When will "This Land Is Your Land" be purged from Public Schools?

[JanMichael]

It was my favorite sing along song back in elementary school. Of course I'm 35 now so that may not be the case anymore. I sure doubt that our esteemed pResident likes it...I doubt that many of his supporters do either, somehow I don't see Tom DeLay, or John Asscroft, or that cat snuffing Frist fellow, singing it with any "passion".

http://www.arlo.net/lyrics/this-land.shtml

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND
words and music by Woody Guthrie

Chorus:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Chorus (2x)

©1956 (renewed 1984), 1958 (renewed 1986) and 1970 TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI)

PS! I only had one teacher that had us sing the entire song. The others ommited, or modified, the last chorus or two. That said I think the meaning remained.

[wicket]

1. I love that song, so much

It has always had much more meaning to me than "God Bless America".

[longtimedem25]

21. That's the reason Woody wrote it...

Woody was pissed off when he first heard "God Bless America." In his own veil of protest, he wrote "This Land" that used this line at the end of each verse...

"Did God Bless America for me?"

He wrote the song around 1940 in New York. It sat alone for a while before it was finally sung in public.


I learned to play the song on autoharp, and I learned to sing all seven verses. I always sing the seven verses when I play it for kids or adults. Not many recognize the unfamiliar verses, but that is the reason I will do 'em all...

Yes, many have never heard most of the verses, but they all important. It is the way, I believe, that Woody would have wanted. Woody was a genius, he believed in people, real people, the salt of the earth types who break their backs to make America great. I believe Woody would be appalled by the Chimp & Co.

[ET Awful]

24. My favorite quote from Woody -

"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think you've not any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow." - Woody

I've always liked his Talkin' Dust Bowl Blues too, the last verse:

We got out to the West Coast broke,
So dad-gum hungry I thought I'd croak,
An' I bummed up a spud or two,
An' my wife fixed up a tater stew --
We poured the kids full of it,
Mighty thin stew, though,
You could read a magazine right through it.
Always have figured
That if it'd been just a little bit thinner,
Some of these here politicians
Coulda seen through it.

[wicket]

26. Woody was awesome!

At least we've still got Arlo :)

[newyawker99]

28. Hi longtimedem25!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[JanMichael]

29. Great post. And yes he'd be flippin' appalled.

Have you heard Billy Bragg/Wilco doing "Stetson Kennedy"?

What's wild is that, as far as I know, Stetson Kennedy is STILL alive and blasting CONservatives.

What an amazing group of musicians and activists.

[DrWeird]

2. I haven't heard that song in years.

And I've never heard the last verse.

Why if people start singing that they might think those redwood trees in national parks might belong to them and not timber companies.

[lapislzi]

3. Over my dead body!

I raised a stink in my daughter's school about the singing of God Bless America, and suggested that This Land Is Your Land be substituted. I lost that one, but they ignore me at their peril. I have also protested the enforced recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, and I have told my daughter she doesn't have to participate if she doesn't want to.

Personally, I think This Land is Your Land should be the national anthem.

[JanMichael]

4. Hopefully it will our National Anthem someday!

That probably would have been a better poll.

[sleepyhead]

14. National anthem

Yes indeed. I have been saying that for years.

[holeinboatoutatsea]

5. they won't purge it

the propaganda value is too high. The words no longer have to be true, but if people believe they are, that's effective. Think of the way this government is now run.

official A says: Program X is a good thing

people say, why yes, it is! They are doing a very good thing.

official A cuts funding for Program X.

nobody notices.

[ET Awful]

6. The last two verses have been relatively unknown for years. . .

they tend to leave out the critical portions of the song when they teach it to kids in music class and such.

[kath]

10. Yes, I don't think they EVER let kids sing the "subversive" verses, ie,

the last two. In fact very few people even know those last two verses exist. We sang that song in school (1960's), but NEVER those verses.

[JanMichael]

12. My hippy teachers in Cali did.

This was in the early 70's. Like I said in the original post.

Then again the first lines are just as Radical now days.

[Minstrel Boy]

7. Will they ban "Born in the USA" too?

No. They just shamelessy co-opt it. It's worse than banning. When you know what they've done, it freezes the soul.

[David Zephyr]

8. Best Verse.

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

I've always loved that verse and love to sing it to "cuservutivs" and watch their heads implode.

JanMichael, you are such a red boy.

[MrMonk]

9. Slightly different version

copied from a CD liner:

This Land is Your Land
Most of us learned this song in kindergarten. What they never told us was that it was written as a protest by Woody Guthrie. During the dust bowl days of the Depression, thousands of farmers, driven from their land by the dust and the economy, headed to what they thought were the greener pastures of California. They were met at the California line by state troopers, sheriff's deputies and big men with shotguns and baseball bats, who told them they were not welcome. Woody responded with the song "This land is your land, this land is my land" and it has become our folk national anthem.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the redwood forest to the gulfstream waters
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw before me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.

This land ...

I roamed and rambled and followed my footsteps
To the sparking sands of your diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was chanting
This land was made for you and me.

This land ...

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of a steeple
By the relief office I saw my people
As they stood there hungry I stood there whistling
This land was made for you and me.

This land ...

Ain't no one living who's going to stop me
As I go walkin' that freedom highway
Ain't no one living who's going to take my rights away
This land was made for you and me.

This land ...

I saw a sign there that tried to stop me,
'Cause on the one side it said "private property"
But on the other side it didn't say nothing
That sign was made for you and me.

This land ...

EDIT: after looking at them side by side, I think I prefer the version in the lead post.

[stevedeshazer]

11. Never heard of it!

Pete Seeger, June 1967:
When Woody Guthrie was singing hillbilly songs on a little Los Angeles radio station in the late 1930s, he used to mail out a small mimeographed songbook to listeners who wanted the words to his songs, On the bottom of one page appeared the following:

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do." :)

[JanMichael]

13. Pete is still kickin'! Didn't he endorse Dennis K.?

His "Songs for Children" (I think that was the name?) was a big part of my childhood.

[stevedeshazer]

18. Indeed he is still kickin'

And indeed he did endorse DK.

[PurityOfEssence]

15. this land is my land, this land is my land; I even blew up the New York

Island...

Junior owns the world; it's his due.

[H2O Man]

16. his song Jesus Christ....

....might upset some d.u.ers as much as the republicans.

[nemo137]

19. for different reasons, i think.

we'd be upset for not knowing about it sooner, they'd not recognize Jesus in the song.

Jesus Christ was a man
who traveled through the land
a hard workin' man and brave
he said to the rich give your money to the poor
so they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.

[JanMichael]

30. This Atheist is definately NOT offended by that song.

One day Jesus stopped at a rich man's door.
"What must I do to be saved?"
"You must take all your goods and give it to the poor",
And so they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.

They nailed Him there to die on a cross in the sky,
In the lightning, the thunder and the rain.
Judas Iscariot committed suicide
When they laid poor Jesus Christ in his grave.

When the love of the poor shall one day turn to hate,
When the patience of the workers gives away;
"Would be better for you rich if you never had been born",
So they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.

This song was written in New York City,
Of rich man, preachers, and slaves;
Yes, if Jesus was to preach like He preached in Galillee ,
They would lay Jesus Christ in His grave.

Why? Because whether or not Jesus is what some people think (theistically and such) he may have have been is not important. The fact that the words attributed to him (Whether he existed or not is again of no importance) are pre-Socialist is all that matters to me.

[DianeG5385]

17. Should the lyrics be changed to..

This land is Our Land
This Land is India
With all the outsource from the New York Island
from the Silicon Valley
from the Golden Heartland, this land was made to be outsourced!

[Gore1FL]

20. I didn't know the last 2 verses

and I thought the first two were flipped -- (I have Peter Paul and Mary's version of it on CD in my car)

Woody Guthrie wrote a masterpiece.

[cryofan]

22. ah, bittersweet nostalgia

I remember singing that song in the music room of the North Heights Elementary school in Del Rio, Texas. The year was about 1965 or so. I was in the third grade or thereabouts. We sang other songs: Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah, John Henry, God Bless America, The Battle Hymm of the Republic, and various folk songs..."Way down upon the Suwanee River, far, far away...."

Talk about memories. Those were different times. We used to have an "Indian Chief" come to the school every year to give a show. I think his name was "Big Red Chief" or something like that....

[lapislzi]

23. kick for the morning crowd

:kick:

[Bridget Burke]

25. Probably purged along with music programs in general....

I always looked forward to the daily music class in elementary school. Some years (when my main teacher was not so hot) it was the only good thing happening.

Our music teacher couldn't sing her way out of a paper bag but she led us through a ton of songs--mostly US & international folk tunes, I now realize. Also played records of classical music & showed us slides of great paintings. Fridays we danced--square dances & the occasional minuet; except for the kids whose religion did not hold with dancing.

There was always a Christmas pageant--everybody was nominally Christian in that area (back then) so it wasn't a problem. One year we ended it with a verse from the Battle Hymn of the Republic:

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you & me
As he died to make men holy
Let us live to make men free
His truth goes marching on (etc.)

She let us know she'd added it because of Civil Rights. She was sort of a cultural missionary to kids in a semi-rural Texas school back in the darkest 50's & I'm glad I knew her.

But all this music & art stuff is being phased out. Who needs it?

[LeahMira]

27. This W. G. song is heartbreaking...

Deportees


The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

CHORUS: Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?