February 1944. Pete Seeger singing at a Valentine's Day party to mark the opening of the United Federal Labor Canteen in Washington. View full size. Medium-format safety negative by Joseph Horne for the Office of War Information.
Submitted by Gooberpea on Tue, 06/24/2008 - 5:44pm.
Pete Seeger is still at it - singing for peace, that is. This article from Sunday's New York Times highlights his recent efforts.
When asked if he thought singing beside the road could end the war, Seeger said that "working for peace was like adding sand to a basket on one side of a large scale, trying to tip it one way despite enormous weight on the opposite side.
"Some of us try to add more sand by teaspoons," he explained. "It's leaking out as fast as it goes in and they’re all laughing at us. But we’re still getting people with teaspoons. I get letters from people saying, 'I'm still on the teaspoon brigade.' "
Sing on, Pete.
"I must put a goat on."
Winston Churchill (possibly misheard)
"Pete cannot seem to get past his old loyalty to the communists. He's never sung a song about the totalitarianism of the Soviets or the horrible oppression under Castro. But he's quick to criticize the United States. That's his prerogative, naturally—it's a free country. He just doesn't seem to care for it very much." -- Ronald Radosh, quoted by David Hadju in Mother Jones
Although Seeger had joined up after the Germans invaded Russia, and had served in the Pacific, when asked what he had done in the war, he said "I just strummed my banjo."
