ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors began writing and speaking as a team in November 2017, when the insults and threats of nuclear war between the United States and North Korea became more and more alarming. What had sounded like bellicose rhetoric began to sound more like serious preparations for nuclear war. In January 2018, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced the Doomsday Clock to two minutes to midnight, a setting it had not seen since the 1950’s. The Bulletin was responding to three threats: the danger of nuclear war, the increasing danger of global climate change and emerging technologies. In reflecting on the peace movement of the 1980s, the struggle for civil rights, and the end of the Vietnam War, the authors were struck by the importance of music in giving people strength and building unity. Singing together counters the sense of being alone facing an insurmountable threat.
