Help Nominate Pete Seeger for a Nobel Peace Prize!

 

Petition to nominate Pete Seeger for the Nobel Peace Prize

 

 

 

Why a Nobel Peace Prize for Pete?

Eleanor Walden, 2007

Pete Seeger is an ambassador for Peace and Social Justice and has been over the course of his 88-year lifetime. Using his prowess as a musician he worked to engage other people, from all walks of life and across generations, in causes to build a better and more civilized world: His work shows up wherever you look in the history of labor solidarity, growth of mass effort to end the Vietnam war, ban of nuclear weapons, work for international diplomacy, support of the Civil Rights Movement, for cleaning up the Hudson River and for environmental responsibility in general. Pete knit the world together with songs from China, the Soviet Union, Israel, Cuba, South Africa and Republican Spain. We learned that Crispus Attucks, born a slave, was the first man to die at the opening of the Revolutionary War, that the Farmer-Labor party in the mid-west had a socialist philosophy that lasted well into the 20^thcentury, we learned that anti-slavery movements were often inspired by songs that indicated a map of escape, such as “Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd,” he popularized many of the IWW songs that helped in CIO organizing, and spread the Civil Rights Movement through promoting the SNCC Freedom Singers and making songs such as “We Shall Overcome,” known all over the world.

When subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee in August of 1955, at the height of the McCarthy period, Pete defended himself on the basis of the First Amendment, the right of an American citizen to free association, not the Fifth Amendment, protection against self incrimination. When he was boycotted from earning a living and practicing his craft on a national scale Pete appeared at union meetings, summer camps, Jr. High Schools, High Schools, and Colleges. His pay at times was as little as $5, but his value was priceless!

Pete also had his mentors: among them Paul Robeson, who said: “The Artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery…” It is time that a cultural worker receives the acknowledgement that, as Bertolt Brecht points out, “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” The cultural workers who know the power of the arts for social and political change, also know how difficult it is to gain recognition for cultural creation without either trivializing the art or somehow qualifying for designation of “high art” by an elite. Pete Seeger always held to the principals that people’s music is not only “good art” but is representational art through music. That reality often refers to the conditions of exploitation and oppression that were apparent to formally uneducated folk. Thus “folk music” was not cute or quaint or obsolete, but through Pete, a living, vibrant form of culture.

Pete is again the Pied Piper of an historic environmental movement. When I was a child in New York City the Hudson River was an open sewer, GE alone pumped a million pounds of PCB’s into it. Pete developed the idea for the Sloop Clearwater, modeled after Hudson fishing vessels in the 19th century when the river supplied fresh fish for people from Albany to Manhattan; he suggested having song festivals along the river banks to bring attention to cleaning up the river. Of course the idea was derided by everybody except those who knew Pete; he said, “You can’t expect people to fight for a cleaner river until they learn to love it.” People learned to love the idea that there were things they could do to clean the river. They pitched in, they cleaned the river, now there is a floating pool where children can swim and the Shad and Sturgeon are edible again. In a segment of the otherwise brutal sitcomLaw and Order on CBS a character says, “The Hudson River’s clean now, thanks to Pete Seeger!”

Culture, in essence, means to honor our forbears. In the words of the Eastern European writer Milan Kundera: “the struggle for people’s power is the struggle for memory and against forgetting”. Pete’s talent, sense of decency, and inalterable belief in, as Anne Franke said, that, “at heart, people are basically good”, were uniquely his, but he has never been alone in his work; the support of his wife Toshi and his family gave him the opportunity to be all he could be. We all stand on Pete Seeger’s shoulders in a manner of speaking. We share Pete Seeger as a “father” of cultural, social, and political movements, as much as we share our parental DNA.

It is time that cultural work receives the recognition that the arts have great influence and global reach, that it is not only a medium of entertainment but of education, compassion and action. It is the desire of the committee that Pete Seeger be recognized as a beacon of integrity and principle in a time, and in a country, more defined by the absence of those qualities than by their honor.

Pete Seeger: How Can I Keep from Singing?

 

I would say that Pete Seeger has had a profound influence on my own life, on the impact that one can have as an artist on society; on each of us taking personal responsibility to make a difference. I grew up in an artistic and musical family, discussing politics, current events, books and ideas at the dinner table. My parents are artists and political activists, and when they were younger, they had given Fred Hellerman from The Weavers rides up to the Catskills when he otherwise couldn’t afford to get there on his own steam. My mom worked on political fund-raisers with the likes of Mary Travers and others over the years in NY. I literally cut my teeth listening to Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, and folk music in general, along with classical music.

I have seen Pete Seeger many times. He has always used his concert appearances as an opportunity to promote causes. I remember seeing him in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow when he began his campaign to clean up the Hudson River with the Sloop Clearwater, and singing an infectious and memorable Guantanamera at a concert rally at a church in Cambridge, MA for the United Farm Workers when I was a picket captain for them (I’d been picketing and raising awareness for anti UFW union-busting since I was in High School).

He understood, profoundly, how to elevate people’s troubles and struggles to music, thus elevating the discourse and people’s spirits. He understands the grass roots nature of all political and social justice movements. He has remained true to his vision all these years. I’ve seen the recent documentary about his life Pete Seeger:The Power of Song twice, it is so uplifting. I highly recommend it. Pete Seeger fearlessly stands up for his beliefs and challenges the rest of us to do the same. I enthusiastically endorse nominating him for a Nobel Peace Prize. He is one of a kind, an American treasure, a true leader!