When Irving Berlin wrote "God Bless America" he didn't know it at the time, but he inadvertently spawned one of the greatest folk songs in history. What Berlin's song did was to piss off Woody Guthrie, who got sick of hearing Kate Smith's rendition on the radio while he watched his countrymen starve during the worst years of the great depression.
So Woody did what he knew to do: write a lyrical response.
And "This Land Is Your Land" was born.
Why is this important on this, of all days?
Follow me over the fold for my take.
Woody Guthrie looked around and saw mass inequity. Mothers weeping over starving and sick children, families torn from their homes and farms in disgraced foreclosure by heartless banks that just did their job.
And God Bless America told Americans to "Stand beside her/And guide her/Through the night with a light from above."
Think about hearing that lyric non-fucking-stop while you were living a life of desperate destitution, quietly suffering, watching death all around you. It's like saying, "Stick with me, dude, there's some light at the end of that tunnel." Or "It's In God's Hands Now."
Didn't sit right with Guthrie. So he simultaneously turned that message on it's ear while taking his fellow Americans on a lyrically rich tour of the best of America.
But that isn't the brilliance of the song. He shows all of America these riches and he screams "THIS IS OURS! THIS BELONGS TO ALL OF US!
From the mountains.
To the prairies.
To the motherfucking oceans white with foam.
This land is ours. ALL of ours. Gay and straight, white and black, latino and aisan, every race and creed known to man is welcome, and has a fair and equal shot. In fact, not only, Guthrie asserts, does this land belong to us...it was made for us.
The foundation of America since it's founding has always been that we are all supposed to have a say.
That's what this day is all about.
I turned 63 today. I don't know how many more days I will be afforded in the year to come, or in the years to come. What I know is that until my last breath I will fight for the idea that this land was made...for you and me.
This machine kills fascists.