The gentleman in the picture above lived a very difficult life. As a child, his mother, suffering from a degenerative neurological disease, burned down the family home, tried to kill his father, and was committed to a mental institution. He came of age during the Great Depression, making his living as an itinerant sign painter before discovering that he could make more money singing in beer halls. He first achieved fame as a radio cowboy in Los Angeles, and then as a folk musician, but found himself blacklisted for his association with the Communist Party. In the prime of his life, he was diagnosed with the same condition that had killed his mother, and spent the last twenty years of his life in a state hospital, unknown and unvisited, even by many of the folk singers who had begun to rediscover his music.
None of this, of course, is what we remember about Woody Guthrie. We remember him for his immense compassion for the little guy, his joyful humor, his unwavering belief in the fight for justice, and for a song he wrote that every school child knows: This Land is Your Land.
This land is your land, with all of its greatness, all of its faults. As communicators for social change, and more importantly, as Americans, it is our responsibility to articulate our vision for our nation, to define what it is that is working, and what needs changing. In telling our stories, we should not be afraid of remembering what has gone before, or complacent about what is yet to be. We have a responsibility to our fellow Americans, and to ourselves, to make our stories heard.