Pete Seeger on hope

On the horizon, the hills above U.C. Berkeley were often brown for lack of rain.  Oakland, the city next door, was also brown but for lack of money.  It seemed that both the rain and money were reserved for the campus and its Californian students.  Unable to afford Berkeley's tuition fees, I took one course at a time.  My classmates seemed amazingly tolerant of my poverty and youth, I was the youngest in my class, but still I enjoyed the experience immensely.

Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie, 1975

This was Berkeley in the mid-70's and we took this tolerance for granted.  We were all equals here and we called our professors by their first names, a practice unheard of in previous generations.   We socialized with our teachers too and we challenged their ideas.  It was inclusive at the School of Public Health.

I loved the clash of ideas and it opened my eyes to the substantive, subversive notion that ideas, not people, are judged.  I loved listening to some of the great thinkers of that time, Ivan Illich and Eric Erikson, and loved that we could ask them questions.

On a beautiful spring day, almost everyday was beautiful in Berkeley, I didn't take my usual route to class along the lush footpaths lined with dark, dense growth and colourful bougainvillea.  Instead I went to Sproul Plaza, the main gate to the university.

Sproul Plaza was the hub of campus activity.  There was the lady dressed from head to toe in black, reciting poetry as she blew bubbles. There were the puppeteers with their large almost life-size political figures -- Reagan, Johnson, Kissinger -- there to deliver their message via street theatre.  There were the artists and pundits showing off their wares and abilities.  And there was a lone fundamentalist preacher delivering his sermon in front of the grand fountain that was the centre of the plaza.

Normally our preacher was without an audience but on that particular day, he had a large crowd before him and he was in fine form.  I stopped to listen too.  Behind our preacher, unbeknownst to our preacher,  stood a beautiful young woman on the edge of the fountain reflecting the gold of that day in her long blonde hair.

At about that time, Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie came to the Bay Area.  I hadn't heard much anti-war music and they were mostly unknown to me.  The music left a lasting impression and this was Pete Seeger's genius.  Like few before him, Seeger understood that lyrics can stay fresh in the mind long after mere words disappear.

In 1961, Seeger was convicted by The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) of 10 counts of contempt of Congress and yet a few short years later, he became one of America's best-known troubadours without having served a single day in jail.  Did Seeger know something the rest of us didn't when he arranged the old gospel song "We shall overcome" in 1940?

For Seeger, the banjo was his vehicle to call attention to the injustice of the Vietnam War and like Seeger, the struggle to end the war dominated our thoughts in Berkeley.  Almost every young person belonged to a political or civic organization.  We staged regular public meetings and protests against military recruitment on campus.  I became hooked on politics.

What might Pete Seeger tell us today about this time in his life?  Perhaps it was Seeger who was standing next to me at that fountain in Sproul Plaza on April 30, 1975.  I think he would have enjoyed the scene that followed as the blond removed her clothing while shouting, "The war is over.  The war is over!"  And perhaps it was then that he leaned over and whispered, "If you sing for children, you can't really say there's no hope."

The pictured album cover is how Pete and Arlo looked in 1975.  At the concert, they played a wonderful song of hope, Quite Early Morning.  This is a live recording.  Pete Seeger, you taught us well. History is about change and there is always hope.


The views expressed in this post are personal opinions only.