This Land is Your Land

Keep it.

Our shared lands are absolutely under attack right now. National parks and forests cannot maintain their environmental quality and public accessibility with this administration’s service and funding cuts. And while their visibility to the public is curtailed, those in power are making moves that would make our treasured common land open for development. These brutes are systematically undoing over a century of conservation progress, and undermining decades of scientific research connected with it.

Each of these topics deserves its own spotlight, its own protest, its own corrective action. But for today, I want to leave you with words to light your fire, lyrics to sing as a battle anthem to fight the harsh offence of this great American land heist.

Woody Guthrie penned the lyrics of “This Land is Your Land” in protest to inequity and abuse of working class Americans. He wrote them specifically against the song “God Bless America”, the ever-present, blindly patriotic verses that seemed to coerce loyalty in a time of overwhelming injustice.

His counter-narrative speaks to the common person’s fight for a world in which they are intimately intwined. Let it speak to you today. Put it in your pocket, and carry it with you as you look out at our landscape, up at our sky, and over our waters. Hear the tune as you view them all as a part of yourself that you will fight with all you’ve got to preserve.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

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

I've roamed and rambled and I 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.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple,
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?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me

With love and hope for the future,

Stephanie

The Bruce Springsteen performance is my favorite version of the song, and it plays on a record in my house with frequency. What is your favorite rendition?

Read more about the song (while this Kennedy Center page still exists): https://www.kennedy-center.org/education/resources-for-educators/classroom-resources/media-and-interactives/media/music/story-behind-the-song/the-story-behind-the-song/this-land-is-your-land/