"Americans...have the power to throw the Trump administration out of office and, together, to build a better nation"

 

On Saturday October 3^rd, the Power to the People festival, organized by Rock & Roll Hall of Fame guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, took over the stage at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. On two stages were rock, alternative, and hip-hop royalty, joining together to remind Americans of their agency to change the future and reclaim American democracy.

The line-up of musicians was legendary. Joan Baez, Jack Black, Cypress Hill, Dropkick Murphys, Flavor Flav, Foo Fighters, The Linda Lindas, Mike McCready, Killer Mike, Dave Matthews, Public Enemy, Nathaniel Rateliffe, Bruce Springsteen, Stephen Stills, and Serj Tankian, among others, covered seven decades of American music.

The festival featured a “Freedom Village” where attendees could find ways to get involved in government, grassroots organizing, education, mutual aid, and social impact organizations. Festival organizers donated a portion of the proceeds from ticket sales to VoteRiders, a nonpartisan organization that works to overcome barriers to voting and make sure everyone who is eligible can vote.

Both in person and in the live stream of the concert, artists urged Americans to remember that they have the power to throw the Trump administration out of office and, together, to build a better nation.

The artists at the event pointedly demonstrated their right to free speech. They were explicit and thorough in their spoken descriptions of their anger at the Trump administration and billionaires who have taken over the country, and they chose songs that needled Trump—John Fogerty’s “Fortunate Son,” for example—or excoriated his policies: Baez and Rateliff sang Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” Springsteen sang “Streets of Minneapolis,” and the Dropkick Murphys’ sang “Don’t Call Me a F*cking Terrorist,” the last two both written in the wake of the Minneapolis shootings by ICE agents. They emphasized their freedom to express themselves by singing Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

The ten-hour concert ended with the performers singing Guthrie’s famous anthem “This Land is Your Land,” written in 1940 as the Great Depression dragged on. Guthrie wrote it to reclaim the United States of America for its working people. “This land is your land,” he wrote, “this land is my land/From California to the New York islands/From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters/This land was made for you and me.”

Tonight Morello sang a verse often left out of the anthem: “In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple/By the relief office, I saw my people/As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking/Is this land made for you and me?”

Famously, Guthrie painted on his guitars the words “This Machine Kills Fascists,” a slogan he took from the World War II machinists and workers who put stickers saying “This Machine Kills Fascists” on their heavy equipment to express their support for the war effort. Guthrie believed that music could fight the hatred, ignorance, and greed that built fascism just as powerfully as a gun.

Tonight Morello reminded the audience: “Every act of art is an act of resistance.” Curiously, today’s concert took place on the anniversary of the day that Woody Guthrie died in 1967. And eighty-six years after he wrote “This Land is Your Land,” his work continues to echo. “This is still America,” Springsteen told the audience of the administration’s tyranny, “and this will not stand.”

—Heather Cox Richardson