What was old is new again

Woodie Guthrie wrote this song, Deportees, long ago. Why have we stood still when our hearts call us to go forward?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN3HTdndZec

Deportee by Woodie Guthrie

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps
You're flying them back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money, to wade back again.

CHORUS:

Goodbye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mes amigos, Jesus and Maria
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane
All they will call you will be deportee

My Father's own father, he waded that river
They took all the money he made in his life
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees
And they rode the truck till they took down and died

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted
Our work contracts out and we have to move on
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys, and died on your plains
We died 'neath your trees, and we died in your bushes
Both sides of the river, we died just the same

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says they are just deportees

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves, to rot on the topsoil
And to be called no name, except deportee.


"Our job aint so much to go way back into history, thats already been done, and we caint spare the time to do it all over gain. Our job is the Here and Now. Today. This week. This month. This year. But we've got to try and include a Timeless Element in our songs. Something that will not tomorrow be gone with the wind. But something that tomorrow will be as true as it is today. The secret of a long lasting song is not the record current event, but this timeless element which may be contained in the chorus or last line or elsewhere. " - Woody Guthrie