In 1963, he intro­duces the song in a voice filled with the con­fi­dence of a great per­former, and the fear of a man on stage in Carnegie Hall.

You know there’s lots of peo­ple get dis­cour­aged about this damned human race, but every time I think about it, I think of, you know, Shake­speare said “It is bet­ter to have loved and lost than to nev­er have loved at all.” And it’s bet­ter to have fought for the sur­vival of the world and failed than to nev­er have fought at all.

If you would like to get out of a pes­simistic mood your­self, I got one sure rem­e­dy for you, go help those peo­ple down in Birm­ing­ham Mis­sis­sip­pi and Alaba­ma. You don’t have to go down there your­self. … There’s all kinds of jobs to do.

Maybe we’ll see this song come true.

“We Shall Over­come” by Pete Seeger from the album We Shall Over­come — The Com­plete Carnegie Hall Con­cert (1963, 8:13).

There are still fights going on. Not nec­es­sar­i­ly in Birm­ing­ham. Not nec­es­sar­i­ly over civ­il rights. Kansas just joined 18 oth­er states in ban­ning some peo­ple from mar­ry­ing the peo­ple they love. We’re on the verge of mak­ing up the def­i­n­i­tion of sci­ence as we go along. Endan­gered species are blink­ing out of exis­tence and the tem­per­a­ture is ris­ing. The blood of tor­tured Iraqi chil­dren is on Amer­i­can hands. AIDS is on the increase, large­ly because of vio­lence against women. Chil­dren are starv­ing. Vic­tims of geno­cide are still wait­ing for jus­tice in Koso­vo, Dar­fur, and Myanmar. 

We are not afraid, We are not afraid
We are not afraid, today
Deep in my heart I do believe
We shall over­come some day

Atrios point­ed out today that:

if you’re wealthy blog read­er you should con­sid­er whether it’s bet­ter to give a grand or two to [your favorite lib­er­al orga­ni­za­tions] or a grand or two to [your favorite blog­gers]. Not that it’s nec­es­sar­i­ly a choice, but for good or for ill unaf­fil­i­at­ed blog­gers are an increas­ing­ly impor­tant part of the trench war­fare of the news cycle, and despite the pres­ence of a lot of free ice cream out there on the inter­nets, your favorite blog­ger would prob­a­bly able to give more and bet­ter blog and feel good about it if a few more bucks were com­ing in.

And, final­ly, this is not a plea for me — go give to oth­er people.

That last sen­tence goes for me too. I’m not here with my hat out. I’ll take free mon­ey, but there are oth­er peo­ple, like Dave Nei­w­ert, who either pub­lish mate­r­i­al on their blog for free, or spend time sell­ing their words. When you give to a blog­ger, it means time to real­ly do something.

I know how I’d spend some cash on move­men­tish things, and you know oth­er blog­gers who could do the same. Think about it, and decide whether your favorite group is doing what you want, or if a cou­ple hours of a blog­ger’s time would be of more val­ue. We won’t spend mon­ey on mar­ket­ing. We’ll spend time research­ing, writ­ing, and pub­lish­ing for free.

Like Arlo says, 

You know, if one per­son, just one per­son does it they may think he’s real­ly sick and they won’t take him.
And if two peo­ple, two peo­ple do it, in har­mo­ny, they may think they’re both fag­gots and they won’t take either of them.
And three peo­ple do it, three, can you imag­ine, three peo­ple walk­ing in sin­gin’ a bar of Alice’s Restau­rant and walk­ing out. They may think it’s an orga­ni­za­tion.
And can you, can you imag­ine fifty peo­ple a day, I said fifty peo­ple a day walk­ing in sin­gin a bar of Alice’s Restau­rant and walk­ing out. And friends they may thinks it’s a movement.

Friends, there’s a move­ment – decen­tral­ized, tan­gled and con­fused, but focussed. We know what we want, and we’ll get there.