Morello Receives Woody Guthrie Prize

October 30, 2024

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Tom Morello of Local 47 (Los Angeles, CA) was awarded the 2024 Woody Guthrie Prize for his longstanding commitment to social justice and human rights.

For nine years, the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has awarded the prize to artists who exemplify Guthrie’s spirit and work by speaking for the less fortunate through music, film, literature, or other art forms.

If you ask Morello where the first punk artist was born, the answer won’t be New York or London—it’ll be Oklahoma. “Woody was a fearless agitator, a six-string instigator, and a poetic truth-teller. He was the original punk rocker whose life, music, art, and lyrics were beacons of justice, liberation, and respite for the downtrodden and the oppressed,” Morello says.

Morello, both solo and with the band Rage Against the Machine, is known for taking part in protests for workers’ rights, the environment, and other social issues. He says that if not for Guthrie, political music like his wouldn’t exist.

“Woody’s songs look an unjust world square in the eye, slice it apart with satire, dismantle it with rage, and then drop a mighty sing-along chorus meant to raise the roof of a union hall or a holding cell,” says Morello.

Guthrie’s granddaughter Anna Canoni led the crowd in her grandfather’s most famous song, “This Land Is Your Land,” to greet Morello at the ceremony. Guthrie wrote the song in 1940 in response to “God Bless America,” which he felt was overplayed on the radio.

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