This land is your land, this land is my land,
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters,
This land was made for you and me.

These lines are the refrain of Woody Guthrie’s folk song “This Land Is Your Land,” written in 1940 amid the late-Depression era and the social dislocations Guthrie witnessed while traveling with migrants and working people. Guthrie composed it partly as a response to the ubiquity of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” whose optimistic patriotism he felt ignored poverty and inequality. The song circulated informally for years before being published and widely recorded; it later became a staple of American folk and civic culture. Although often sung as a unifying patriotic anthem, Guthrie also wrote additional verses (sometimes omitted) that sharpen its social critique.

The refrain asserts a democratic, collective claim to the nation: the land belongs to “you and me,” not to a narrow elite. By naming a sweep of iconic American landscapes—from California to New York, redwoods to Gulf Stream—Guthrie evokes a shared geographic imagination that can bind diverse listeners. Yet the simplicity is strategic: it can be heard as inclusive patriotism, but in the fuller song it also presses a moral argument about economic justice and access to public space. The repeated “your…my” collapses private ownership into common belonging, turning a travelogue of scenery into a statement of civic rights and mutual responsibility.

1) “This land is your land, this land is my land / From California to the New York Island / From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters / This land was made for you and me.”
2) “This land is your land, this land is my land / From California to the New York Island / From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters / God blessed America for me.”