Posted 8 years ago on June 27, 2012, 6:44 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

A call for support from Occupiers, Friends, and Musicians from Philadelphia to New York City

The Occupy Guitarmy is spearheading #99MileMarch from Philadelphia to New York City from July 5 to July 11, 2012 in honor of Woody Guthrie’s 100th birthday (July 14, 2012) and in celebration of the National Gathering of Occupy movement.

We call on Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York musicians, social justice activists, union members, and occupy supporters to help support our action. We actively seek: daily, overnight, and long haul marchers, daily location event organizers, street medics, guitar techs, kitchen staff, live-streamers, caravan vehicles, oral historians, and general volunteers. We ask that marchers, volunteers, and on-site supporters of our action visit our website (www.99milemarch.org) to engage with us in advance. Please contact us if you plan to march with us!

For more information and details on how to get involved, visit 99milemarch.org and @99MileMarch

The Occupy Guitarmy is calling for a National Guitarmy to convene in Philadelphia for a July 4 show of solidarity in performing "This Land Is Your Land" at Independence Mall. The next day, we will embark on a 99 mile journey of song and community as they march back to New York City singing songs from the Guthrie catalog, as well as social justice favorites such as “We Shall Not Be Moved,” “Which Side Are You On?” and “El Pueblo Unido.” All songs, chords, and lyrics can be found on our website (www.occupyguitarmy.tumblr/com and 99milemarch.com)

Along the seven day journey, the Occupy Guitarmy will stop in local communities to teach and learn songs, discuss issues facing local residents, and perform with local musicians. We welcome musicians, marchers, teachers, union members, community music groups, summer camps, marching bands, rock bands, hip hop crews, and any other musical or social justice groups to join us on our daily walks and our daily stops.

We ask that each town and city we walk through make us welcome with an event, protest action, discussion, pot luck, or other community event in which we can play, learn songs, and talk with local community members about the power of music for social justice and the crisis facing our pubic school arts education.

Along the way we hope to raise awareness of the importance of music as part of our civic culture, and discuss the negative impact of the erosion of public arts education funding in the last decades. Each mile that we march we ask to have sponsored by supporters through a walk-a-thon for the K-12 school instrument donation group Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation.

We will also be collecting stories of local musicians, teachers, students, parents, and everyday folks about the role of public school music programming in their lives, about current and past budget cuts to music programs, and about feasible local, regional, and national solutions for these problems.

The Occupy Guitarmy is a leaderless brigade of instrumentalists and singers who first organized for the New York City actions of May Day. Numbering in the hundreds, assembled with guitars, ukeleles, cellos, violins, basses, noisemakers, and voices, they marched to Union Square to play on stage with progressive activist-musician Tom Morello. The guitarmy maintains an online instructional guide of chords, lyrics MP3s, and videos so that everyone can learn their set list, and encourages progressive groups and local Occupies to start their own guitarmy by downloading a specially prepared “kit” that includes music, graphics, notes on organizing, and other resources.

Once the Occupy Guitarmy begins its journey, we will feature live streaming, daily blogging, and tweeting (@99MileMarch), and actively invite media and everyday folks to share and discuss our action.