When George Carlin was just starting out, he used do a skit called the Hippy Dippy Weatherman. It was a brilliant riff on the hippy movement, especially when he would get caught up in the Highs that seemed to always be hovering over a part of the country, particularly California.
I was too young to be a hippy. I missed the whole movement by about five to seven years. But I was old enough to follow the whole hippy movement, the significance of Woodstock, the protests against the war and the Establishment, the emergence of the counterculture and the tremendous power of people to change the way our country and our world works.
I was reminded of all this again watching a special on Peter, Paul and Mary over the weekend. They showed them singing at the Martin Luther King rally in Washington D.C. A quarter million people gathered in peace, believing they could change the world.
As I listened to the songs they sang, We Shall Overcome, The Times They Are a Changin’ and Blowin’ in the Wind, I thought about the amazing times back then, when every event had the power to be of historical significance.
Of course, no one at the time knew this, as they were just doing what they thought was right. It certainly wasn’t always popular. Many of the activities – from burning ROTC buildings on college campuses to throwing molotov cocktails at the police – were outright anarchy.
Still, who could forget the 1968 Democratic Convention where thousands of protesters chanted “The Whole World’s Watching,” shortly after we lost Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King to madmen.
It seemed as if the whole world as we knew it was about to come crumbling down around us. The Establishment was shaking in their boots as the onslaught of civil unrest filled the streets, led in large part by the counterculture hippy movement.
As a young boy, I found this ability of the average person to change society was exhilarating. I couldn’t wait to grow up and enjoy the benefits of a world where no child had to go hungry at night, where there was no war, where every person enjoyed equal rights under the law and where hatred was just a dim memory.
Well, I’m still waiting.
As I watched the protests on the documentary about PP&M, I couldn’t help but fast forward to the present. The OCCUPY movement is very much reminiscent of these times. It certainly became obvious when the cop at the University of California at Davis brazenly sprayed peaceful demonstrators with pepper spray at point blank range. It reminded me of the police overreactions in the 1960s with their billy clubs and water cannons.
The really sad thing is, the people in power now were the hippies of the 1960s. They have become the Establishment – they protect the status quo of the banks and Wall Streets raping the average American in pursuit of the almighty dollar. They sold out their ideals for the corner office and the posh McMansion where they can hide from the rest of the world, toasting their fellow former hippies who have also trod on the backs of their workers to enjoy 18 holes at a golf course that still discriminates, albeit, quietly.
I find this all totally at odds with my own understanding of the world. As a journalism major and writer, I will defend the First Amendment to the death.
If you don’t recall exactly what the amendment is, here it is verbatim:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
And here I see every day on television the very subjugation of these rights. Protestors in nearly every part of our country are being suppressed in their right to peaceably assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Sadly, those who used to be the loudest protectors of our rights to free speech and assembly were members of the media. Unfortunately, they are all owned by large corporations these days, so they tilt their messages in the wind of the direction of stockholder interests, not the interests of the public.
Worse, there are factions who wish to demonize these protests as socialist, communist, anarchy, and my favorite un-American… the name calling goes on. They want us to believe that these people must be protected from themselves, calling actions to shut them down in the interest of public safety and sanitation.
What a load of crap! And the sad part is that there are people in this country who are falling for this line of bullshit!
I can think of nothing more American than raising our voices against injustice. We have a Congress that acts in its own interests. We have corporations who have lost their soul and will do anything to maximize their return on their investment. They don’t give a crap about our country or what is good for it. But they will take every opportunity to squash dissension in the guise of protecting us from these whackos. Well, weren’t those in the anti-war movement – the peaceniks – once the whackos.
And now, in their old age, they are perhaps bitter about the way their own lives turned out. Through their civil disobedience they were able to end a war and help advance the rights of their fellow man through the civil rights and equal rights movements.
How cool is that? But I guess they were a one-trick pony. And now that others have come along who want to change the status quo, they are the most staunch defenders of it. Directly and indirectly, it is the world their generation created. For better or worse, all the corporate greed and virulent politics are their making. They are the Congressmen who won’t compromise and the tycoons who will squeeze every dime out of you and then gleefully cast you aside in a massive layoff rather than pull another penny from their own pockets.
I leave you with the words of Bob Dylan, as they are probably more true today than they were back then:
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.
The times they are indeed a changin’ – get out of the way or get run over by the tide of public opinion.
Out on the Treasure Coast, dusting off my protest signs,
– Robb