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THE MUSIC OF PROGRESSIVE PATRIOTISM  
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Suzan Erem
July 1, 2026
Barn Raiser
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_ When social movements need to march in beat, Dick Flacks gives them
a song. What follows is a brief tour through influential songs and
poems of protest and resistance in U.S. history, many with rural
roots, with Flack’s extensive knowledge as a guide _

In 1982, Dick Flacks, a professor at the University of California
Santa Barbara launched “Culture of Protest” on KCSB. The show
features songs and narrative inspired by social struggles, present and
past, national and international. , KCSB

 

Dick Flacks has a long and storied history in the progressive
movement.

He was a co-author of the Port Huron Statement by the Students for a
Democratic Society, the 1962 manifesto credited with launching the New
Left movement of the 1960s. For 44 years, he has hosted a radio show
on KCSB in Santa Barbara, California, while also working as an
activist, sociologist and author.

In 2018, he and his wife Mickey chronicled their long journey in their
memoir _Making History Making Blintzes, How Two Red Diaper Babies
Found Each Other and Discovered America_
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Press). He is co-author of _Playing for Change: Music and Musicians in
the Service of Social Movements_
[[link removed]] (Routledge, 2010).

Dick and I had a long conversation about the power of song. What
follows is a brief tour through influential songs and poems of protest
and resistance in American history, many with rural roots, with
Flack’s extensive knowledge as a guide. His commentary is provided
here, in addition to lyrics and links for you to follow along. _–
Suzan Erem_

In 2013, I was approached by Peter Dreier, a friend of mine, to
co-author a piece on the theme of progressive patriotism. I had been
discovering that a lot of the expressions of patriotism that are most
well-known in this country had come from people on the left, not the
right, and that story was centerpiece of the article. Here’s the key
examples:

“THE NEW COLOSSUS”

On the base of the Statue of Liberty, is an excerpt from “The New
Colossus,” a poem by Emma Lazarus (1849-1887), who was very
consciously left wing.

Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the
homeless, tempest-tost to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

The poem speaks to fact that we are the society that welcomes the
downtrodden and the homeless to our shores. That is the essence of
what our country is about.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

Francis Bellamy (1855-1931) was a minister who lost his pulpit because
he preached that Jesus was a socialist. He and his cousin Edward were
both socialists. In 1892, on the 400th anniversary of Columbus
arriving to America, he thought it would be a great idea to create a
school pledge that immigrant children could speak alongside
American-born kids that would unite them around a vision of America.
Of course, the socialist line when you think of it having that history
is “with liberty and justice for all.” And that’s how he
understood the purpose of the pledge.

“AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL”

I didn’t know that its author Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929) was in
a lifelong same-sex relationship with a fellow Wellesley College
professor Katharine Coman. Bates had written a whole lot of poetry
including a book of anti-imperialist poems _America the Beautiful and
Other Poems_ (1912).

If you look at all the verses, the message is America _is_ beautiful,
but its beauty is also in danger of corruption unless we rescue it, so
to speak. I don’t think she used the word “rescue” but that’s
the America we have to fight for. She clearly intended to make the
point that there’s two sides to America the beautiful. Of course
it’s beautiful physically. Is it beautiful socially? Is it a land of
brotherhood? This is a verse that is seldom sung.

America! America!God shed his grace on theeTill selfish gain no longer
stainThe banner of the free!

So, here’s another person consciously on the left who is creating a
very important patriotic symbol. The national anthem was only decided
in the 1930s, and “America the Beautiful” was one of the key
contenders for that.

“THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND”

Then comes Woody Guthrie (1912-1967), who said that he was listening
to “God Bless America” on the radio and thought, “That’s not
the way to talk about America.” America is for the people of
America, not God. And “God Bless America,” when you hear it,
doesn’t have any content about what America is supposed to be
really. So he wrote “This Land is Your Land” as an answer to that.

There were very political verses that he wrote about the poor in
America. He didn’t think the political side of what he was writing
about people on welfare and so forth could be sung in schools. So, the
verses that are really famous, those sung by most people most of the
time, didn’t include two verses:

As I was walkin’ – I saw a sign thereAnd that sign said “No
trespassin’”But on the other side …. it didn’t say
nothin’!Now that side was made for you and me!

In the squares of the city – In the shadow of the steepleNear the
relief office – I see my peopleAnd some are grumblin’ and some are
wonderin’If this land’s still made for you and me

It wasn’t really because of censorship by others. It was Woody’s
own view of how to make that song useful. It is amazing how far that
song has gone given he was a Communist—and now those class conscious
verses are typically included by performers.

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WATCH HERE [[link removed]]  

Woody is now the one of the great icons of American culture. I’m
amazed because it seems even truer from year to year. I keep meeting
kids in their early 20s who are Woody Guthrie fans. I’ve had
students who said, when the punk movement was starting, that he’s
the father of punk. It makes sense because he was rejecting corporate
culture very consciously.  

“THE HOUSE I LIVE IN”

Earl Robinson (1910-1991) was another Communist Party composer of
note. He wrote for radio in the 1940s and had a time in Hollywood
before he was blacklisted. The lyrics to “The House I Live In”
were written by another Communist, Abel Meeropol (1903-1986).
Meeropol, writing under the pseudonym Lewis Allen, earlier wrote the
anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit,” famously sung by Billie
Holiday.

The first verse of “The House I Live In” goes:

The house I live inA plot of earth, a streetThe grocer and the
butcherAnd the people that I meetThe children in the playgroundThe
faces that I seeAll races, all religionsThat’s America to me

I was raised with “The House I Live In,” sung by Frank Sinatra at
the height of his teen idol popularity. He initially performed it in a
Hollywood short that won an Oscar. The short was a kind of little
documentary where he teaches children how to be anti-racist by singing
that song. 

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Sinatra made the song popular and he continued to sing it throughout
his career. The song made it the finale of the national celebration of
the centenary of the Statue of Liberty.

“BALLAD FOR AMERICANS”

Robinson also wrote the music for a popular cantata that recounted the
history of liberty in America called “Ballad for Americans.”
Norman Corwin, the great radio producer, heard it off-Broadway, went
to CBS and said this 10-minute work could be a great short radio
program. It really fit with the anti-fascist, win the war struggle
leading up to World War II. A CBS executive said, “Wouldn’t Paul
Robeson be the best singer for that?”

Robeson was one of the most famous Americans in the 1930s and
certainly the most famous African American, during his heyday, in the
world. And yet he was completely denied the opportunity to make a
living out of his art once the blacklist hit him in 1950.

But a decade earlier, in 1940, “Ballad for Americans” was
performed at two political conventions. One was the Communist Party
convention, I guess Robeson must have sung it there, and the
Republican convention. Bing Crosby made a recorded version of it. It
became for a while a very well-known patriotic anthem.

Did they all believe in liberty in those days?

Nobody who was anybody believed it.Ev’rybody who was anybody they
doubted it.Nobody had faith.Nobody but Washington, Tom Paine, Benjamin
Franklin,Chaim Solomon, Crispus Attucks, Lafayette. Nobodies.The
nobodies ran a tea party at Boston. Betsy Rossorganized a sewing
circle. Paul Revere had a horse race.

And a little ragged group believed it.

I think younger people might listen to the “Ballad for Americans”
and think it’s pretty corny. If you listen more carefully you
realize there is a strong progressive populist message in it. 

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A friend the other day said, “Can’t we get as many of us as
possible to play ‘Ballad for Americans’ on July 4th this year at
noon to observe the 250th?” You can find a recording of it online.
If everyone plays it at noon, the walls of Jericho will come down. No
doubt at this point!

“LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING”

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” by James Weldon Johnson (1871-1838)
has for a long time been regarded as the African American national
anthem.

Is this just an African American national anthem? No. This is one of
the greatest American songs that has ever been written. And it what
made me realize it should be brought together with all the other
patriotic songs was when it was sung pre-game by Coco Jones at the
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alongside the Star-Spangled Banner.

Stony the road we trod,Bitter the chastening rod,Felt in the days when
hope unborn had died;Yet with a steady beat,Have not our weary
feetCome to the place for which our fathers sighed?We have come over a
way that with tears has been watered,We have come, treading our path
through the blood of the slaughtered,Out from the gloomy past,Till now
we stand at lastWhere the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

And of course, the right-wing didn’t like that. Jon Root, a
Christian Nationalist sports commentator put it this way on X in a
post promoted by Fox News:

The United States of America has ONLY ONE national anthem. Kicking off
the #SuperBowl [[link removed]], in
the year of our great nation’s 250th birthday, with the “Black
National Anthem,” is a disgrace & racially divisive. …

WHERE PROTEST SONGS COME FROM

To me the most important protest songs come out of the movements
themselves in the street. When people are occupying a space in
protest, they need to start singing if they want to keep their sanity
and spirits up. Protest songs come from below, from the grassroots, as
soon as there’s that kind of occupation or strategy, whether it’s
in the civil rights movement, people sitting in their churches
preparing to go out in the streets, they’re singing freedom songs in
the church and then out into the street. Whether it’s in union halls
preparing to go on strike, whether it’s in Occupy Wall Street
sitting down across the country, in those places if there’s
prolonged sitting there’s going to be people starting to sing songs,
the old songs but also making new songs.

The gospel hymn, “We Shall Overcome” is the most important
American protest song ever. It wasn’t made famous because it was
recorded by a popular singer. It was made famous through the civil
rights movement and the singing in the streets. 

THE STATE OF PROTEST MUSIC TODAY

What’s happened now is amazing to me because there’s never been
more production of protest songs of both the street kind and the
commercial kind than has been happening now. It dwarfs even the 1960s,
partly because of YouTube and the internet disseminating stuff. But
also, in the streets.

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In Minneapolis there’s Singing Resistance
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deliberately and consciously forms itself as a group to go in the
streets and sing alongside the protest. And they made new songs and
that has of course gotten on to YouTube. That kind of resistance
singing has spread to other parts of the country to other places where
people are hanging out in protest and gathering. 

In more recent years, Bruce Springsteen (b. 1949) has been very
conscious. He’s made recordings of “This Land is Your Land,”
he’s honored Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and at the Obama Center
celebration he played “Land of Hope and Dreams,” a great American
song that is so pertinent to this time. And “Born in the USA,” as
everyone who’s not right-wing knows, was a very critical song.

Got in a little hometown jamSo they put a rifle in my handsSend me off
to a foreign landTo go and kill the yellow man

Born in the USAI was born in the USA

Down in the shadow of the penitentiaryOut by the gas fires of the
refineryI’m ten years burnin’ down the roadNowhere to run, ain’t
got nowhere to go

And Jesse Welles, recorded an anti-Trump song “No Kings” with Joan
Baez. And I thought that was a great inter-generational moment that
they did.

No hatred, no violenceNo starvation and no greedAnd no kings, no
kingsNo kings

 

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Beyoncé and other African American artists have always had some
political content to some of the songs that they’ve been doing. 

Look at Bad Bunny. This is the most popular singer on the planet and
very political on top of which he’s singing in Spanish and yet
he’s able to make great popular music.

In the country music world, there have been artists like the Dixie
Chicks whose CDs have been thrown into fires and melted because people
didn’t like their politics. But the artists who are being attacked
are the ones who win in popularity as well as memory.

If you really look at who are the most powerfully important country
singers of all time, it’s Johnny Cash who was very political. It’s
Willie Nelson who was political. Dolly Parton has been quite
political. Roanne Cash, Johnny Cash’s daughter, is quite political.

ALIVE AND WELL IN TODAY’S STRUGGLES

On June 14, the Committee for the First Amendment hosted Rise Up Sing
Out. Jane Fonda has gotten the bug that protest songs are really
important. 

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“Nothing brings people together more powerfully than music,” she
said. “Music speaks a truth that’s beyond words. It’s a primal
unifying force, a common language of resistance and hope. A great
speech can inspire a following. A song can define a movement.”

And that’s exactly the line I’m preaching.

We’re in a new era of song about that’s socially conscious and
that’s trying to empower people, that is producing choruses and
individual troubadours who have that intention and are having that
kind of impact.

I have to say that it’s still sort of mysterious why music has that
power.

_Dick Flacks’s radio show is called Culture of Protest, posted on
KCSB.org, Thursdays at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time and on demand at
__https://spinitron.com/KCSB/show/169092/Culture-of-Protest_
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_[__SUZAN EREM_ [[link removed]]_ is
a fruit and nut farmer, working writer and community organizer in
rural Cedar County, Iowa. Her Substack is Postcards from the
Heartland. Her farm can be found at __DracoHill.org_
[[link removed]]_.  __MORE BY THIS AUTHOR →_
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_This story was originally published by __Barn Raiser,_
[[link removed]]_ your independent source for rural and
small town news. _

_Your independent source for rural and small town news._

_Barn Raiser_ [[link removed]]_ connects local and
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who live in and care about rural and small town communities. By giving
voice to shared concerns, and by reporting on local organizing
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* Music
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* people's music
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* protest music
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* protest songs
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* patriotism
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* July Fourth
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* July 4th
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* Fourth of July
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* Francis Bellamy
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* Pledge of Allegiance
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* America the Beautiful
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* Katharine Lee Bates
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* This Land Is Your Land
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* Woody Guthrie
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* The House I Live In
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* Abel Meeropol
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* Frank Sinatra
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* Earl Robinson
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* Paul Robeson
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* Ballad for Americans
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* Singing Resistance
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* Bruce Springsteen
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* No Kings
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* Joan Baez
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* Jesse Welles
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* Committee for the First Amendment
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* Rise Up Sing Out
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* Jane Fonda
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* James Weldon Johnson
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* Lift Every Voice and Sing
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