The World Loses One Of Its Greatest Troubadours For Social Justice And Peace

“Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing.Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago.”

 A Brief Note of Remembrance by NAL publisher Doug Draper

Those of us who have continued to love and admire him as a folk music icon and a humanitarian, knew that train, craped in black, would not be much longer in coming for him.

Folk singer/activist Pete Seeger dies at 94

After all, by the time he stood and sang with Bruce Springsteen on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial five years ago during the inauguration of America’s first black president, he was turning 90, and that tall, thin frame of his was looking frail. So was the sound his voice, which always encouraged his audience to sing along, and now had them singing almost all of the lines to such self-penned anthems as ‘If I Had A Hammer’, ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ and ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone’. 

Yet waves of sadness and ‘Oh noes’ still washed over me and, I am sure, over many countless millions of others around the world when we learned that late this Monday, January 27^th, Pete Seeger had passed away at age 94.

Pete Seeger who, believe it or not was a World War II veteran, devoted most of his years raising his voice against war and other abominations poverty, racism and assaults on our natural environment, going back to his days as a Harvard University drop-out engaged in the publication of a radical student newspaper while he was there 

Blacklisted in the 1950s by the infamous U.S. senator Joe McCarthy and his Tea Party-like followers as an enemy of the country I’m sure he loved and cared for more than they, Pete Seeger never capitulated. He remained a strong and uncompromising voice for peace and social justice right up to a couple of years ago when, as weakened by age as he was, he marched in solidarity with members of the Occupy Wall Street movement in the streets of New York City. 

Along with the songs he wrote, there were so many other songs of peace and protest that he almost singularly popularized, including ‘We Shall Overcome’, which is still sung by millions of people around the world in their struggles against violence and oppression.

Pete grips his banjo. The words on the banjo read; “This machine surrounds hate and

 I was fortunate enough to listen and hear Pete Seeger speak and sing at least a few times while he was still touring over the past two or three decades with his close friends Arlo Guthrie, whose father Woody, the author of ‘This Land Is Your Land’ and so many other anthems for the masses of working and struggling people, was one of his contemporaries. And as I did, I wondered how anyone with a breath of sanity or humanity could ever view him as an enemy or a threat. In my opinion, that view could only come from those who choose, through design or ignorance, t aid and abet the forces of violence and oppression. 

A number of years ago, I invited into my home library of music a double CD set called ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone’ –The Songs of Pete Seeger’. On that tribute album, a singer named Tommy Sands, along with a choir made up of both Protestant and Catholic children from an Ireland where, at that time, bloody Sundays were still very much the rule, performed one the most moving versions f ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone’ ever recorded. 

I will play that version of the song again this January 28^th, and as I think about the sad fact that too many people on this earth still choose hate and violence over love and peace, I will honour the spirit of Pete Seeger and the most haunting and powerful lines in that song – “When will we ever learn.?”  

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