In 1950, when Arlo was three years old, the Guthrie family moved into the 2,253-unit Beach Haven Apartment complex in Brooklyn. Beach Haven was built by Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump. It quickly became shockingly clear to Woody Guthrie, whose iconic Americana folk music championed equality and social justice, that Fred Trump was a bigot.
Beach Haven barred African-Americans from renting. The discovery was particularly painful for Woody Guthrie; in 1940 he had penned his signature song, "This Land Is Your land," to celebrate inclusiveness, an America for everyone.
Guthrie's outrage at Fred Trump's racist renting policy prompted him to write a scathing poem that he turned into a song, Old Man Trump. The lost poem was recently discovered by Will Kaufman, professor of American literature and culture at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK, while he was researching the Woody Guthrie archives in Tulsa, Oklahoma for a book about Guthrie. The poem opens with these words:
"I suppose that Old Man Trump knows
just how much racial hate
He stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed that color line
Here at his Beach Haven family project"
During the 2016 presidential campaign several performers recorded adaptations of Woodie Guthrie's feisty lyrics about Fred Trump with added words about Donald Trump. A stinging example is "Ain't Got No Home - The Ballad of Old Man Trump"--performed by the New Ash Grove Players.
In 1973, the U.S. government charged Fred Trump, Donald Trump, and the Trump organization with violation of the Fair Housing Act. For their defense the Trumps hired Senator Joseph McCarthy's attorney Roy Cohn, who entered a countersuit against the government (big surprise, Trumps suing those who threaten or expose them). Later a judge threw out the countersuit claim calling it "a waste of paper ," The Trumps then signed a consent agreement to desegregate, but without an admission of guilt,
Donald Trump and Arlo Guthrie, sons of strong-minded men, carried on their fathers' ideologies. Arlo's music and his activism promote social justice just as Woody's did. The Great Barrington church , purchased by Arlo in 1991 serves as a community center dedicated "to cultivate a deeper awareness of culture, humanity and the environment of which we are all a part."
And Trump? His record speaks for itself: his propensity for stiffing contractors , suing adversaries, and dishing out racial and ethnic prejudice, including a report that one of his Atlantic City casinos took black employees off the floor when Donald Trump arrived; in another instance his Trump Plaza casino was charged with racism and fined $200,000 by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission for removing black employees from working around one of the casino's white mob related high rollers. In his book Trumped! The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump John O'Donnell, a past president and chief operating officer of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, reports some eyebrow raising racist statements overheard from Donald Trump such as: " I've got black accountants at Trump Castle and at Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day."
Arlo Guthrie and Donald Trump verify the cliche': The apple doesn't fall from the tree. They also illustrate that different trees can produce radically different apples, some delicious and others---------? (Fill in the blank)
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