Getting back to our roots...

In May of 2007 an old friend urged me to attend an informational meeting in the next town, my hometown - Middleboro - about a proposed casino.  I had no idea that this meeting would be the spark that would light a fire, that would burn white hot for the next five years, and change my life forever.

Today, June 9, 2012, is a reminder that the same spark caught the wind and spread to Palmer and Brimfield, Fall River and Foxboro, Plainville and Milford, Freetown and Lakeville, and is now burning brightly in East Boston's Maverick Square and at every open poll in the city of Taunton.

Whatever the outcome for these and other communities across the Commonwealth and across the nation, places where regular people living and working and raising kids in cities and towns woke up one day to find themselves facing down billionaires, fighting the end result of gubernatorial hubris, legislative incompetence and failed federal policy, enduring marketing blitzes and media blackouts, and becoming intimately familiar with the corrosive power of ignorance and greed, I just wanted to share these words.

God bless the grass that grows thru the crack.
They roll the concrete over it to try and keep it back.
The concrete gets tired of what it has to do,
It breaks and it buckles and the grass grows thru,
And God bless the grass.

God bless the truth that fights toward the sun,
They roll the lies over it and think that it is done.
It moves through the ground and reaches for the air,
And after a while it is growing everywhere,
And God bless the grass.

God bless the grass that grows through cement.
It's green and it's tender and it's easily bent.
But after a while it lifts up its head,
For the grass is living and the stone is dead,
And God bless the grass.

God bless the grass that's gentle and low,
Its roots they are deep and its will is to grow.
And God bless the truth, the friend of the poor,
And the wild grass growing at the poor man's door,
And God bless the grass.

Welcome friends.

God Bless the Grassroots by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1964 Schroder Music Company, renewed 1992