Eulogy for Utah Phillips

I just got the news that Utah Phillips, one of the strongest and most consistent voices in America for the rights and dignity of working class people and for a free world based on human values, has passed away in his sleep at the age of 73. (http://www.kvmr.org/utah_letter.html – Utah Phillips has Left the Stage)

What follows are just a few of my thoughts, as one performer to another, speaking about a man who influenced me and my music tremendously over the years. I would not presume to present this as anything other then that, just a few words of gratitude and sorrow, nothing more. Utah’s family has posted an official obituary on his website – http://utahphillips.com/. Ya’ll should go check it out. Also, The family requests memorial donations to Hospitality House, P.O. Box 3223, Grass Valley, California 95945 (530) 271-7144 www.hospitalityhouseshelter.org

In losing Utah Phillips we lose one of our strongest and best voices, a man who has inspired hope and resistance for decades, and whose deeply personal and deeply human approach to history and the struggle for human freedom has touched countless lives.

He was a great man in the best possible sense of the words. Unlike most “great” men, his greatness didn’t come from any power he wielded over others, it came from the power of his vision, the strength of his voice, his trueness to his convictions, and his astounding ability to find joy and humor and love everywhere he looked. He was a living bridge spanning the gap between past and present, between the dream of what will be and the struggle to make it so. Other writers have called him a living national treasure, I say he was more then that. The movement for freedom, justice, equality, and dignity for all people that he gave his life too has never been bounded by nations, and his work and his life were too big too be encapsulated or confined by the lines men draw in the dust and call borders.

In honoring him, his work, and his passing we honor ourselves and we honor everyone who has come before us and who will come after us. Like so many others, Utah has passed into the great unknown, but he will never cease to BE- can never cease to be – as long as his words and actions still live. One of the songs Utah sang, originally written by Alfred Hayes, captures what I’m trying to say better then I could:

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you and me
Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
“I never died” says he.

“In Salt Lake, Joe, by God” says I,
Him standing by my bed
“They framed you on a murder charge”
Says Joe “But I ain’t dead.”

“The copper bosses killed you Joe,
They shot you Joe” says I
“Takes more than guns to kill a man”
Says Joe “I didn’t die.”

And standing there as big as life,
And smiling with his eyes
Joe says “What they forgot to kill
Went on to organize.”

“Joe Hill ain’t dead” he says to me,
“Joe Hill ain’t never died
Where workingmen are out on strike
Joe Hill is at their side.”

From San Diego up to Maine,
In every mine and mill,
Where workers strike and organise,
Says he “You’ll find Joe Hill.”

The same words could have just as easily have been written about Utah, he will stay with us as long as his words are remembered, his songs are sung, and as long as there are still people struggling for a better life and a better world. Utah liked to say that the greatest weapon of the working class is the Long Memory – the refusal to forget those who have come and gone before us, their lives, their struggles, and the unbroken thread of resistance that stretches back from where we are to where we’ve been. He carried that memory for a long time, let us carry it now for him.

Our friend, our comrade, has gone where we cannot follow. Let’s honor him in the best way we can – in the way he would have wanted us too – by going out and organizing, by building the movement he devoted his life too, by realizing his dream and ours – a world based on mutual aid, freedom, equality, liberty, and solidarity. We will mourn, but we will organize, and we will win. For Utah, for all of our honored dead, but mostly for the living and the countless unborn generations yet to come.

Posted: May 24th, 2008 under economics, gods & religion, music, personal, race & racism, video.
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