Female Actor:
He was an ornery bastard. Contrary, irresponsible. He couldn't show up anywhere on time. Never knew when to quite drinking. Couldn't cure himself of wanderin' off, vanishing without a word to anybody, deserting those he cared for most.
Male Actor:
This is our country here as far as you can see no matter which way you walk or
No matter what spot of it you stand on And when you have crossed her as many times as I have you will see as many ugly things about her as pretty things
This Land Is Your Land – (instrumental)
Female Actor:
Don't get me wrong, though. Woody was a good, gentle person-at least when he was sober. He was a wiry, weather-beaten guy not much bigger than a fence post. His name was Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, born Okemah, Oklahoma July 14, 1912.
Male Actor:
You will hear whole gangs of travelers and settlers arguing about her. What she is, how she come to be, what you are supposed to do here. and you will hear some argue at you That she is so beautiful you are supposed to spend your life just feeling her pretty parts, Sucking in her sweetest breezes and tasting her fairest odors, looking at her brightest colored scenes, And I would say that gang has the wrong notion.
(music)
As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me
Male Actor:
And there are some bunches that tell you she is all ugly and all dirty, that there is nothing good about her, nothing free, nothing clean, that she is all slums, shacks, rot, filth, stink, and bad odors, loud words of bitter flavors, Well, this herd is big and I heard them often and I heard them loud, but I come to think that they too was just as wrong as the first outfit,
Female:
That powerful image of the little man in the red-checked shirt with a guitar, ridin’ in the boxcars from state to state, singing his songs, carrying the news, fightin’ the big guys ...that was Woody Guthrie.
(music)
Well, I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me
Male:
Because I seen the pretty and I seen the ugly and it was because I knew the pretty part that I wanted to change the ugly part, Because I hated the dirty part that I knew how to feel the love for the cleaner part, I looked in a million of her faces and eyes, and I told myself there was a look on that face that was good, if I could see it there, in back of all of the shades and shadows of fear and doubt and ignorance and tangles of debts and worries,
And I guess it is these things that make our country look all lopsided to some of us, lopped over onto the good and easy side or over onto the bad and the hard side, I know that the people that run our desks and offices got so full of the desire to grab enough money to run away and hide on, that they let this thought run them, instead of the bigger plan, well, this has always been a hard word to say, but It could very truly be that our office people are doing the best they know how to do, But we had ought to teach ourselves better and higher than this before we run ourselves and put ourselves into our offices.
Female:
Woody is just Woody. Thousands of people do not know he has any other name. He is just a voice and a guitar. He sings the songs of a people and I suspect that he is, in a way, that people. Harsh voiced and nasal, his guitar hanging like a tire iron on a rusty rim, there is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings. But there is the will of a people to endure and fight against oppression. I think we call this the American spirit.
(music)
One bright Sunday morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the relief office I saw my people
As they stood there hungry, I stood there whistling
This land was made for you and me
This land is your land this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me