On the Unironic Singing of 'This Land is Your Land' at Rallies/Protests/Demonstrations

As someone who came of age and into the peace movement during the first years of the Iraq war, I’ve been going to protests, rallies, and demonstrations—if sporadically—for nearly 15 years now. You could make a bingo card with the types you’ll encounter there… which I say in love. And if one were to make such a card, the free square is the guy with the acoustic guitar.

And at any given protest, perhaps as a scheduled part or perhaps as it wraps up, someone will burst into an unironic “This Land is Your Land.” It’s catchy, it’s intended to signify inclusion, and everyone knows the lyrics (or will soon). But over the last few years, I’ve become really disturbed by some underlying lyrics as they function in this context. This short post is not about the actual song, which has a rich history. In fact, if you’re not familiar with it, you should check out this NPR piece and the its Wikipedia page.

The tl;dr of those links is that when Guthrie originally wrote the song, it had a lot more commentary about who’s excluded by private property, about who’s suffering in our society, and the original closer undermined the whitewashing “God Bless America”. Unlike “Born in the USA” being played at pro-America events, its message meshes even better with the event than its perceived one.

What’s been gnawing at me is what I experience when it’s sung. The effecting lines are “This land is your land, this land is my land” and “this land was made for you and me.” They soar as our earnestness meets our memory of the lyrics.

Just as I’m working on ableism in my language, I’m trying to become more aware of words which reinforce settler ideas, from explicit manifest destiny to its subtler (to white people raised in it) forms. This may include implications that indigenous peoples were all killed off, language of migration West which doesn’t take into account the violence of the US government and settlers, and statements that we were at peace (nationally) at points during the Indian wars.There’s a lot of learning and unlearning involved.

From my childhood, I’m very aware of the explicit language of manifest destiny. I was exposed to it in a lot of my reading as a kid who loved history and grew up religious. I don’t recall either parent ever using it, but I certainly read books which very specifically said that white European Christians were intended by God to move to America, conquer it, and make it our nation and thus be blessed.

And, to bring in a third element, my mother and my former associate pastor and frequent song-leader Adam Tice both encouraged me to pay attention to the words I sing, their origins, and their context. Do I believe them? Would I sing them if I wouldn’t say them? Adam did his thesis on Jesus’s life as described in 20th century Mennonite hymnals and is a great conversationalist on the overall subject. Getting mom started on churches singing this song in particular was a trip.

Now, I can’t not hear that explicit voice of manifest destiny in the song. “This land was made for you and me” sets my teeth on edge. All the words about land remind me of the peoples killed so that I can be welcome from California to the New York Island. I know Guthrie wrote it as a social commentary. I know that the intentions are based in having a land where everyone belongs and matters (and whether everyone “belongs” is not clear-cut when considering settler colonialism). But detached from context and from reflection, is singing it a reinforcement of narratives that the land belongs to a settler-based society and what we need is for that society to improve? Intentions aren’t everything.

My own choice is not to sing it. That doesn’t merit writing anything. But I’m writing because perhaps you’re “guy with the acousting guitar” or organizing an event where you might be inclined to sing it. Consider what else you might sing. It will take a while for anything else to become as widely-known. Perhaps we could start working on that now.