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PUBLIC RESPONSE
TO
"We Can't Make it Here"
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I just downloaded "we can't
make it here" this afternoon and WOW what a song!!! JM is somewhere
between Warren Zevon and Springsteen on this one. Truly therapy and affirmation
for a growing number of "us" that live the song everday........so
astute.......so REAL.......it dosen't get any better for those seeking
the truth of the matter. I was really amazed at some of the responses
the forum recieved......sounded like a delegation from the Young Republicans...what's
up with that??? I'm not here to say I'm some big city liberal either (hate
em) I just happen to be one of those good ol'boys that dabbles in being
an intellectual at times. I'm a flag waving, gun toting, pick up driving,
deep thinking, freedom loving, working for a living American from central
Maine. I just happen to like people that think for themselves and can
relate and translate the working Americans plight. Anyway I'm totally
psyched James is gonna be at the Grand in Ellsworth in Febuary for my
35th birthday.......haven't had this much enthusiasm since we organized
a road trip to see David Allan Coe in MA 2 summers ago!!!!! James keep
up the good work cause we appreciate it!!!!!!! Keep the faith my Brother-
~BT
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Hey there James,
I wanted to put down some thoughts concerning your tune
"We Can't Make
it Here Anymore".
This song strikes a chord with me for a couple reasons
as it is MY face
very directly from verse to verse:
1) I ignore people asking for money in the left
hand turn lane because I
know most of them are NOT Viet Nam vets. But I do donate to veteran
charities.
2) I am a CEO, and I know that you can't make it on minimum wage.
As if
I didn't know that, as if I didn't notice the way my refrigerator only
had
food for my two kids so many days for so many years, as if I was born
with a silver spoon in my mouth. And from that experience I watch the
way I
pay, my lowest paid person get's $18 an hour, and her schedule is as flexible
as
she wants it to be. I am the 3rd lowest paid person in my company. I may
be
rich someday, but not for ripping people off. I think there are many CEO's
like me; the ones from companies like Enron make the news.
3) Then the song gets into the fact that there are no jobs so people
are
left with joining the Corps or the USAF. I was in the USAF for 8.5 years.
Not
because it was the only job I could get, but for other more idealistic
reasons.
My family immigrated here and being the yongest of five kids I felt as
though somebody from my family should pay some dues. So I served from
'87 - 95 and I had a lot to do with a lot of death and I'm not too proud
of what I participated in. I am changed for it. I am also firm in my
desire to make things better so other soldiers, marines, airmen and
seamen don't have to kill for nothing, or for the wrong cause. Each year
I was in the USAF I was elligible for food stamps and various other
programs because of my low income, my kids etc...I never took it. I made
do.
Seems to me if people find out how to get by without being dependent on
"entitlements" that we'd all be a lot better off.
4) The textile plant is closed so now all there is to do is to get
drunk, shoot a syringe in our arm and get skinny. Bullshit. People sing
songs
like we are in a depression, but they obviously have no clue how bad it
was
during the depression. The strength of the people during the depression
to get by was incredible. Now something turns bad and we run to mind
alteration, complaining and self pity rather than guts and
determination. We can make it here now...we just don't have the balls
to do it. We are a spoiled brat of a nation that will fail because we
have lost what it
takes to make it.
We CAN make it here now.
Perhaps a last verse of your song could be:
So get off your ass there is some work to do
The jobs are gone now it's all up to you
Find something to live on, something to make
That other people can use, or use to create
Don't rely on the sources that robbed you blind
They're all rich, or gone and don't pay you mind
Hanging around for a handout won't work anymore
You have to make it yourself here anymore
~AK
Mr. K,
you certainly have a point. we don't have to sit around and wait
for a hand out. but we don't have to sit around and let the enron type
ceos rip us off either. we don't have to sit around and watch
politicians gut programs that help people who've had to go and fight their
wars, while forcing through tax breaks for the enron types.
my songs are my only weapons and they aren't perfect,
they offend some good
people, and they probably don't scare the powers that be. but silence
is
complicity, and I can no longer be silent.
thanks for noticing
~James McMurtry
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James, et al...
I wanted to write to thank you so very much for "We Can't Make It
Here." I am a loyal KPIG on-line listener and when I first heard
it played there several weeks back, I sent it to my entire email list
and posted it to a couple of online boards.
I am an organizer in the Tulsa Peace Fellowship in Oklahoma and it is
so very appreciated when one of my favorite artists comes out with something
so powerful and moving about the devastation we are experiencing in this
country and the world at the hands of the greedy and power hungry. We
love having good motivational music to reinforce what we are doing as
we stand our corners during our regular anti-war peace vigils, too.
Maybe one day you can come to Oklahoma for a concert appearance. The Woody
Guthrie Festival is an incredible weekend of music in mid-July in honor
of Woody's birthday and legacy. It would thrill me to no end to see your
name on the list of performers this year. (www.woodyguthrie.com)
With peace, much love and respect~
~MG from OK
"We can no longer afford to confuse peaceability with passivity.
Authentic peace is no more passive than war. Like war, it calls for discipline
and intelligence and strength of character, though it calls also for higher
principles and aims. If we are serious about peace, then we must work
for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as
we now prepare for war."
~ Wendell Berry, Orion Magazine March/April 2003
A Citizen's Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States:
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/03-2om/Berry.html
Thoughts in the Presence of Fear:
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/oo/sidebars/America/Berry.html
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