Pete Seeger has passed away at the age of ninety four. Seeger will live through his songs as long as people through the world are struggling for peace, freedom, and socialism. C. Wright Mills the great sociologist who passed away too young, half a century ago, wrote that through the U.S. and the world their were many "plain Marxists" to whom his work was dedicated.
I would call Pete Seeger a "plain Communist," someone who was a vital part of the larger Communist movement both as a member of the CPUSA in the past and as a non member who continued to perform in concerts and at events sponsored by and our supported by the CPUSA. Below I have cut and pasted an article a response from Rabbi Michael Lerner, leader of the Progressive Jewish group Tikkun about his memories of Pete and an article from the Guardian, a progessive British newspaper These two statementswhich so far is the best early responses that I can find.
In the article, Pete is quoted as saying that he was "still a failed Communist." I would take issue with that. Joe McCarthy, Senators Dodd, Eastland, Thurmond and so many others are dead, along with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, John Foster Dulles, and so many others whom he fought with and through his songs. And what did they accomplish for humanity. There legacy is death and destruction for the people of the world and suffering in the form of increased poverty, racism, and imperialism for the American people. As Karl Marx if he were still alive might say, they were "failed capitalists," digging in the long run the grave of the capitalist system while they worked to search and destroy its enemies
Fortunately, modern technology gives us the records and films and videos that will keep Pete alive as long as there is a civilization to appreciate him. In that sense, he was and will be still "a successful Communist"
Norman Markowitz
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Read this on-line at http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/pete-seeger-a-personal-remembrance. You are also welcome to publish the Editor's note on Facebook or other social media or put it on your website.
Pete Seeger Dies--But His Spirit and Music Will Never Die
Editor's note: Personal Remembrance of Seeger:I could scarcely believe my ears when staff members at Tikkun told me that Pete Seeger had just called to ask if he could perform at the first national Tikkun conference in New York City in 1988. I had raised my son on Seeger's music, and had myself been moved by some of his radical songs. He was already a legend and I was already a fan when I was in high school.Seeger understood that the kind of Judaism we espoused was rooted in the universalist and prophetic tradition that had led so many Jews to become deeply involved in the movements for peace and social justice--not the chauvinist nationalism that was becoming dominant in large sections of the organized Jewish community--and he told me that he had followed me in the 1970s when the Nixon White House had indicted me, at the time a professor of philosopy at the University of Washington, for organizing anti-war demonstrations (the trial was called The Seattle Seven, and eventually all charges were dropped after spending some time in federal penitentiary for "contempt of court"--a charge overturned by the 9th Circuit Federal Appeals court). Seeger became a fan of Tikkun, a supporter of our activities, and his appearnace at our conference was one of the highlights of the event. Even Rabbi and Jewish folksinger Shlomo Carlebach, who also performed at that conference, told me he felt joy and awe at Seeger's presence at the Tikkun conference.Seeger told me her particularly respected Tikkun's tone of respect for those with whom we disagreed politically, our refusal to demean personally those who had fallen into reactionary ideas (e.g. our refusal to make fun of Reagan's intellect which was a popular move among lefties in the 1980s and our refusal to accept the notion that Americans were racist simply by virtue of voting for him, our commitment to try to address the rational needs that were leading people to support irrational politics), and our willingness to take the hatred of the Jewish establishment (and eventually the boycott we faced from most synagogues in the US) for being critics of Israeli policy toward Palestinians but without (us or him) ever demeaning the desire of the Jewish people for the same security that most other people had obtained through a national state and an army. Like Tikkun, he too wanted that same protection for the Palestinian people. At the conference, Seeger was a voice of hope and optimism in sharp contrast to Irving Howe and Alfred Kazin, two of our other speakers, who were filled with doom and gloom.
I kept in touch with him for many years, we chuckled at those former leftists like Howe and Kazin who seemed to give up on the possibility of transformation, both of us noting how much had already changed in our own lifetimes (his much longer than mine) and he was always an amazingly sane voice in contrast with leftists who sometimes lost touch with the needs of rank-and-file Americans. He persisted in an egalitarian democratic tradition that had led him to be a communist (though not an apologist for the Soviet union) and a cultural agitator. We at Tikkun will deeply miss him. And his music will remain alive among all of us spiritual progressives (of every faith, including secular humanists and atheists) from generation to generation. May his memory always be a blessing! --Rabbi Michael Lerner. RabbiLerner.Tikkun@gmail.com www.tikkun.org
Pete Seeger: Dies at 94
Pete Seeger has died aged 94. Here's one of our final interviews with the great folk singer, from 2007, in the wake of Bruce Springsteen's Seeger Sessions album
Pete Seeger … 'I still call myself a failed Communist. Photograph: Jamie-James Medina
On the first Friday of the month, in fine weather and sometimes foul, you will find Pete Seeger, the folk-singing legend and pioneering environmentalist, in a small wooden clubhouse by the Hudson river, 70 miles north of Manhattan. At 87, and only slightly stooped by age, he looks much as he did 40 years ago, when he was the voice of the left, and an inspiration to young folk singers like Bob Dylan. Here at his beloved Beacon Sloop Club, in jeans and with shirt sleeves rolled up, he is still the driving force for a weekly dinner that draws a few dozen similarly conscientious folk at the river's edge. "The town gave us use of the building 45 years ago," recalls Seeger. "My wife suggested we call it a pot-luck dinner and we've been busy ever since." Seeger has won many awards, including the National Medal for the Arts, but his main concern these days is teaching children about the natural life of the Hudson. Ecology is so much his passion that sometimes he likes to be called a river singer. Indeed, along with raising anti-war consciousness in the 1960s, he played a key role in the movement to clean up the Hudson, which forced General Electric to pay half a billion dollars for the removal of toxic substances. "I still call myself a failed communist," says Seeger, preparing the club's stage for a late afternoon sing-song. And it's true that his most famous compositions, Where Have All the Flowers Gone? (adapted from an old Russian song about Cossacks going off to war) and Turn, Turn, Turn (a big hit for the Byrds) don't sound as revolutionary as they did. Seeger's banjo once sported the message: "This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender" (an echo of the message on Woody Guthrie's guitar: "This machine kills fascists"). The anti-fascist, union anthems he sang with Guthrie and later with his own band, the Weavers, placed him at the forefront of the action. He was targeted as a communist sympathiser in the 1950s (he was called before the McCarthy hearings after being warned that If I Had a Hammer would go down badly with the authorities, found guilty of contempt of Congress and sentenced to a year in prison). During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, he led a crowd, with Martin Luther King, in a rendition of We Shall Overcome. Nowadays, Seeger doesn't play before large audiences, partly because he fears his voice is no longer strong enough. But he'll spend hours in the club, mischievously giving out bumper stickers reading "Gravity - it's just a theory" and encouraging people to send them to anyone in Kansas, heartland of the anti-Darwinism, creationist movement. He'll sing along at the club and tell stories for hours - but his best story is his own. Born in 1919, and immersed in music by his teacher parents, Seeger got his big break in 1940. His parents were helping famous folk team John and Alan Lomax to transcribe songs recorded in the south. Woody Guthrie was persuaded to come to Washington to record them and Seeger accompanied him in the studio. The results were eventually published as a book: Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People. "I went out west with Woody," says Seeger. "He taught me how to sing in saloons, how to hitch-hike, how to ride freight trains. Then I went out on my own." Guthrie, he says, taught him how to busk. "He'd say put the banjo on your back, go into a bar and buy a nickel beer and sip it as slow as you can. Sooner or later, someone will say, 'Kid, can you play that thing?' Don't be too eager, just say, 'Maybe, a little.' Keep on sipping beer. Sooner or later, someone will say, 'Kid, I've got a quarter for you if you pick us a tune.' Then you play your best song." With that advice, Seeger supported himself on his travels. Last year, Bruce Springsteen - a friend since the 1990s - released an album of songs Seeger had performed over the years. We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions put Seeger back in the spotlight. "I wish he hadn't used my name," says Seeger. "I've managed to survive all these years by keeping a low profile. Now my cover's blown. If I had known, I'd have asked him to mention my name somewhere inside." While he likes Springsteen's renditions ("They're not my songs, they're old songs, I just happened to sing 'em,"), he says the renewed attention has added to the admin work that falls to his wife of more than 60 years, Toshi. "Most men chain their wives to a sink. Mine is chained to a table covered with correspondence. 'Oh, Mr Seeger, won't you listen to my record? Read my book, come over here and accept this award ...'" He refuses almost all such requests. The business of the mighty river comes first nowadays. He's the enduring, seemingly ageless, folk-singing socialist-ecologist, and a fervent believer in thinking globally and acting locally. And down by the river, after the monthly pot-luck dinner, there's always time to take out the old five-string banjo and sing a song. "The real revolution will come when people realise the danger we're in," he offers in parting. "I'm not as optimistic as people think I am. I think we have a 50-50 chance of there being a human race in 100 years". Pete Seeger, Songwriter and Champion |
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