Badly Bent in Beach Haven

Back in January of 2016, a song Woody wrote in 1950 about his landlord “old man” Fred Trump made the news. This weekend, the Beach Haven apartments where Woody lived were the subject of another New York Times investigation. It’s the story of yet another rent-raising, tax-dodging Trump family scam,…

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Woody’s “Old Man Trump” Recorded by Harvey, DiFranco, Morello

Ryan Harvey, Ani DiFranco and Tom Morello have collaborated on a recording of Woody Guthrie’s “Old Man Trump.” I wrote about “Old Man Trump” and the bigotry it denounces here, back in January; but I didn’t know about this recording until yesterday, when my friend David Goddy sent along an…

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Bloodpot and Melting Pot: Woody Guthrie and “Old Man Trump”

In 1950, Woody Guthrie leased an apartment from Donald Trump’s father, Fred, in the Beach Haven complex, near Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. As Woody’s biographer Will Kaufman writes in an article published today on The Conversation, it didn’t take too long before Woody “was already lamenting the bigotry that pervaded his new, lily-white…

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