Singing for our Lives

Oh, the power of music…. Today I was watching “Six Feet Under” which I used to watch religiously when I lived in NYC, but had not seen the last season’s episodes. Well, at the end of the show, they played a song, “We are Singing for our Lives” and me, being the cheeseball, emotional goof that I am, started crying. The line that touched me went “we are peaceful, angry people and we are singing, singing for our lives”. I immediately thought about the fight to defeat SB959 and how we, as GLBTQ people, are so mad about this hateful bill and being basically equated with pedophiles. Yet, even in our frustration, hurt and anger, we are basically a peace-loving group that is trying to reach out and appeal to a sense of fairness and justice. So, I did an internet search to find out more about the song and was amazed to discover “Singing For Our Lives was written after Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone were murdered in San Francisco. Over the years, verses have been added reflecting many issues and concerns, The song can also be found in the Unitarian Universalist Hymnal, Singing The Living Tradition.” The lyrics of the entire song are…

”We are a gentle angry peopleSinging, singing for our livesWe are a land of many colors...We are an anti-nuclear people...We are gay and straight together...We are a peaceful, loving people...”

I stopped and thought about the ironic parallel between the timing of when the song was written and now that I am finally hearing it. Harvey Milk was the first openly-gay elected official in a large US city and represented such a beacon of hope for our community. His murder was such a tragedy. Almost thirty years later, trailblazers like Kathy Webb are still pioneering our path into the political community and gaining our place at the political table. Yet, there are those that still want to push us back into a status of second-class citizenship and want to deny us the basic fundamental freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution, “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” We are still singing, singing for our lives.

To download “Singing for our Lives” (free) http://www.hollynear.com/free.download.html