The Resistance Hymn

[1970]
Tune: “Patriot Game”
Words: adopted by Barbara Dane from "The Hallo People"

Album “F.T.A.! Songs et the GI Resistance”, Paredon Records
Sung by Barbara Dane with active-duty GIs.
Recorded at Fort Hood, Texas, Fort Benning, Georgia and Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Edited by Irwin Silber.




“This song was made up for draft resisters, and that's how it got its name. But since then, a whole blossoming movement of resisters inside the Army has come to light, and this song has served there too. I'll never forget the night I was teaching it to a meeting of sailors and marines in San Diego, who were organizing a new branch of the Movement for a Democratic Military, early in 1970. Inside the little store-front meeting place, I was telling the guys not to sing the part in the chorus wrong where it says "I've got something I’ll die for, what else can they do." It's drummed into people's heads so hard, during basic training, that their own lives are worth nothing, that I wanted to remind everyone that now that thay’d begun to find out what was really worth living for, the solidarity and strength and love of people willing to fight together for their own dignity, it was terribly important not to just be wasted, but to go out fighting if necessary. Just then the doors were smashed in by the San Diego police and the Shore Patrol walked in and ripped off a guy they claimed was AWOL [“Absence Without Leave”, ossia “disertore” – ndr]. They were such a new group, they weren't prepered with a response. But next time?”
(Nota introduttiva al brano dal libretto che accompagna l’album citato)