This Land is Your Land

Okemah, OK & New York, NY

This simple, but eloquent song by Woody Guthrie, sung by school children across the U.S., has brought Americans from all backgrounds together for 70 years. It is at once patriotic but also a song of protest for labor and various civil rights movements. In 2007, when my daughter and I were in an orphanage in the interior of China, our hosts asked us to sing a typical American song. “This Land” was not only the only song we could think to sing, the Chinese children and staff joined in on the 2nd verse!

Doug