Chet,
I have two bumper stickers side by side on the back of my car: The one on the left says "In the US, one percent of the population owns 34 percent of the wealth," (an old bumper sticker: it's more than 40 percent, now); the other says simply "Robin Hood Was Right."

A while back I wrote that like rap, many folk songs also romanticize the outlaw life. In thinking about this over the last few days, I was forced to recognize that the folk hero outlaw and the gangsta have little in common: the songmakers, at least, saw the outlaws as, if not in all cases stealing from the rich to give to the poor, at least stealing from the rich. But the gangstas prey upon their own community, most of their violence is directed at their own neighbors, they are dragging children into their world. I have to agree: they are degenerates, throwbacks, befouling their own nests.

But what can we do about it? Can we turn our feelings into a message which might reach some? Any blues artist on this thread? Is there hope there?
--seed