Dana Lyons - Concert in the Hall

Saturday's concert in Thomas Berry Hall was the kickoff to Dana's These Songs of Freedom tour. We feel so lucky, and so grateful, to have hosted Dana here for his first concert tour! What a beautiful, fun, uplifting and important afternoon of songs, music and of course, incredible storytelling from Dana, an environmental and political activist, and committed social justice musical warrior.
Dana told us many encouraging stories of the power of the people: how he's seen and been a part of many fights for justice that have, against all odds, won. 

We'll have Dana speak in his own words from here.

"This next song is called Cracks in the Heartland and it's the title track of my latest cd. Well, the reason I wrote this song, it's about the fight of the people of Nebraska to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. And I think it's one of the great people power stories in modern American history. And what I found fascinating was the farmers and the ranchers teamed up with the environmentalists and the Native American leaders and they fought for a really long time and in the end they won. It took a really long time. And they won."

"And this next song is called Drop of Water. I had the honor of singing this at the dam removal ceremony at the Elwha River. Yes. (audience applause) What a miracle that was. That's yet another example of people of all walks of life in our region, very conservative, very progressive, working to honor the Native American treaties, treaty rights, working left by the Native American. That fight went on for 100 years. Some fights take a long time. The fight to stop the Keystone Pipeline was over a decade. Basically almost anything that really is important and beautiful takes quite a while to achieve because we've got to bring everyone on side. And that's one of the miracles about living in a democracy. And I can hear some of my friends saying, oh, come on, this isn't a real democracy. Well, fair enough, fair enough. I call it a semi-functioning democracy. And my definition of a semi-functioning democracy is that when we, the people, regular folks, citizens, we can get organized on something we care about. And once in a while, we can beat big government or big business. Once in a while, we win. And a surprising amount of the time, we win. It's not just once in a while. It's a good hunk of the time. And we won - removing those dams from the Yellow Long River Dam. The people of Nebraska, Alaska, won against big oil. And we have a lot of examples. It's easy to forget the news media is not reminding us of the victory after victory after victory, but these are things we can do in democracy."

Dana's recommended "Homework"  for continued non-violence/non-cooperative protest and ways of being in these, our sometimes strange and scary times.

"One of the reasons that I sincerely believe we're going to retain and strengthen our democracy is because I believe that the authoritarians are underestimating us. I think they are underestimating us on two important levels. One, I think they're underestimating our love for our country. I think they're underestimating our love for democracy, for our ability to try to make change. And, I believe they're underestimating the creativity that rises. Look at the history. Look at the creativity that comes out of this country,
that's coming out today, right now. It's amazing."

Dana ended his concert to a rousing standing ovation following a wonderful sing-along of Pete Seeger's The Hammer Song, John Denver's Take Me Home Country Roads and Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire.
 

"This is my new job.This is what I'm doing until we take back our democracy or until you have to come see me tour in another country. But I'll still keep working on it. I'm never gonna give up. We're never gonna give up. We're not gonna give up our freedom."

Thank you, Dana!
 

-Karina, Communications Steward