Portside

'So it went. Decade after decade. Singing and agitating and inspiring the children and the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren of those who had heard him singing the songs of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in 1938, or serenading Eleanor Roosevelt in 1944, or accompanying Henry Wallace’s presidential campaign in 1948.The hundreds of Occupy Wall Street activists who joined Seeger on a thirty five-block march through Manhattan in October 2011 knew that he was seventy years older than they were, but he was one of them; indeed, said his friend Gary Davis, Pete was "seeing his life come to fruition." It was that understanding of music as art and mission that drew Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen and Ani DiFranco and Tom Morello and Billy Bragg to the man whose energy and warmth, intellect and integrity they aspired to emulate. Seeger believed—still believes—that songs can lift people up and inspire them to take the actions necessary to change the world," Bragg wrote when Pete turned 91, delighting in the fact that Woody Guthrie's comrade "continues to urge us all to overcome".'