{"id":43824,"date":"2015-01-03T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-03T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/?p=43824"},"modified":"2026-07-15T14:18:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T21:18:21","slug":"cover-me-this-land-is-your-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/2015\/01\/03\/cover-me-this-land-is-your-land\/","title":{"rendered":"This Land Is Your Land"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four years ago, I found myself in an unusual situation. It was a cold winter day, and I was standing alongside of Pete Seeger… He\u2019s ninety years old, a living embodiment of Woody\u2019s legacy. And there were several hundred thousand of our fellow citizens in front of us. We had the Lincoln Memorial behind us and a newly-elected president to our right. We were going to sing, \u201cThis Land is Your Land\u201d in front of all these Americans. And Pete insisted, \u201cWe have to sing all the verses! We have to sing all the verses, man, you can\u2019t leave any of them out.\u201d I said, I don\u2019t know, Pete… He says, \u201cNo. We\u2019re all gonna sing all the verses. All the verses.” So we got to it.
\n<\/span>–Bruce Springsteen, March 15, 2012<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pete Seeger was right: they\u00a0had to sing all<\/em> the verses. Because that day–January 18, 2009–was one of those rare moments in America when all assembled understood that something of momentous importance was happening.<\/p>\n

On the day that America’s first Black president assumed his office, Woody Guthrie’s biting response to “God Bless America” was stripped of its bitter irony and gleamed under the grey winter skies like a jewel in the sun.<\/p>\n