Do You Hear the People Sing? Saving the World One Sing Along at a Time

Earlier this week, the Texas Solidarity Sing Along (yes! there's one in Texas!) posted a link on Facebook titled "Have your say: Can protest songs really change the world?" I'm so glad you asked! And, why yes, I believe they can! The folks at ONE, an advocacy organization cofounded by Bono and dedicated to ending extreme poverty, have since June been engaged in an effort they call "agit8: Iconic protest songs that have changed the world," which features high-profile performers recording their versions of some well-known, some less-well-known protest songs. The aim is to inspire people all around the world to take action.

I wholeheartedly applaud their efforts. The way we get music to people anymore is via their favorite performers. Listening is all well and good, and it's a necessary first step. But it's very passive and therefore delivers only some of music's true magic, which has been part of the human experience since before David played his lyre to soothe Saul's troubled soul. Look closely at the poster created for this laudable project:

It displays the words "come together" in large type. Like coming together for a performance? No. Like raising our voices together? Yes! Just as it says, that's when extraordinary things can happen.

Like the Singing Revolution that took place in Estonia in the late 1980s, in which, according to the documentary film, three distinct Estonian political groups sang their way to unity and a nonviolent revolution that freed them from Soviet rule. Like people all over the world who have been so inspired by the song "Do You Hear the People Sing?" from Les Misérables that it's been heard from Turkey to Taiwan.

Here in Madison, Wisconsin, many of us know firsthand about those extraordinary things that can happen, because we participate regularly in the Solidarity Sing Along, which has been meeting every weekday from noon to one at the state capitol since March 11, 2011. And lately some of us have also been meeting every evening at about 5pm at the capitol to sing until the building closes at 6.

Photo by Callen Harty

If you're local and you're not sure you're ready to sing in the halls of power, you might want to check out the Madison Song Circle, which meets every Wednesday, 6:30-8:30pm, at the Cardinal Bar, 418 E. Wilson. We sing from the Rise Up Singing songbooks in the tradition of a song circle, where we go around the circle and everyone, time permitting, has a chance to choose a song for the group to sing together. Many of us have gotten hooked on singing together. It keeps us energized, focused, hopeful, and connected to each other.

Photo by the Overpass Light Brigade.

I can hear some of you thinking, "Okay, well, that's nice, but I don't sing." Au contraire. Yes, you do. You may not sing well, you may not feel confident about your singing, but you can sing. In a supportive group. The point is not how well you sing, but simply that you sing. With your friends, with your community. And if you think it couldn't possibly make a difference, think again. Why has the Walker administration tried so hard to silence us, arresting and handcuffing hundreds just because we gather in the rotunda to exercise our right to free speech by singing together about our dissatisfaction with what's happening in our state? Because they know and fear not only the power of our collective voices but also the power of our solidarity with each other.

Folks in Texas as well as in Michigan have decided it is time to sing truth to power in their state capitols too. If you're eager to start a solidarity sing along in your state, you can download a copy of Wisconsin's Solidarity Sing Along songbook for free here. Many of the songs have Wisconsin-specific lyrics, so you'll want to put together your own songbook, but this will give you a good idea of what works in Wisconsin, and many of the songs are easily adaptable to other states, especially seeing as how the Republican-controlled states are all working from the ALEC playbook. The fight in Wisconsin is the same as the fight in Texas as the fight in Michigan as the fight in North Carolina as the fight in Turkey as the the fight in Italy... All over the world, people are oppressed and in pain; they feel discouraged and isolated and powerless. And the magic of singing together can help in surprising ways.

For music to really work its magic, it's not enough, as Pete Seeger would say, to put songs in people's ears. You have to put them on their lips. Pete has long advocated starting a singing movement. He would love what's happening here in Madison. What I have learned from Pete over the years is that singing together builds community. It builds strong community. And strong community is exactly what we need in these dark times.

Some of the people I've sung with at the SSA, I've never had a single face-to-face conversation with. But singing truth to power has bound our hearts more tightly than it's possible to describe. We are a loose collective, analogous to a neighborhood pickup basketball game, composed of Democrats, independents, anarchists, Greens, Wobblies, teachers, retirees, veterans, union members... Given that our governor has expressly stated his goal to divide and conquer, our solidarity is unquestionably a force to be reckoned with, so much so that the state Department of Administration has done everything it can think of to silence us. Thus far, to no avail.

Several days ago, my friend Rebecca Kemble wrote this in a Facebook post decrying the overwhelming global forces aligned against us:

Pretty much all we have is our relationships with each other and the potential for mass action as we build those relationships with trust and respect.

The forces arrayed against us are powerful, and they're determined to divide and conquer us, in the worst ways possible. Rebecca is right. Our only recourse is to hold fast to each other, in spite of our differences, in spite of our fears. The solidarity that's required isn't the artificial kind that comes from just taking your cue from the people in charge. It's the kind where you know that no matter what happens, there's a whole slew of people at the ready who will have your back and not back down.

One of the best ways to build such a community, to keep our spirits and energy up in the face of overwhelming global corporate power, is to sing together. Often. Loudly. Vociferously. The more we sing, the stronger and more united we'll be. When it's time to run for the barricades, we won't be caught fumbling for our songbooks. Not that songbooks are bad, but it's a good idea to keep a ready arsenal of songs that can flow from hearts to mouths to the ears of those in power at a moment's notice. If we do, there's no doubt that extraordinary things will happen and that we will indeed change the world.

Resistance Is Essential

Three weeks have gone by, and finally I've figured out what I think. I know, I know. I'm slow to process such things. There were many who would gladly have digested the experience for me, but I resisted. This was big. Huge even. I had to figure it out for myself, even if it took me, well, a few weeks.

First, I'm furious. Second, if I had it all to do over again, I would. Gladly. And I hope you would too.

Of course, I'm still furious at the Fitzwalker weasels for all the damage they're doing to our beloved state. But I'm also furious that Obama tweeted his "support" in the eleventh hour, that the DNC's idea of "support" was to come to Wisconsin to squeeze more money out of people who'd already given their hearts and souls and more money than they could afford to the recall effort, not to mention the money the Fitzwalkers have already stolen from them. They threw us under the goddamned bus.

The DNC treated the Wisconsin Recall like it was a marginal little regional dispute. The RNC, on the other hand, treated it like it was the front line of an epic battle, a warm-up for November. I wonder how the DNC would like it if we tweeted our support on November 5. (Don't worry—I'll hold my nose and vote for O, but only because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.)

Three weeks of grieving. I keep thinking of all of you who worked so incredibly hard. Collecting signatures in the freezing cold. Organizing and canvassing and connecting and generally working your asses off. The result is so bitter, so hard to swallow.

Our state has been occupied by greedy corporate plunderers who believe the 1% are more worthy than the rest of us, who care nothing for our children's future, for the unemployed, for students and teachers, for our health, for our state's precious natural resources, for truth and transparency.

Not only is the result hard to accept. It's hard to believe it's legit. Regardless of whether there was outright fraud or just a gross billionaire-funded burial of the state in outsize lies and propaganda, or both, the system is rigged.

We the people have been subsumed by them the corporations.

In spite of the outcome, in spite of how hard it is to accept, it was the right thing to do. In fact, it's still the right thing to do. We need not apologize for having attempted to rid Wisconsin of its weasel infestation. We didn't fail. We were failed—by a rigged system and by the milquetoast pseudo support of Obama and the DNC.

That we didn't succeed only means that resistance is more essential than ever. The weasels are ruthless, organized, and loaded with dirty billionaire dough. As Robert Kraig so rightly observed, "A movement is not something that can be defeated by one election. ... It bears remembering that the modern conservative movement was established out of the ashes of a decisive electoral defeat, Barry Goldwater’s landslide presidential loss in 1964."

A little voice in my head keeps saying, "Don't mourn! Organize!" But I can't tell you not to mourn, as I am doing my own mourning. But I will tell you to organize.

What does it take to organize? Nothing fancy or complicated. Just friends, community, and learning. By "friends," I mean strong, lasting, deep friendships that you can count on when your back is up against the wall. Real community happens when every member counts, every member has a voice, every member is worthy of care and respect. A community cultivates cooperation, understanding, and confidence, in each other and in our leaders, even and especially when we don't agree.

We have only just begun to build solidarity, and in spite of how often or loudly we chant otherwise, we don't always know what democracy looks like. But we are learning. And we must continue to learn, to educate ourselves and each other. To give ourselves and each other the benefit of the doubt, and to forgive ourselves and each other when necessary.

We have to keep raising our voices, in defiance of the cacophony of the corporate mass media and the rabid right spin machine. We have to keep resisting, to keep singing. Thanks to a stalwart band of determined activists, the Solidarity Sing Along continues to be an important point of daily resistance, as well as an important point of community learning and organizing. We're still putting the Fitzwalker weasels on notice: We're still here. We're not going away.

We can't stop now. We're only just getting started.

# # #Many thanks to Leslie Amsterdam for use of her photo (top).