Favorite protest songs?

[gollygee]

I'm in the mood for protest music and I'm looking on itunes . . .

Any suggestions?

[brainshrub]

1. We are the Union!

Okay, it's a chant not a song. But it sounds great.

[cally]

2. Still gives me chills

but I doubt you can find it on the net...

We shall not be moved
Just like a tree standing by the water
we shall not be moved.

[Xipe Totec]

3. Union Sundown by Bob Dylan

Well, my shoes, they come from Singapore,
My flashlight's from Taiwan,
My tablecloth's from Malaysia,
My belt buckle's from the Amazon.
You know, this shirt I wear comes from the Philippines
And the car I drive is a Chevrolet,
It was put together down in Argentina
By a guy makin' thirty cents a day.

Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.

http://www.ocap.ca/songs/unionsun.html

[demodewd]

4. Street Fightin'

Street Fightin' man by the Stones

[GiovanniC]

5. Depends on What You're Looking For, I Guess

Some mainstream stuff:

Black Eyed Peas: "Where Is The Love"
Outkast: "War"
Jadakiss: "Why"

[Mojambo]

6. Anything by Phil Ochs. n/t

[Tamyrlin79]

7. I know it's not exactly a protest song, but...

The "We will Rock You" part of We Are the Champions by Queen has always appealed to me. I like to sing it and think about chanting at Republicans. :)

[salib]

8. Anything from Joe Hill

Of course, there is always the Internationale.

[TaleWgnDg]

9. anything written or sung by Pete Seeger . . .

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/seeger-bio-2.html

edited to add:

http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/seeger1950s.rm
"Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"

[HEyHEY]

10. "WHo's side are you onnnn, who side are you on?"

I know it's a civil rights song but it's good.

[Shananigans]

11. Phil Ochs...great protest music.

[Generic Other]

12. Don't Let The Bastards (Get You Down)

by Kris Kristofferson

Righteous killing in the name of freedom.
We've been down that sorry road before.
They let us hang around a little longer than they should've.
It's too late to fool us anymore.

We've seen the ones, who killed the ones with vision,
Cold blooded murder right before your eyes
Today they hold the power, and the money, and the guns.
It's getting hard to listen to their lies.

I just gotta wonder what my daddy would've done,
If he'd seen the way they turned his dream around.
I've gotta go by what he told me:
"Try to tell the truth and stand your ground.
Don't let the bastards get you down."

Bombing Baghdad back into the Stone Age
Round the clock, non-stop forty days
Killing them in their homes and on the highways
Now after a decade of crippling sanctions,
we're talking about going in there
and doing it all over again.
Fighting terrorism

I just gotta wonder what my daddy would've done
If he'd seen the way they turned his dream around.
I've gotta go by what he told me:
"Try to tell the truth and stand your ground.
Don't let the bastards get you down."

[PurityOfEssence]

13. "Which Side Are You On?"

Really says it best...

[KurtNYC]

14. A couple public domain tunes... (meaning FREE)

The compassionate conservatives "Not My President Not My War"
The compassionate conservatives "FratBoy"
Yikes McGee "The Liar"
The Bots "Fuzzy Math"

http://www.thebots.net/FuzzyMath.htm

[ornotna]

16. Also here

http://www.protest-records.com/

Free music, go get it.

[Generic Other]

15. Help save the youth of America by Billy Bragg

Help save the youth of America
Help save them from themselves
Help save the sun-tanned surfer boys
And the Californian girls

When the lights go out in the rest of the World
What do our cousins say
They're playing in the sun and having fun, fun, fun
Till Daddy takes the gun away

From the Big Church to the Big River
And out to the Shining Sea
This is the Land of Opportunity
And there's a Monkey Trial on TV

A nation with their freezers full
Are dancing in their seats
While outside another nation
Is sleeping in the streets

Don't tell me the old, old story
Tell me the truth this time
Is the Man in the Mask or the Indian
An enemy or a friend of mine

Help save the youth of America
Help save the youth of the world
Help save the boys in uniform
Their mothers and their faithful girls

Listen to the voice of the soldier
Down in the killing zone
Talking about the cost of living
And the price of bringing him home

They're already shipping the body bags
Down by the Rio Grande
But you can fight for democracy at home
And not in some foreign land

And the fate of the great United States
Is entwined in the fate of us all
And the incident at Tschernobyl proves
The world we live in is very small

And the cities of Europe have burned before
And they may yet burn again
And if they do I hope you understand
That Washington will burn with them
Omaha will burn with them
Los Alamos will burn with them

[bagimin]

17. "Echoes of Heroes" (written 35 yrs ago and note last verse)

Now the echoes of heroes are heard everywhere
In the conflicts of old in the times of dispair
All down through the ages the voices do ring
They cry out of victory and of freedom they sing

CHORUS
And the echo of the laughter and the songs that they sung
The whine of the steel and the roar of the guns
And the tolling of the bell and the cries of the lame
And the echoes of heroes roll down through the ages to remind us again

In the fields of flanders the brave one do lie
At Verdun and Ypres where a million men died
From the Marne to the Somme to the Normandy shore
Their spirits go marching where the wild ealgles soar

On the land,in the sky,in the oceans they come
All onward they march as the drummers do drum
Their faces are bloody and their weapons are worn
Their bones are all shattered and their bodies all torn (CHORUS)

Must this be the road we are travelling yet
Must this be a time when all nations forget
All the sons and the fathers who joined in the fray
To be killed and destroyed and buried in the clay (CHORUS 2)

Gordon Lightfoot

[tigereye]

18. seems appropriate - heard it today

from Mermaid Ave. VOl 1 - She came along to me

Billy Bragg and Wilco

Ten hundred books could I write you about her
Because I felt if I could know her
I would know all women
And they've not been any too well known
for brains and planning and organised thinking
But I'm sure the women are equal
And they may be ahead of the men

Yet I wouldn't spread such a rumor around
because one organises the other
And sometimes the most lost and wasted
attract the most balanced and sane
And the wild and the reckless take up
with the clocked and the timed
And the mixture is all of us
And we're still mixing

But never, never, never,
Never could have it been done
If the women hadn't entered into the deal
Like she came along to me

And all creeds and kinds and colors
of us are blending
Till I suppose ten million years from now
we'll all be just alike
Same color, same size, working together
And maybe we'll have all of the fascists
out of the way by then
Maybe so.

WORDS: Woody Guthrie 1942 - MUSIC: Bragg/Tweedy/Bennett

[Rhiannon12866]

19. I once sang "We Shall Overcome" with a group of

Soviet Union schoolchildren. It was a truly moving experience.:-)

[tXr]

20. Woody Guthrie...

"Dust Bowl Ballads" (Album)

The Police - "Driven To Tears"

How can you say that you're not responsible?
What does it have to do with me?
What is my reaction, what should it be?
Confronted by this latest atrocity

Driven to tears

Hide my face in my hands, shame wells in my throat
My comfortable existance is reduced to a shallow meaningless party
Seems that when some innocents die
All we can offer them is a page in a some magazine
Too many cameras and not enough food
'Cos this is what we've seen

Driven to tears

Protest is futile, nothing seems to get through
What's to become of our world, who knows what to do

Driven to tears

The Police - "Invisible Sun"

I don't want to spend the rest of my life
Looking at the barrel of an Armalite
I don't want to spend the rest of my days
Keeping out of trouble like the soldiers say
I don't want to spend my time in hell
Looking at the walls of a prison cell
I don't ever want to play the part
Of a statistic on a government chart

There has to be an invisible sun
It gives its heat to everyone
There has to be an invisible sun
That gives us hope when the whole day's done

It's dark all day and it glows all night
Factory smoke and acetylene light
I face the day with me head caved in
Looking like something that the cat brought in

There has to be an invisible sun
It gives its heat to everyone
There has to be an invisible sun
That gives us hope when the whole day's done

And they're only going to change this place
By killing everybody in the human race
They would kill me for a cigarette
But I don't even wanna die just yet

There has to be an invisible sun
It gives its heat to everyone
There has to be an invisible sun
That gives us hope when the whole day's done

[JSJ]

21. "the great mandala" n/t

[jeff30997]

22. Power to the People from John Lennon.

[auburngrad82]

23. What's Goin' On, by Marvin Gaye

Marvin was the Man!

[LeftishBrit]

24. I also like Billy Bragg

But the song that always gives me chills is "When We Go Rolling Home", about 19th century farm labourers, but applicable to so many situations; e.g.

"The rich may steal the power, but the glory's ours alone,
When we go rolling home; when we go rolling home...

The summer of resentment, the winter of despair;
The journey to contentment is set with trap and snare.
Stand to and stand together; your labour's yours alone,
When we go rolling home; when we go rolling home.."

I am not sure who the writer/composer is; possibly Anon, but I stand to be corrected.

[Vladimir]

25. First we take Manhattan by Lenard Cohen

http://www.leonardcohen.com/lc10_01.html

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

I'm guided by a signal in the heavens
I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin
I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

I'd really like to live beside you, baby
I love your body and your spirit and your clothes
But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those

Ah you loved me as a loser, but now you're worried that I just might win
You know the way to stop me, but you don't have the discipline
How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

[AngryOldDem]

26. "The Declaration"

I'm probably going to be laughed right off the board for this, but right now the song that is most stirring to me is "The Declaration," the Declaration of Independence set to music, sung by the Fifth Dimension.

Hearing the words set to music really drives home just how radical this document is, as well as what the Founders were trying to do when they set up this country: Give the people the power to chart their own course, as well as the right and responsibility to take their country back if it is getting out of control. In short, overthrow.

This song was released in early 1970, packaged as a medley with "A Change Is Gonna Come" and "People Gotta Be Free." The Armed Forces banned "The Declaration" from their playlists, and it was considered to be "too controversial" for mainstream radio airplay (which probably explains why 99% of you have never heard of the song). It caught on and did fairly well with college stations.

In the notes packaged with the CD I have, lead singer Marilyn McCoo said of the song, "When you listen to the words, it's quite revolutionary, and they didn't want us listening to those lyrics back in the late '60s and early '70s."

But what is most interesting about this song's history is, the group performed it at a White House governors dinner. When they finished, there was silence -- until Richard Nixon started applauding.

This song gives me chills. It is one of the more powerful songs you will hear, exactly because it is based on a document that was under attack then, just as it is now. Needless to say, it's been getting a lot of spin time on my CD player of late.

I doubt you'll be able to find it. Just wanted to share.

ON EDIT: grammar fix