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   From: Vindris2@webtv.net   
      
   Pete Seeger enters 9th decade as an activist   
      
   John Minchillo /  AP   
   FILE - In this Oct. 21, 2011 file photo, activist musician Pete Seeger,   
   92, left, marches with his grandson Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, right, and   
   nearly a thousand demonstrators sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street   
   protests for a brief acoustic concert in Columbus Circle, in New York.   
   The demonstrators marched down Broadway singing "This Little Light of   
   Mine" and other folk and gospel songs while ad-libbing lines about   
   corporate greed and social justice. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)   
   By CHRIS TALBOTTThe Associated Press   
   Tao Rodriguez-Seeger was halfway through Friday night's march down   
   Broadway to support the Occupy Wall Street movement, a guitar strapped   
   over his shoulder and his grandfather Pete Seeger at his side. Suddenly   
   a New York City police officer stepped from the crowd and grabbed his   
   elbow.   
   "Are you Tao Seeger?" the officer asked tersely. "Was this your idea?   
   Did you think of this?"   
   Rodriguez-Seeger, a New Orleans-based musician, was certain arrest was   
   imminent. The officer reached for his hand and he readied for the cuffs.   
   Then something unexpected happened.   
   "He shook my hand and said, 'Thank you, thank you. This is beautiful,'"   
   Rodriguez-Seeger said. "That really did it for me. The cops recognized   
   what we were about."   
   That moment affirmed the message that his grandfather has preached   
   tirelessly across nine decades. The causes and movements have changed   
   from time to time over 75 years, but his message has always been the   
   same: Song is the key to understanding and change.   
   "Music does something to you," Rodriguez-Seeger said. "It can cross   
   rivers of meaning that entire books can't get across. ... You take any   
   one of Bob Dylan's songs and you get to the heart of the matter where it   
   took Homer volumes and volumes of books to get to the same point."   
   Today, Pete Seeger is approaching the far end of a life lived walking   
   hand in hand with American history, often at odds with the government   
   that runs things. It failed to shut him up. The courts had no chance.   
   Changing tastes and values? Never. Even time seems to have taken a step   
   back in deference to the musical rabble-rouser's resolve and   
   determination.   
   This time around, the 92-year-old Seeger was carried along by two canes,   
   not the sound of his banjo. But his presence, in a crowd of nearly 1,000   
   with guitar players and chanting sign-holders and police swirling   
   around, gave the new protest movement something it seemed to lack over   
   the last month.   
   A momentary clarity, longtime friend Guy Davis thinks. A purpose. A   
   direction.   
   "It's his humanity," Davis said.   
   Seeger's voice first rose in the 1930s against Hitler. He met Woody   
   Guthrie, Alan Lomax and Lead Belly, and began to advocate for migrant   
   workers and miners in the 1940s. He stared down Sen. Joseph McCarthy and   
   endured a blacklisting he simply shrugged away. In middle age, he was a   
   key figure in the folk revival that produced Dylan and, later, the   
   protests that helped shape modern America.   
   Seeger still takes delight in lending his presence to important things,   
   even if his voice doesn't carry like it used to. He found himself   
   attracted to the studied inorganization of the Wall Street protesters.   
   "Be wary of great leaders," he said Sunday in a phone interview full of   
   songs and stories when asked what he identifies with in the Occupy Wall   
   Street message. "Hope that there are many, many small leaders."   
   Other than the canes and snowy beard, Seeger hasn't changed much since   
   he began singing out against fascism in the mid-1930s after dropping out   
   of Harvard in frustration.   
   "The sociology professor said, 'Don't think that you can change the   
   world. The only thing you can do is study it,'" Seeger said. "... But   
   this was 1937 and Hitler had taken power. He was murdering people and   
   was ready to go to war."   
   You could say Seeger inherited his activism. His great-great grandfather   
   came to America seeking self-determination after reading the Declaration   
   of Independence. His great-grandfather was an abolitionist. His father   
   was a socialist who spoke out against World War I.   
   His views didn't always make him popular. He was a member of the   
   Communist Party, something he later apologized for. He was initially for   
   staying out of World War II, but changed his mind when Hitler broke his   
   nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union. He also spoke out against the   
   war in Vietnam, a move that got him censored on "The Smothers Brothers   
   Comedy Hour," and visited North Vietnam in 1972.   
   Seeger's influence is incalculable, however. He's the rare artist whose   
   music and message transcends time, speaking to his children and their   
   children and on and on.   
   The son of a musicologist and a violinist, he began leading others in   
   song at 8 and was introduced to protest music around 12. Early on, he   
   saw beauty and possibility in traditional songs often considered   
   regional hokum or race records unfit for an upstanding white audience.   
   His message found an eager audience in the young generation of kids who   
   would go on to define rock 'n' roll, changing American and world culture   
   in myriad ways. He introduced Martin Luther King Jr. to "We Shall   
   Overcome." In his hands, songs like "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer   
   Song)" and "Turn, Turn, Turn!" became galvanizing anthems.   
   He remains a voice for the disenfranchised â€" the poor of   
   Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta and victims of racism and greed.   
   Kira Moyer-Sims, a 19-year-old participant in the Occupy Wall Street   
   movement, was introduced to Seeger's music on mix CDs from her   
   high-school social studies teacher. Those songs, from a time that seems   
   far away in the age of the iPod, spoke to her with modern urgency and   
   helped push her into the protest ranks.   
   "Hearing this new music for me was huge and made me realize totally the   
   importance of our nation's history and the fact that we can change it if   
   we want to," she said. "Seeing Pete Seeger there in solidarity with the   
   thing I've been living the past 38 days ... was phenomenal for me."   
   The idea of protesting for progressive change seemed to have gone out of   
   vogue in the U.S. â€" or at least disappeared from public view.   
   After the flower children moved on to mid-life and minivans, Americans   
   turned their focus inward. Fewer people had time for simple songs with   
   complex meanings.   
   Rodriguez-Seeger said he was attracted to the nascent Occupy Wall Street   
   movement when he joined a support march two weeks ago in Las Vegas. He   
   was drawn to the anti-establishment message but noticed immediately that   
   something was missing.   
   "I saw a lot of people getting angry at us for marching, getting out of   
   their SUVs and giving us the finger and screaming obscenities" and using   
   anti-gay slurs, Rodriguez-Seeger said. "I thought, if we were singing   
   right now my gut tells me they'd be less inclined to behave like that   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)