ABSTRACT
The song “This Land Is My Land” (1956, lyrics available on the web at http:www.arlo.net/lyrics) has become a popular standard at public school assembly programs in the United States. It is
difficult to imagine that it was written by Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie, a formerly unemployed and homeless Okie who was involved in left-wing political causes during a career that spanned from the 1920s through the 1950s. Guthrie spent his youth in Oklahoma, absorbing the culture and music of hoboes, farm
laborers, and hillbillies before joining the great dust-bowl migration to the U.S. west coast. In California, he was an active supporter of the labor movement and the Communist Party (Blum, 1990: 284-85). Many of Guthrie’s songs celebrate the United States, but in a way that questions the fundamental inequalities he witnessed in our society. A simple statement like “this land is your land, this land is my land,” which says that the nation belongs to everyone, challenges a world where some people have great wealth and limitless opportunity while others are impoverished, discriminated against, and disempowered. In stanzas that rarely appear in school productions, Woody’s political message is much more explicit. For example, one stanza openly challenges the idea of private property (Seeger, 1985: 160-62).
