never saw under your oh-so-evil communism.
No, PJ, the guys in the Politburo were definitely wealthy. Even Mikhail Sergeevich, the best of the lot by a long chalk, managed to salt away enough extra-legal money that he now feels no pain at all.
The nomenklatura didn't look wealthy from a western standpoint, but that was in part a difference in style (they preferred the solid '30s-'50s look), and in part because they hid it, much as the top officers of labor unions hide it. They could have anything they wanted any time they wanted it, no limits. That's wealthy.
El'tsin was definitely US-owned scum. It was sickening how easily the coup that put him in power was carried out.
Of course, the Soviet Syatem was not exactly "socialism" either. But my general point remains. A majority of russians wer better off under the soviet syatem than post soviet. And this is why the Russian communist party is the fastest growing party in Russia right now.
I can't argue with you - the soviet system was definitely not communism or socialism, and it would sicken but only slightly surprise me to learn that most people were better off under the commissars -- life was truly meager back then, unless one had connections "nalevo".
I stopped following the situation in Russia when Mikhail Sergeevich got turfed out. He was the best hope the people had, at that point, and a great improvement over his successors (to paraphrase a comment originally made about an operating system). So when El'tsin got "selected" to replace him, I had to quit watching - my stomach just couldn't take it.
I hope the new KP is better than the original.
---"...economic inequality – the vast gap between the rich and everyone else– isn’t the result of market forces and Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.” It has been deliberately, politically engineered."---
"Unfortunately, this starting premise is entirely wrong. Market forces applied to everything, particularly labor, if left on their own, DO lead to enormous economic inequality."
That statement by Moyers and Winship stopped me, too. Capitalism largely by itself created the wealth inequities of the Gilded Age. It should be remembered, though, that we have never had a truly free market in this country. Gov't fostered the rise of the robber barons in many ways - for example, through laws regulating and encouraging railroad building, the US military's role in clearing the way for exploitation and settlement in the West by genocial policies against Native Americans, monetary and financial policy, and much else.
But it's also true that the ballooning of wealth for the 1% in recent years has been accelerated by political machination as well, as the filthy rich have fastened their claws on our democratic insitutions - including the Supeme Court shown by the travesty of Citizens United.
Wealth and political power go together. If you will check your early American history, you will see that in the early days of the country only the "property owners" were allowed to vote. (Male, probably white). "Property owners" in this context meant people who owned "income producing property". Not just someone owning a home. So right from the start the deck was "stacked" against the common people, the workers. As the government grew more powerful with time, so did the control of that government by the wealthy (the 1% of that era). The real reason for the Revolution was the objection of the wealthy colonists to have to pay taxes to Great Britain and King George the Third. A government that they could not control. After the Revolution they wasted no time creating a government they could control. One where only they had the right to vote. Just like today's Republicans are trying to do with their "Picture ID requirement" to vote. Again, the rich people taking away the vote from the rest of us. Just like the Founding Fathers did back when the US was born. Interestingly enough, even groups like the Libertarians support "Citizens United" even though "Citizens United" effectively gives the wealthy the power to drown out of the voices of everyone else. Including those opposed to the increasing power of the "State" over the people of the United States of America! Just shows how far from reality the doctrinaire Libertarian Party of the USA has become today.
"Property owners" in this context meant people who owned "income producing property". Not just someone owning a home.
-------------------------------------
Are you sure about that? I've done some research, and the records from the time talk about "property worth £20", or "property over the value of £5 10s". There's no mention of an income threshold, just the worth of the property for tax purposes.
"And sing they did, in the spirit of hope and change that President Obama had spun as the heart of his campaign rhetoric."
It's hard not to rub this idiocy into the faces of people like Springsteen and Seeger, and all the other assholes that defended Obama during that time. During that time, I felt alone and isolated amidst a chorus of people that never bothered to study history, to understand that anyone in a position of power like that is your enemy.
With the icing on the cake known as the NDAA, you might think that people would wake up. But it's clear that many of those same fools will once again vote for their own oppression. In a sick, twisted and very sad sense, they deserve what is coming.
Love you both, and love the Guthries. You can bet Woody would be occupying, and i think i saw where Arlo was giving free performances, too. i'm sure he is involved somehow.
Occupy!
part of the establishment, here only to hose down lefty's
"...made for you and me"? If you are a Native American reading those lyrics, the irony would be killer.
Yes, difficult for the people of Native Tribes to know what life would be like had not the Europeans arrived from "Their Land" nor anyone else arrived at all?
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Would the air be poisoned? Would the water be poisoned? Would the land be poisoned? Would the food be poisoned? Would there be nuclear anything in this land at all? Would there be massive strip mining for coal, and stuff?
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But all history in this land starts with the Europeans and no one else.
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Would the Tribes still pretty much just be hunting, fishing, and camping out upon Creator's earth?
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Things myself and mine can discuss when we're sitting around all Spiritual Like enjoying the lunchtime buffet at Pizza Hut.
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Don't worry Europeans I have instructed mine to never place a bet in Vegas you will ever come close to Saving the Earth.
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Out and about some people were wishing me a happy a new year. I said, There aren't any new years at all there is only the continuation of the same old crap.
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Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.
Yes, Shadow Dancer - difficult to know.
Luck to us all,
Mike
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