In olden times wandering minstrels and religious mendicant undertook voluntary homelessness and did so in a time when it was considered a duty to give food and to provide shelter to the poor. In Asian religions it was meritorious to give to the destitute. In European monasteries and churches wealth was redistributed in times of great need to the impoverished and to the sick, but despite their good intentions great disparities in wealth were the norm rather than the exception. America came to represent the new hope of Europe and the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” who arrived by the hundreds of thousands.

Unfortunately in a matter of only a few generations the causes of ancestral homelessness have been forgotten. As a result we live in an era that has seen a fourfold increase in homelessness over the past 30 years and on a continent that is the wealthiest in the history of the world. Why then are there such disparities in wealth in a democracy such as ours?

Not long ago in the Great Depression and during the Dust Bowl times we had wandering minstrel poets who asked such questions by way of their music. Woody Guthrie was a well-known figure during the 1930s and ’40s.

Guthrie wrote with great feeling about America and the hard times it was passing through. In the song “This Land is Your Land” he wrote: “One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple / By the relief office I saw my people / As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering / If God blessed America for you and me.”

In another song called “The Great Historical Bum” he wrote, “I better quit my talkin now; I told you all I know / But please remember partner, wherever you may go / That people are building a peaceful world, and when the job is done / That’ll be the

biggest thing that man has ever done.”

In yet another song he wrote: “I ain’t got no home, I’m just a roamin round / Just a wanderin worker, I go from town to town / And the police make it hard wherever I may go / And I ain’t got no home in thisworld anymore.”

His songs spoke for the innumerable homeless prior to World War II as well as those who understood that the causes resulting from economic and agricultural conditions far transcended any individual failure.

Though Guthrie settled down briefly in Texas and New York City he left the “sissified cities” and went on his hobo ways because he did not like to be comfortable when so many of the dispossessed weren’t. Identifying deeply with rural life he wrote: “Take off your shoes and pray/the ground you walk is holy ground / Every spot on earth I traipse around / Every spot I walk is holy ground / Every little inch is holy ground / Every grain of dirt is holy ground.”

From this profound connection to the earth Guthrie’s mood could shift quickly to lacerating the uncaring and those who thought negatively of the homeless, and in one song called “Mean Thinkin Blues” he adopted the attitude of a thoroughly mean person: “I hate everybody don’t think like me / I’d rather see you dead than see you [set] free / Rather see you starved than see you [get] work / I’m readin all the books to learn how to hurt / [And bring you] daily misery and spread [more] disease / Keeping you without no vote / [And] without no union [too] / I hurt when I see you get along well / I’d ten times rather see you in the fires of hell / I sprouted a six inch stinger in the middle of my tail / And growed horns and cut em off so as I could fool you.”

Sixty years later this lyric is still just as compelling in its satire on those who have disparate wealth and those who justify legislation denying funds to treatment centers, affordable housing programs and out-patient clinics for the mentally ill. If Guthrie were alive today he would still be writing as furiously against those who divert money from domestic programs to perpetual wars for scarce resources rather than into programs that could provide a fairer and more equitable society.

Through the Depression and World War II, Guthrie wrote defiantly against all forms of fascism that prevailed in the world and even went so far as to write on the side of his

guitar “This machine kills fascists.” His machine was music and he believed his songs could change the world.

Among the bards of ancient Ireland it was believed that the satire of the poet could raise boils on the public faces of the mean-spirited and the ungenerous. Guthrie tried to raise boils on the faces of an indifferent public.

In the end, Woody Guthrie turned from bitterness to the celebration of peace when he wrote: “My peace is all I’ve got and all I’ve ever known / My peace is worth a thousand times more than anything I own / I pass my peace around across hands of every hue / I guess my peace is just about all I’ve got to give to you.”

Hugh Curran was co-director of a Down East homeless shelter for five years. He now teaches in the Peace Studies Program at the University of Maine in Orono. A slightly shorter version of this article was recorded for broadcasting on WERU Radio and for the “Homelessness Marathon,” which will be taking place on Feb 15-16.