Connie Carter, AWTT Director of Education offers these thoughts.

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Believe your eyes, believe your eyes, and not the eyes of those who would deceive you – believe your eyes!

Hold out your hands, hold out your hands, across the land to neighbors who are frightened – hold out your hands!

Come move your feet, come move your feet, take to the streets and march against injustice – come, move your feet!

Chorus

Here we stand, together we are strong!

Rise up and let the whole world know

That all God’s children here belong.

Believe your heart, believe your heart, it’s torn apart because you love so deeply – believe your heart!

Lift up your voice, lift up your voice, you have no choice so make it loud and mighty – lift up your voice!

Believe Your Eyes was a brand-new song written the weekend of January 24th & 25th, 2026 by Thomas Keesecker, a long time composer and church musician. Congregations across the country were asked to sing it on February 1st as part of a musical collective witness. My church in Orono, Maine, was one of those congregations.  Every Sunday we sing beautiful hymns with meaningful lyrics, but this Sunday was different.  The idea that we were singing with hundreds, maybe thousands of others, sending the same message brought tears to my eyes after the first “Believe your eyes.”

And then I immediately thought about a conversation I had had with Americans Who Tell the Truth’s portrait subject David Rovics about the power of music at protests and rallies – the idea that music touches our hearts and our minds simultaneously.  It makes us feel united in ways that maybe standing and holding a sign, calling our representatives and senators, writing this blog post don’t quite do. In my conversation with him in early 2025, he bemoaned the fact that protests in the U.S. are void of music – something that made the protests of the 60s feel very different and have an energy that moved us all toward change. 

Good news, David!  I think that music is returning – not just in this one example of churches uniting in song but in groups around our country who are coming together to protest AND to sing! Will this make a difference? I have hope that it will give energy, hope, a bit of light to what we all need to mount a movement towards truth, justice, change.  We need not only Bad Bunny, but we need Matt Watroba who brings a community together to sing weekly at his local library in Michigan.  We need Lucas Richman, Bangor Symphony Orchestra director who composed Symphony: This Will Be Our Reply for orchestra and chorus, a work inspired by composer Leonard Bernstien’s words: “This will be our reply to violence.” We need all of us!

We need to remember other AWTT portrait subjects – Pete Seeger, Noel Paul Stookey, Sandy O, Pat Humphries,  John Alston, Con Fullam, Reggie Harris, Kim Harris, Bruce “Utah” Phillips, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Woody Guthrie.  And maybe it’s time to make the last three verses of Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land as well known as the first one:

As I went walking I saw a sign there,

And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”

But on the other side it didn’t say nothing

That side was made for you and me.

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

This land was made for you & me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,

As I go walking that freedom highway;

Nobody living can ever make me turn back

This land was made for you and me. 

So, do this – look at their portraits, read their stories, but most of all, listen to their music! We need them all right now, but mostly we need you to find a song, sing it at the top of your lungs, join with others, keep hope alive, move us toward justice, let your little light shine, and, as the lyrics of one song I recently sang say, “This is what democracy looks like!”