Imagine a dream where you sit in a large dark auditorium. There might be other people in the auditorium but you cannot see them or hear them. Up on stage Willie Nelson sings a song about a peaceful resolution.
The beautiful song captivates you.
Upon awakening you cannot remember anything except the words ‘a peaceful resolution’ and a deep feeling of peace.
A long time ago, before September 11, 2001, Amy Nelson dreamt of being in her Dad’s audience. There in the dark she heard Willie Nelson sing the song about a peaceful resolution. The dream meant little to Amy back then.
Now imagine Willie Nelson‘s BioWillie tour bus, the Honeysuckle Rose IV rolling across the Southern California desert April 29th, 2007, at 3:03 A.M. on the way to The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Amy had reminded her Dad about the dream and the song. She could not get the song out of her head.
Willie Nelson said, “Hey look what I did. I wrote the song!”
Amy grabbed her voice recorder and Willie sang “A Peaceful Solution” into the voice recorder.
Later that day Liz O’Garvey and Jay Greathouse received an email from Willie Nelson about “A Peaceful Solution” and an audio file. The April 29, 2007, “A Peaceful Solution” article continues to expand to this day.
Willie Nelson offers “A Peaceful Solution” for people to use in making peace videos. He also allows anyone to perform it and record it. People can even change the lyrics or add new ones.
Liz and Jay popularized the Willie Nelson Peace Research Institute website. They invite musicians and videographers to take up Willie‘s offer. Liz and Jay add links to the individual articles about them on the “A Peaceful Solution” video page.
Every article about the individual musicians and videographers includes links to the audio or video file of their version of “A Peaceful Solution” and the number of articles continues to grow.
It all started with a dream about Willie Nelson singing a song. Now many people sing it. More people sing “A Peaceful Solution” every day.
Willie Nelson offers no less than five versions of “A Peaceful Solution” himself. Other people perform “A Peaceful Solution” in their own unique style, record it and send a file to the Willie Nelson Peace Research Institute website. Both audio and video files of these performances find a new audience online.
Some people create videos using one of the “A Peaceful Solution” audio files as the soundtrack. Documentary footage, original animations and more all help spread the song and message farther.
As more people send in their versions of “A Peaceful Solution” the project continues to grow.
You can join them.
No licensing restrictions, no entry fee and no deadline applies. Just possess the willingness to record your version and send an mp3 file to us. The Willie Nelson Peace Research Institute will write an article and post your version.
Or make a video, upload it to your favorite video hosting site and send in the link. The Willie Nelson Peace Research Institute will write an article and embed the video in it.
Include an artist’s statement if you wish. Let other people know what peace means to you. Encourage more people to participate.
Share the dream. Share the song.
[...] West has submitted her version of “A Peaceful Solution,” the song written by Willie and Amy Nelson. You can see her video at [...]
[...] This webeo is based on Willie Nelson Peace Research Institute, A PEACEFUL SOLUTION project. [...]
[...] chance to record it, freely. You can see the video of Kristina Elise Fitzsimmons singing “A Peaceful Solution” at [...]
[...] Willie Nelson Peace Research Institute has posted Pappy Stu singing his a cappella version of “A Peaceful Solution,” and you can watch the video at http://WillieNelsonPri.com. Willie and Amy Nelson wrote [...]
[...] made an adorable and charming mini-documentary about one of their educational outreaches with “A Peaceful Solution” as the soundtrack. They provide an excellent example of one place to go for information beyond [...]
[...] Willie Nelson wrote Jimmy’s Road about David Zettner, a young bass player in Willie Nelson’s band, drafted and inducted into the Army during the Vietnam War. Willie used the name Jimmy in the song because he said “it was more euphonic.” [...]
[...] Blues Rock gives us “A Peaceful Solution” in his personalized blues-rock style. Here we have a musical genre that signifies both a radical [...]
[...] A Peaceful Solution Story [...]
[...] A Peaceful Solution Story [...]
[...] A Peaceful Solution Story [...]
[...] A Peaceful Solution Story [...]
[...] A Peaceful Solution Story [...]
Hello, I just finished this video using “A Peaceful Solution”. I’ll post a link to my website soon. Thanks for making a peace song that has no o licensing restrictions! The link to my video is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwa2ZYOySpg
Thank you, Forest. We look forward to featuring your video.
[...] A Peaceful Solution Story [...]
[...] A Peaceful Solution Story [...]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOs1ITZQ8oU
Gary, thanks for producing a new A Peaceful Solution video. I’ll check it out and get back to you with more info on your feature. Thanks for connecting.
Gary, this is wonderful. Thank you for your heartfelt moving version of A Peaceful Solution. You created a very peaceful mood with your mellow acoustic sound and warm vocals. We look forward to featuring you. I’ll contact you via email. Thanks again for contributing your voice to a growing chorus for peace.
[...] A Peaceful Solution Story [...]
[...] A Peaceful Solution Story [...]
[...] A Peaceful Solution Story [...]
Peaceful Solution – Egypt Version
Lyrics by Cal Jennings
It was a peaceful solution
Egypt’s peaceful revolution
Now they’ve gone
And shown us how it’s done
When the leaders get greedy
And don’t care for the needy
Time for peaceful revolution
Has come
Corporate Supreme Court judges
Won’t hear us
So they’d better fear us
Or we’ll rise up and take back our land
With a peaceful solution
A peace revolution
We’ll take back America
Right On Cal! Now we can all walk like Egyptians!
All governments exist only with the consent of the governed. That consent does not have to be “withdrawn” via unlawful force at-arms or even via the ballot box.
Indeed, it is most-effectively withdrawn when the citizens refuse to go to work!
The Beast of Government exists on tax revenues. ALL governments share this fundamental reality. ALL governments fail when the economic capacity to tax is destroyed. ALL citizens give their consent to their government each and every day by performing economic acts and thereby exposing that activity to taxation.
That taxation forms the essence of the functional capacity to govern. Period.
The people in all nations, at all times, reserve the right and the ability, through peaceful and lawful action, to destroy any government should it fail to comply with their demands and act in a sufficiently-onerous manner, and a minority of the population is all it requires to effect this change.
1.) The Soviet Union fell via this mechanism,
2.) East Germany fell via this mechanism, and now
3.) Egypt has fallen via this mechanism.
No blood and no lawlessness were required. The Egyptians walked.
In fact, it was the pro-government goons that were engaged in violence in an attempt to goad the people into acts that they could then use to “justify” the excessive use of force. The government gassed the protesters. The government was the one shooting people; rifles are prohibited from private ownership in Egypt. The government was, as best we can determine, the one raining Molotov cocktails on the protesters. But the government failed to incite the protesters to violence, who instead maintained their right to starve the government by refusing to provide it with the economic activity it needed to survive.
All persons in all nations should be aware of the fundamental fact that their government, no matter how oppressive, no matter how ugly, no matter how allegedly-free or representative (or not) exists only because you rise from your bed each day and go to work.
The day you stop, along with a sizable fraction of your neighbors and friends, and instead wave signs and demand change, thereby shutting down the engine of commerce is the day you remove through peaceful and lawful means the fuel that the government requires to operate.
Our “protests” in Washington and elsewhere fail to provide results because the “or else” has not been provided along with the protest. We come, we wave signs, and the next day we go home and go to work. If instead any sizable fraction of the population that is, for instance, opposed to ObamaCare or Bankster Theft were to appear, wave signs, and go on strike until and unless the change demanded was made.
The pundits are all saying this was a “military coup less the shooting.” Baloney. This was a popular uprising conducted via economic boycott and it brought down a dictatorial government without violating the law.
Now we see what comes next for Egypt.
We now have a blueprint to toss the putative head of a nation without firing a single shot or drawing a drop of blood.
For those in The United States or other western nations who claim that we are inexorably on a path toward civil disorder or even civil war due to the outrageous looting of our nations that have been conducted by financial interests with the full consent and complicity of our governments, I simply point to Egypt.
There is another path that is peaceful, entirely lawful, and has just been proved to have efficacy in yet another nation that many said would never lose its Dictator without violence.
Three times the pundits have said this, and three times they have been wrong.
Thank you for the great reply, Mek!
Cal
Thanks for watching!
Of course, I did not mention Sit-ins that were first widely employed by Mohandas Gandhi in South African strikes and later the Indian independence movement, and were later expanded on by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and others during the American Civil Rights Movement. In the 1960s, students used this method of protest during the student movements, such as the protests in Germany. The Young Lords in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood used it successfully for a whole week to win community demands for low income housing investment at the Mckormick Theological Seminary.
The sit-down strike was the precursor to the sit-in. And the grand-daddy is the General Strike.
Some in the labor movement hope to mount a “peaceful revolution” by organizing enough strikers to completely paralyse the state and corporate apparatus. With this goal achieved, the workers would be able to re-organize society along radically different lines. This philosophy, known as syndicalism, enjoyed modest support amongst the radical sections of the labor movement in the late nineteenth and early 20th century.
The United States, Britain, and Australia had this trend culminate in the growth of the Industrial Workers of the World. General strikes were frequent in Spain during the early 20th century, where revolutionary syndicalism was most popular.
The largest general strike that ever stopped the economy of an advanced industrial country – and the first general wildcat strike in history – was May 1968 in France. The prolonged strike involved eleven million workers for two weeks in a row, and its impact was such that it almost caused the collapse of the de Gaulle government.
Way before that the Belgian general strike for universal suffrage in 1893 succeeded.
All peaceful. On the strikers part, at least.
Sit-ins were the most popular form of protest in Houston, TX when I was in high school. They generally just dragged the protesters to jail for those instead of inflicting the severe beatings they were sometimes known for.
I was very pleased that you understood the context of what I was saying with my song lyrics. It’s nice to get in intelligent, informed reply. Thank you again.
Cal
Be-ins were my favorite.
The ‘Human Be-In’ was later recalled by Allen Cohen as a necessary meld that brought together philosophically opposed factions of the current San Francisco-based counterculture: on one side, the Berkeley radicals, who were tending toward increased militancy in response to the U.S. government’s Vietnam war policies, and, on the other side, the rather non-political Haight-Ashbury hippies, who urged peaceful protest. Their means were drastically different, but they held many of the same goals.
I liked the Teach-ins, too. I always seemed to learn more with an alternative curriculum.
The comment about the ‘Human Be-ins’ reminds me about Judi Bari’s outreach to the loggers and mill workers in the 1990s. IMHO, it was this activity bringing together everyone hurt by corporate logging that made Redwood Summer 1992 so effective.
A Peaceful Solution – From Egypt to America (New Words)
lyrics by Cal Jennings
It was a peaceful solution
Egypt’s peaceful revolution
Egypt went and showed us how it’s done
Then it spread to Wisconsin
Now that we got the facts in
Time to prove The People number one
Corporate Supreme Court judges… should hear us
And they’d better fear us
‘Cause the people want to take back their land
With a peaceful solution
A peace revolution
That’s spreadin’ ‘cross America’
(Solo & Chant)
Taxpayers bailed ‘em out
They’re foreclosing, scaling back
Sending all our jobs overseas
They’re taking from the needy
And giving to the greedy
Now we’re gonna’ bring ‘em to their knees
Taxpayers bailed ‘em out
They’re foreclosing, scaling back
Sending all our jobs overseas
They’re taking from the needy
And giving to the greedy
Now we’re gonna’ bring ‘em to their knees
(End chant and solo)
Now we won’t be a-needin’
The Tea Party’s misleadin’
Time to take back America
Corporate profits are soarin’
But they’re still ignorin’
Time to take back America
Corporate Supreme Court judges… should hear us
And they’d better fear us
‘Cause the people want to take back their land
With a peaceful solution
A peace revolution
We’ll take back America
Now let’s take back America
(I haven’t recorded this yet. I’m still working on the music portion and am considering adding some more orchestration.)
Cal, this is fabulous! U have my email, I will watch 4 it.
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[...] “A Peaceful Solution” by Willie Nelson w/thanks to the Willie Nelson Peace Research Institute [...]
For Peaceful Solutions….for whatever reason we are am here…Let us be here vibrating in the highest light…that we may share that love with all that we touch and all that we may. Where there is pain..Let us bring love…Where there is repression…Let us bring love…Where there is any need…let use bring love. And with that love…great laughter & joy…To dance with the wind and the rain. To take all the hands that are also our own, and breathing with our one breath..Heal & Love all.
Remember it is fact…It only takes the square root of 1% of the population of any area to change it with your thoughts. Music is thought, and much more.