I have stood for every philosophy, movement, etc. that supports the idea of equality and equal opportunity for all, as long as I can remember. In fact, these ideas had a lot to do with my becoming a musician, listening to Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie and later Joan Baez and on and on. I even chose to devote my working life to educating the poorest of the poor, in every sense of the words, in the South Carolina Juvenile Justice system. There have been many times, this being South Carolina, when such beliefs were, and are, not popular, and negative attention was and is aroused. What gets to me these days is that even movements toward equality have become fragmented. A longtime friend of mine recently told me, in all seriousness, that she no longer believed there were any good male humans in the world. I have come to believe, unpopularly among my own chosen culture, that there is no virtue in fighting only for your own rights. When we sing and march and vote and teach or whatever we do, we're either in it for all of us or else we're on some kind of self-centered trip with no real goal. In other words, after all these years, we ain't learned nothing yet. I hope this hurts nobody's feelings. If we want to continue this discussion, maybe we could start a newer, shorter thread.

Chet