This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the redwood forest to the Gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
This land. These United States. My country. Your country. A country that welcomes the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” A country where we have the right to worship as we please. A country that is seen as a beacon of freedom around the world. A country that walks softly and carries a big stick. A country that values straight talk over bluster. A country that is in danger of losing it all.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
Saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.
We are a country that should be outraged that our Jewish brothers and sisters are facing daily bomb threats and destruction of their graveyards. We should be outraged that anti-Semites and racists are working in our White House. We should be outraged that highly educated legal immigrants who teach in our universities and offer medical care in our hospitals are harassed and shot on the street by those inflamed by xenophobic rhetoric. We should be outraged that the hard-working immigrant laborers who build our houses and serve our food and do our dirty work for minimum wage are being harassed and frightened and summarily arrested, leaving shattered families and broken lives behind.
I’ve roamed and rambled and followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
All around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me.
We should be outraged and ashamed that our waters and mountains and fields and national parks are now being seen as corporate profit centers and dumping grounds for industrial and agricultural waste. We should be outraged that our public school system is being dismantled and profitized, that our children have become commodities. We should be outraged that our prisons are becoming profit centers, serviced by an immigration policy that guarantees hundreds of new customers each week.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and dust clouds rolling
As the fog was lifting, a voice was chanting
This land was made for you and me.
This land was made for you and me. Not for Vladimir Putin. Not for Donald Trump. Not for any one man. Not for oligarchs and billionaires, Russian or American. Our democracy is all we have. If there is evidence — and there certainly is — that our democratic process has been tampered with by an avowed enemy state, we should be outraged that party loyalties and lust for power are forestalling efforts to learn the whole truth, whatever it may be.
We have fallen into a dark place, where the rhetoric of fear and hatred and division — and bold-faced lies — are being normalized and used as political weaponry.
We are better than this. I believe it in my heart, just as I believe with the voices of true Americans chanting and standing up for what’s right, this fog, too, will lift.
This land was made for you and me.
