We Are One - Inaugural Concert!

Pete & The Boss!
This is so cool!

Look at their faces yesterday!

Especially 89 yr old Pete Seeger’s beaming at the huge crowd on the mall and Tao smiling at Grandpa Pete—all the while singing their hearts out! (The “rest of the story” is the fact that Pete Seeger is the guy who sang “We Shall Overcome” to Martin Luther King which so impressed King that he adopted the song as the civil rights theme.)

Pete restored Woody Guthrie's original verses that have been censored from the song over the years to make it less political:

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
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.

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?

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.

To think it was just one short year ago, Tao had to sing alone at our event in Beacon NY because Grandpa Pete got pneumonia, which, in turn, inspired our Peace Island Picnic with Tao and Larry Long singing this very same “This Land is Our Land” across the Mississippi River from the RNC! The cause of peace and justice were again taking a hit that RNC week — a constant ebb and flow — but here’s to the hope we shall overcome!

Howabout more? How about Bob Marley's "One Love" (Let's Get Together)!Mr. President - We're "All Fired Up and Ready to Go"!

The Reverend MLK, jr.

It is right to celebrate the life of the man upon whose shoulders we all stand.






Never have his shoulders cast a bigger shadow...
I long - for too long - argued that the war against the Taliban was a 'good war' of retaliation for 9/11. Many do-good pacifist liberals criticized me for it. I was late coming to the conclusion that as soon as Bush chose to invade and occupy Iraq, "Operation Enduring Freedom" became unsustainable. Inoperable & unendurable. I should have remembered Martin Luther King Jr's words. My error. I apologize, deeply, for it. Joseph Stiglitz straightened me out.

As Martin said, "What is bent can be made straight".