Burnin
1973 | Regae
“You can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all the time. -- So now we see the light, we gonna stand up for our rights!”
Trivia
- This was the last song Marley ever performed on stage, on 23 September 1980 at the Stanley Theater, now the Benedum Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
- Get Up, Stand up was written by Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.
- The song was re-recorded and re-released by the three of The Wailers on their own solo releases. Each with different arrangements and approaches to the third verse.
THE HOT TAKES
Luke Tatum
Stand up for your right. Don't give up the fight. What right? It's not spelled out explicitly here, but Bob Marley was writing about Haiti. The first thing that comes to my mind when considering Haiti is the absurdly-named Operation Uphold Democracy, but that happened in the mid-nineties. Haiti was influenced much earlier by a US occupation in and around World War I. Yes, it's true: Woodrow Wilson messed up a lot of places. Invasion, occupation, and transfer of power. All in a day's work for our fearless leaders, eh? So I like to think this is a song about standing up for the right of self-determination. We would never allow a foreign power to come in, set up military bases, and switch our government officials. But when you're the morally-unassailable United States, callous phrases like "all options are on the table,"--which includes war crimes!--can be uttered casually, and repeated by the media without batting an eyelash.
Sherry Voluntary
This song is a sort of human fight song against all oppression. The anthem of the downtrodden, it encourages people to take action to protect their rights. I often hear people in their frustration talk about standing up to State aggression with violent force, and while I agree that it might be justified, I don't agree that it’s the best way to stand up for your rights. I hope that day never comes because it would most likely it would be devastating to the actual cause of freedom at this point. There are so few of us libertarian types, that if we didn't have a much bigger group of allies, we'd just be obliterated, and the people we could possibly be allies with would probably want to reinstate the kind of State system we abhor. So, to me, the best way we can stand up right now is to have conversations online and in our communities to win hearts and minds. It may be frustrating at times, but the peaceful option is by far the best option.
Nicky P
One of the most insidious things that powerful groups do to control minorities is work to sow division. If we keep people fighting long enough they won't notice the chains you put around them til they're too tight. Coin-tel-pro is a tactic employed throughout the history of the US to great benefit to power. Within the liberty movement there are definitely characters that if they're not working for the state certainly you can't tell the difference with the amount of dissent & distrust they sow. I often wonder if Ron Paul flew too close to the sun and they went out of their way to create discord within the group. If I was in power and desired to keep it I know I would. One of my big soap boxes is to be accepting of wherever people are on the spectrum and try and guide them where possible. Some ancaps are so ancap that they have to be opposition. Some praggies certainly have motives outside of liberty as well. No one is free from this suspicion so all we can do is spread the ideas and work to de-escalate the voices that would keep us divided. We all want peace and prosperity, lets focus on the peace within our own clique first and show them how the world can be.