remember these scenes really well and we wonder why it is they don’t seem to be able to be replicated today. They were important then. They are important now.
If we had a media that would actually cover it, maybe it would encourage more to stand up and hit the streets. Or maybe it was just the draft then that isn’t here now. Or maybe I just don’t have any idea why.
I miss John Lennon:
It is my greatest desire and intent that someday soon we will Give peace a chance.
Love and hugs to you all.
Sing it with me now and everyday until we stop this madness.
I can hear you. . .you all sound great!
I organized a peace vigil at my church not too long ago. The others were a bunch of Republican right wingers who had never done any social activism before, but after years of war and three tours of duty by the husband of one of the women, they were eager to participate. At the end I told them we’d sing the traditional song of such activities: We shall overcome.
They looked at me blankly. Had no clue of the song. I was taken aback. How could someone be an American and not know that song?
So I told them where to find it in the hymnal (yes, it’s there) and we’d sing it.
But we don’t know the music, several said. We’ll follow his lead, someone added.
Believe me, I replied to them, after you listen to me lead you through this you still won’t know the music.
I had a similar experience while working as a musician for the local Episcopal church a few years back. These were social-justice aware folks — they elected Gene Robinson as Bishop, and were daily involved in other peace-and-justice work. Yet when I suggested “We Shall Overcome” for a Martin Luther King Day service, no one in the choir knew it! I taught them that and also “Down By The Riverside”. I am just astonished at how few people seem to know or recall these songs — time to change that!
Seems unbelievable that people don’t know THAT song. . .wow. . .I guess I’ve not ever had occasion to run into any that don’t know it. Pretty amazing. I think they should make “Eyes On The Prize” mandatory watching for all kids in their history classes. How else can they possibly know or understand what went on during the MLK, jr days? The days of civil rights won at very great cost and by tremendous courage and determination.
Just wow.
Hugs
Shirl
I guess this shows exactly how the dumbing down of the generations following the Civil Rights era is being played out-what Summer of Love, what civil rights..you mean we ain’t always had em…We shall overcome-overcome what?..Viet Nam, just names on a hunk of granite..Mrs. vs Ms…history, I guess we don’t need no stinkin history as long as we can shop at Wal-Mart..Imagine all the people, yeah just imagine all the people-can we overcome if we listen to the dreamers….
Stunningly right on the money.
Love ya Choc
Thanks Shirl..sometimes I do manage to get out my mostly jumbled and chaotic thoughts down onto paper..it’s nice when other people get it..and lots of love and hugs back to you.
which is a bit-maybe a lot off topic but every time I hear Tom Brokaw talk about the ‘Greatest Generation’-the people who won WW11 I take offense-no I’m not trying to take anything away from that generation but the Civil Rights era/the hippie/anti-war peaceniks had a lot of ‘Great’ people too..trying to elevate any era as Brokaw did to me was just more cause for dividing people into categories..I’m better than you and so on…bullshit.
Great story Carnacki. It is quite amazing how little so many seem to know these days about such important parts of our past.
Has it always been so? Maybe you and I and some of the others here are just weird cases. Or maybe these things don’t seem to be important to very many in the 2000’s.
I feel like I’m on the wrong planet some days. . .well, most days.
Love ya guy
Hugs
Shirl
Thanks, shirlstars.
Smiling through my tears. Maybe there is hope.
Oh, there is always HOPE. I see it every day in some way or another, it’s there just waiting for all of us to reach out and grab a hold of it. It just seems like we need more “grabbers” and less “watchers.”
Love ya
Hugs
Shirl
I would never try to be an apologist for our current country’s situation with regards to this war – but I will say a couple of things:
First of all – the people spoke loud and clear last November. It was at the ballot box and not in the streets, but still…it was loud and clear. As Andrew Bacevich (Viet Nam Vet and Iraq War Critic whose only son was recently killed in Iraq) said recently:
What kind of democracy is this, when the people do speak; and the people’s voice is unambiguous, and nothing happens?
Secondly, I remember being so disappointed in the lack of rebellion and protest in this generation of young people a few years ago – I work with a whole lot of 20-somethings. And then I thought about the different ways we grew up. I grew up hearing things like:
Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
I have a dream.
Their ealiest memories are of the lies of Watergate/Viet Nam, church scandals, even the corruption of major non-profits like Red Cross (during the initial outbreak of AIDS) and United Way of America. I wonder what kind of hope and vision is possible when, in your formative years you learn that every major institution you know of is corrupt.
I’m not saying this wasn’t true when I grew up – we just didn’t know it and so we continued to believe that people working together could change things. I’m afraid that too many of our young people have lost that vision about the efficacy of collective action so that even when they do set out to try to make the world better, its small scale and individual actions they are drawn to.
I think your thoughts have great merit. It just seems odd to me, but then most everything these days seems odd to me. . . .maybe I spend too much time in the stars. . .LOL!
Thanks for your insights, Nanc.
Hugs and loves
Shirl
Can you just IMAGINE??????? Thanks Shirl. Great point made. hugs back to ya.
I can IMAGINE!
Sometimes those scenes seem like only yesterday and sometimes from another life in a different dimension.
What this administration has done is to defer and obscure the sights, sounds and costs of war with the complicity of big biz, the congress and the MSM. As we’ve all heard, there is no shared sacrifice. The legacy of this war will become apparent somewhere down the road for others to deal with and it won’t be pretty. Old Rome comes to mind. Thanks for the remembrance, shirl.
Thanks for remembering along with me. . .and I so know what you mean, only yesterday, or in a galaxy far far away. . .
Love ya and
Hugs
Shirl
Hi Shirl.
Reporters had kids then who faced being drafted. Big difference today.
I think you’re right about that Steven.
Hugs
Shirl
why we sit like sheep and watch our country and the values – freedom (as embodied by the bill of rights), respect for each other, hope, compassion all get trashed. And we don’t seem to even whimper out loud. Maybe it is because the churches teach sheepdom? Maybe it is the media that encapsulates sheepdom? Maybe it is the cocooning we have done staying at home with the cable and internets? Maybe it is the wedginess of politics that never really speaks truth? Maybe it is because we no longer know that we, too, can be heroes everyday. We do not need a caped crusader. We do not need green berets. We just need to grit our teeth and try something even if it is wrong!
Cindy Sheehan is showing us how to be a hero. Al Gore is showing us how. But we don’t have to be former vp or bereaved mom, we just have to find a good outlet for our outrage. (And find someway to communicate the outrage to others in a coherent way.)
I agree with your sentiments. It seems that most in our society these days are not very ACTION oriented. Maybe we all spend too much time at keyboards and LCD screens.
Thanks Grandma Jo
Hugs and loves
Shirl
to you Shirl.
Great diary!
Hi Shirl, I have days(almost all days) where I wonder where the passion in this country has gone…passion to do the right thing, passion to help make our little part of the world and the bigger world a better place, passion to feel as john edwards says-it’s time to be patriotic about something besides war, passion to speak out even if you know you’ll be laughed at or worse, passion to march, passion to riot in the streets if need be, passion to demand that people from New Orleans and other places have the right to go home and live their lives in a new and better city, passion to impeach…….
Instead we have miasma of lies from our ‘leaders’, lies from the 4th Estate enabling them, the absolute dominance of the Falwells, Dobsons and the right wing jesus freaks who preach it’s our duty to basically shut the fuck up and not question any authority-patriarchal authority-I sometimes wonder why more of us aren’t completely brainwashed and brain dead…I think people have lost the ability to hope?……
Another song I’d forgotten about until I watched ‘Beyond the Sea’ with Kevin Spacey playing Bobby Darin was Darin’s ‘Freedom Song’…that was/is a great song. Very simple but powerful.
Yeah now it’s ask not what you can do for your country but hey..’go shopping’.
You beautifully stated exactly what I am feeling these days, thanks CI.
Hugs
Shirl