OK I’ll disagree with you .. up to a point. Yes, Woody Guthrie did mean the land “belongs to you and me”, but my point is that it belongs to no-one. There’s altogether too much fighting over land and who has the rights to it. I’m an anarchist but am aware of many ironies and paradoxes in holding that position. I don’t want government, apart from self-government, and especially not in control of the land. But, if there’s no control, we’re liable to see the total exploitation and devastation of every piece of it, unless people learn how to manage it better. I’m thinking of the colonisation of the last wildernesses by the landless poor, as happens in the Amazon and elsewhere. I live in England and the irony is that the large estates of the aristocracy have preserved a lot of our remaining woodlands, while enclosure, which destroyed our peasant class and grabbed most of our once common lands, has left us with the hedgerows that typify the English countryside. With so much land disappearing under roads and buildings, those narrow strips of woody plants now provide one of the few highways for wildlife to move from place to place and maintain biodiversity. Life’s a bitch and we’ve got our work cut out to improve our relationship with it.
Yup. The song is subtle til that suppressed verse is sung. Woody was no fool...
'This land is ...'
OK I’ll disagree with you .. up to a point. Yes, Woody Guthrie did mean the land “belongs to you and me”, but my point is that it belongs to no-one. There’s altogether too much fighting over land and who has the rights to it. I’m an anarchist but am aware of many ironies and paradoxes in holding that position. I don’t want government, apart from self-government, and especially not in control of the land. But, if there’s no control, we’re liable to see the total exploitation and devastation of every piece of it, unless people learn how to manage it better. I’m thinking of the colonisation of the last wildernesses by the landless poor, as happens in the Amazon and elsewhere. I live in England and the irony is that the large estates of the aristocracy have preserved a lot of our remaining woodlands, while enclosure, which destroyed our peasant class and grabbed most of our once common lands, has left us with the hedgerows that typify the English countryside. With so much land disappearing under roads and buildings, those narrow strips of woody plants now provide one of the few highways for wildlife to move from place to place and maintain biodiversity. Life’s a bitch and we’ve got our work cut out to improve our relationship with it.
In solidarity,
Richard Anthony