Don't Despair: This Land is Still Our Land

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

By Joel Connelly

As a Bellingham teenager, I witnessed a Peter Paul & Mary college concert up at Western U, concluding with Woody Guthrie’s classic “This Land Is Your Land,” written as counter to the Irving Berlin “God Bless America.”

It features the rousing final line, “This land is made for you and me,” to which Mary Travers added the footnote, “It still is.” After a post-performance autograph scrum I found myself at the Pastime Cafe hearing Peter Yarrow talking about the Freedom Riders and other foot soldiers risking all in the Civil Rights movement.

Mary Travers never knew Donald Trump, and Yarrow died earlier this year. Alas, our land is being given over to oligarchs, billionaires of a new Gilded Age. Trump is their authoritarian enabler, signing a succession of executive orders.

It was enlightened change when I was growing up, and John F. Kennedy was in the White House. Today, by jarring contrast, defense of democracy is from the bottom up, and the blowback has begun against all the awful stuff.

https://www.postalley.org/2026/01/06/dont-despair-this-land-is-still-our-land/

[vapor2]

1. GOOD POINT

Was just chatting with hubby's nephew who told me that we can't give into their fear tactics and he's right. PLUS I grew up with PP & M and saw their political activism and often play Bob Dylan's song "The Times They Are a Changing". I still have some fear when Ice shoots an innocent woman in the head 3 times and see these thugs inside a Target store. This appears to be 47's private army but for what damn reason? I cringe every day for fear of the unknown by these vile, sadists. .

[Midnight Writer]

2. Conservative talkers/podcasters/influencers claim this song is a hymn to communism.

I consider it a celebration of inclusion. Inclusion is a dirty word to the Right Wing.