A blog to encourage creation of non-commercially-motivated homemade, public domain, topical, politically left protest folk songs by non-professional working-class songwriters and musicians, that express a different consciousness than that expressed by most of the commercially-motivated songs that get aired in 21st-century on corporate or foundation-sponsored or government-funded radio stations..
Wednesday, May 7, 2025
Saturday, March 22, 2025
Saturday, August 13, 2022
Friday, November 20, 2020
`A Time To Stir' Film Wins 2020 De Antonio Award
Protest Folk Magazine is pleased to announce that the winner of its Emile de Antonio Award for the Best Documentary Feature Film released in 2020 is filmmaker Paul Cronin's A Time To Stir historical documentary, about the student protests on the Upper West Side at Columbia University in April and May of 1968.
The 2020 De Antonio Award-winning documentary film can be viewed for free on Vimeo.
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| Emile de Antonio |
Saturday, April 21, 2018
`Bloody Minds' protest folk song lyrics from 1967 and 2010
lyrics
Look what I done find
I done did research
IDA exists
Laugh between your walls
Sit behind your desks
Watch your missiles fall
IDA exists.
The value-free school
Your mask we see right through
The weapons of the Pentagon
Their brains procured by you.
Godly Grayson Kirk
On the board he knits
Smokes upon his pipe
While his bombers bite
Problems he assigns:
“How to make men die?”
Professors they plan
Death for Viet Nam.
In ’56 to serve Defense
Five schools they did combine
Four years later
Columbia
It joined the bloody minds.
City slums they rot
Homeless live in lots
Atoms to destroy
They’re your little toys
Oh, they pay you well
To create a hell
Did you see the news?
Twelve children they slew.
A division
Its name Jason
In summer they study
They meet, they talk
They plan, they plot
Counter-insurgency.
Lovers they must part
Lamps they now are dark
Knowledge turned to swords
Kirk sits on the board
Schools changed into guns
For the Pentagon
Students now they learn:
How to make kids burn.
You stand in class
You spout your facts
A noble scientist
But then at night
You join the fight
You do secret research.
Wall Street banks collapse
Workers get laid-off
Laser beams command
Bombs on Afghanistan
Drones built by IDA
In Pakistan they slay
Robot war research
Makes professors rich.
In 2010, scientists again
They do space war research
With DARPA funds in secret labs
They threaten all the Earth.
Murder poor peasants
With the tools you sent
Orphan thin children
Help the junta win
Kill them with your mind
Paralyze their spines
Someday you will die
And in slime you’ll lie.
Friday, April 20, 2018
`Columbia' protest folk song lyrics from 1966
The historical protest folk song, "Columbia," was written in the Furnald Hall dormitory on Columbia University's campus in late 1966 to protest the Columbia Administration's complicity with the U.S. war machine during the Vietnam War Era.
(lyrics)
Oh, educate Columbia Pursue the truth Columbia Exalt the mind Columbia Research and find Columbia And "humanize and civilize With reason as your tool." Invite the spies Columbia The C.I.A. Columbia Give them a room Columbia To recruit spooks Columbia And "humanize and civilize With reason as your tool." Help the Navy Columbia R.O.T.C. Columbia Teach a course for Columbia "The Art of War" Columbia And "humanize and civilize With reason as your tool." Secret research Columbia You'd best not snitch Columbia At campus labs Maybe some bombs? For electronic war Design lasers And "humanize and civilize With reason as your tool."

