I Shall Not Be Moved

I have a dim recollection from my childhood of going to a church service at a church unfamiliar to me, one of a denomination different from that of my family. The town in which I grew up was, and still is, small, and many people we knew were there, all of them coming to this place of meeting, all with a purpose.  I should say also that my home town was (and still is, I hope) fairly liberal and activist, so we weren't getting together to protest Obamacare or demand that the rich take our money (that's what they want, right?).

We were gathering to protest something.  I believe it was Nicaragua, or if not that, some other injustice in Central or South America, land where there have been so many injustices that it's hard to determine which one was happening when.  But we were there to protest, mostly middle-class white people gathered in a church in the middle of a small, liberal town, to say that such things were unacceptable, that atrocity and injustice are never acceptable.  And that's the first time I remember hearing, and singing, "We Shall Overcome."

I sang pretty well as a child, and I didn't then have the baggage that I have now, the fears and neuroses which make me unwilling to simply give up my voice in song whenever asked. So I sang, not really understanding, but knowing that this whole thing was about something important, and that I was singing on the right side, because why else would my parents and all the people I knew be here?  I'm sure I'd heard the song before; one of my favorite childhood artists was Pete Seeger, whom I had the opportunity to see live, but I don't remember that. I do remember singing in the church.

"We Shall Overcome" isn't really a song that the privileged should sing. Yes, if you're on the right side of a cause, you might be justified in joining with others and singing, but even then, you're not really the one who is overcoming.  If a middle-class white man joined in the Civil Rights struggle, he should be viewed as being on the right side, and maybe he could have sung "We Shall Overcome" with his brothers and sisters, lending his voice to theirs as he lent his support to their cause. But he wasn't the one who was going to overcome someday. He wasn't oppressed.

So we were singing a song, all of us lucky not to be in Nicaragua and being killed by death squads or raped or burned or mutilated, and we were doing it in private, essentially, not out where someone who might have been able to help might have seen us and been persuaded to do so.  We weren't going to overcome shit. As Dave Barry puts it:

[W]e held hands, black and white together, and sang "We Shall Overcome," and we were absolutely positive that we would. I got into a friendly argument with a bystander, a black man not much older than I, who laughed and assured me that nobody was going to overcome anything.

 It was that, minus the black people and anyone arguing that we wouldn't overcome anything.

You know the end of the story: we didn't. I'm pretty sure Nicaraguans continued to be killed, raped, mutilated, and generally treated like shit for a while after, prayer and song notwithstanding. I'm not trying to be flip about that either; I wish that it weren't so.  But, like most prayers, our Nicaraguan-oriented, non-denominational ones didn't produce instant gratification.

I'm not encouraging cynicism, far from it.  If all you can do is stand and sing in solidarity, even if it does nothing and you're thousands of miles from those who really need to overcome, even if you do it alone, even if it costs you nothing, standing is a start. It's not sufficient, but it's better than not standing and singing.

We also, I dimly recall, sang "The People United Will Never Be Defeated," (which I went on to hear as a piano work performed by the composer, Frederic Rzewski, in another church, which is another story entirely, but it's an amazing work).  Good song.  Perhaps too Marxist for most people, but still stirring, and since I believe at least one, possibly both, sides of the conflict in Nicaragua were Marxists and Spanish, an apropos choice.

But we didn't sing my favorite protest song. You can probably guess from the title which one I'm talking about.  I prefer it as "We Shall Not Be Moved" because there is strength in numbers, but a great many versions have been done in the singular, and one could make the case that by singing, "I shall not be moved," one is affirming a group promise not to be moved, since the only person one can promise shall not move is oneself.

It's a simple song; most good protest songs are.

I shall not, I shall not be moved
I shall not, I shall not be moved
Just like a tree that's planted by the water.
I shall not be moved.

You can vary the lyrics, but those are the ones with which you can sing along.

Why is it my favorite? Why did I tell you this long, rambling story about an ineffective protest? I'll admit, "We Shall Overcome" makes me cry like a baby in the right circumstances, and it lends itself to Gospel much more. And I'll admit that, unless you're on the line, as it were, singing it is a bit strange because who's trying to move you, really?

But it is the most resolute song. We shall overcome some day, but I shall not be moved ever.  You can sing it on the picket line, when forming a barricade against the onrushing aggressor, when standing up and being counted and saying, "No, I won't go away.  I shall not be moved."

It makes no promises of dominion, because there are none that can be made. Maybe all the singing in the world isn't going to stop them. Maybe they'll never stop, and the world will end in injustice and terror, the soul of man forever crushed beneath the heel of a boot. Not a pleasant thought if you're looking to win, but being right doesn't mean winning.

The Christian tradition from which the song comes has a prime example of this: Jesus was about as right as you can get, and yet he lost. Badly. But he didn't see it coming and turn around, run in the opposite direction, decide that hey, maybe the Pharisees were right all along, even though I for one could completely understand it if he had. Crucifixion is ugly, slow, painful, and just generally terrible in all senses of the word.

So the boot may go on stamping the face forever, and it might be that no amount of singing (or indeed, any other, more "practical" action) will change that. We can say we'll win eventually, or we can say we can never be finally defeated, but what point is there? There's no hope. Everything goes down to dust and all the the efforts of good cannot change that.

But Jesus didn't run. He let the heel squash him flat because he knew that standing was more important than winning. He knew that the only thing that he could guarantee was that he would not waver, that he would stand firm, that he would not move. And in doing so, in dying without giving up, he did win after all.

I shall not be moved. That doesn't say, "I will fight back." That doesn't say, "I will win," or, "I will be where you are some day and then you'll see." It just says, "I am right, and I shall be moved. My roots are deep. Go tell your boss, all the way up to the top, that I shall not be moved."  It's the sit-in rather than the riot. It's the passive resistance of peace rather than the active resistance of war. It's a stand, a line back from which one will not be pushed.

It's faith. "I shall not be moved," is a faith that winning isn't everything. It's a faith that, despite there being nothing else to do but stand and sing, some day that will change. It's a faith that boots may crush, that hope may die, that all may come down to dust, but I still believe and I am still standing and singing, wherever I am.

So why do I remember the useless protest of my childhood fondly, and why do I wish that we'd sung "I Shall Not Be Moved?" Because useless though it may have been, it mattered. Any time someone stands up and sings in solidarity, it matters, even if it doesn't make a difference.

And if we stop standing up and singing, vowing to stay standing and singing, then we aren't going to do anything else. It's the song that gives you courage to go and do more than singing. It's the song that you hear from all corners telling you that you aren't alone after all. Could we be heard in Nicaragua? Of course not. But we could hear ourselves. And though not going backward is a start, the song doesn't say, "I shall not move." Once you stand and sing, then go and do right with a song in your heart. You shall not be moved, you shall not be turned, you shall not be halted.

After the service, I'm sure my family went home. The details swim in my mind; was the fire and brimstone preacher there to whom I enjoyed listening because he was entertaining? Which church in my town was it? Who else was there?  I just remember the songs. They're still with me, long after memory has faded..