Bryan Boone: Hippies

  What happened? A couple of nights ago I was watching an infomercial for Time Life’s Summer of Love CD collection. I watched as Tommy James of Tommy James and the Shondells was describing the summer of 1967 when the beginnings of a counterculture known as the Hippie movement started in a district of San Francisco known as Haight Ashbury. This movement rapidly became a nationwide phenomenon that spread to Canada and Europe before it died down somewhere around the mid 70’s.

  Hippies opposed war, they believed in love, peace, hope and championed music icons like John Lennon, Janice Joplin, Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia; most Hippies were musicians themselves and carried a “make love not war” banner everywhere they went. In August of 1969 an event that has been dubbed by Rolling Stone as “the most famous event in rock history” took place, Woodstock. On a large farm in Bethel, NY an event that had hoped to get at least 50,000 in attendance, culminated in crowds in excess of 500,000 and an event where tickets became irrelevant. The fences to the event were never completed and soon became overrun by people attending; the announcement was made “it’s a free concert now,” as Hippies began to pour in. There was so many of them then, united in their message as well as their loyalty to the planet and the human race.

  Every time I hear songs from that era I get homesick for a time and place that I never had the pleasure of knowing. A time that was among the greatest moments in our history that people like me can only dream of having experienced. The average age of attendance of someone at Woodstock in 1969 was 22.

  Move forward in time 40 years, and another group has managed to grab the headlines in our daily newspapers, The Tea Party. They’re older, angrier and louder than the Hippies of the 60’s and 70’s. The Tea Baggers with an average age of 64 years old today are the same people that were 22 years old during Woodstock. What happened to them? The Tea Partiers are not advocates of peace, they don’t teach love or hope but rather hate, racism and bigotry. They champion war and the oppressive practices of the free market known as corporate America.

  Don McLean wrote and sang a song that is as entrenched into our culture and our history as the pledge of allegiance, a song called American Pie. This song tells of how America changed after February 3, 1959, a day he describes as “the day the music died.” I have to agree with Mr. McLean that a lot changed following the death of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. Richardson Jr., but I don’t think that it marks a time when the music died. I believe that since then not only has the music lived on, but has gotten louder as its message has become more necessary for everyone who will listen.

  As I sit here with a tear in my eye listening to a Beatles classic like “A little help from my friends” and the legendary John Lennon solo “Imagine” I’m writing these words with much humility. I don’t know what happened to America, I don’t know what became of the Hippies of the 60’s and 70’s and I don’t have an explanation for the motivation and hate of the Tea Baggers. What I do have, is a love for people that transcends how I feel about anything or any place. We have to find that spirit that existed then and try to appeal to it once again.

  I truly feel like it’s our time and that we can make a difference moving forward. There’s a revolution ready to take place in the land of the free and it’s not what’s falsely advertised by politicians and corporations, it’s a true revolution that will help those whp can’t help themselves and be a voice for those that can’t speak up. There’s a movement of true liberals ready to move forward. Liberals ready to silence the corporations and make rulings like citizens united irrelevant. We can and will make a difference.

  I was born in 1973 so I only got to hear about the summer of love and the powerful message behind the Hippie movement. I spoke with one of my former school teachers that was a Hippie and part of the peace movement of the ‘60’s and her response was very helpful in showing me a clearer picture of how the Tea Party managed to come from that generation. Her description of the divisions in America then sounds like the main problems today - people want everybody to act like them and they feel like they have an exclusive claim to what it means to be a patriotic American. Apparently these days to be a patriotic American means you have to hate the other half of the country. Many feel like they’re right and everybody else is inherently wrong.

  Anyway, getting back on topic; what happened to the passion that motivated the youth of the 60’s? There have been many attempts to counter the hateful rhetoric that’s repeated in America today. I don’t know the exact reason why hate speech and negativity is so popular. One reason I think is that hate speech and divisive tactics are backed by corporate checkbooks, elected officials that pander to them and an entire 24 hour news organization that works on its behalf. I do believe though, that people like the Hippies have the answer.

  The teacher I mentioned earlier was a Hippie of the 60’s, and there has to be a lot more of them out there. We need those Hippies back, this time in a leadership rols and working side by side with another group of great Americans of the 60’s, the heroes of the civil rights movement. They’re much wiser now and have a lifetime of experience to share. There has to be a way to appeal to them to stand up one more time and fight for the common good of America. There have been a lot of obstacles put in place since the 60’s and I know that makes it hard. The economy and it’s separation between people with everything and people with nothing makes it very difficult for people's voices to be heard if they’re not in step with the corporations that control the purse strings.

  The singers and songwriters today with large audiences are owned by record labels. I gained so much respect for Green Day when they released their album “21st Century Breakdown.” Wal-Mart said that they had to censor and alter the message in some of their songs to put it on their shelves. Green Day opted to not sell that CD at Wal-Mart. The Dixie Chicks are an example of what happens to musicians that use their platform to stand up to the establishment.

  The United States of America has managed to put into place the best government and best media that money can buy. The US Government is believed to have three branches that are in place for a system of checks and balances; but there’s a fourth branch not addressed in the Constitution and it’s been given more power than the other three combined. It has no oversight and has been given unlimited power by the Supreme Court to influence our elections and they use their vast wealth to influence our laws. This fourth branch of government is the corporations.

  The entities that back corporate America today are ruthless and they don’t mind telling lies to help push their agenda along - a tactic that I’ve come to loathe in this deeply divided political climate. Politians have used a divide and conquer style of politics mixed with fear. They divide the country with rhetoric using wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion, then scare people to death with made up threats like “death panels.” Just about every speech given has at least a dozen examples of how “the sky is falling.”

  I want people to see the spirit that drove the Hippies of the 60’s and 70’s; no violence, no hateful rhetoric, no racism, no bigotry just brothers and sisters, real Americans if you will, who care about people. People whose neighbor is more important to them than money; where a picture of a person in need has just as loud of a voice as the picture of a dead president on a banknote; people who refuse to sit back and silently tolerate another person facing the night cold and hungry; people eho think one person who goes without necessary medical care is way too many; real Americans.

  It’s been roughly 44 years since the civil rights movement ended and sadly the job wasn’t completed. Restaurants, hospitals, schools, basically something in every single walk of life is still segregated. Only it’s not segregated based on the color of one’s skin, it’s segregated based on the size of one’s bank account. People rally so passionately under their pro-life banner in their opposition to abortion; but are they really pro-life and do they really care about children? What about those children who are sick? They want to cut off their ability to see a doctor. What about those children whose mothers and fathers have lost their job? They don’t want to help them with unemployment benefits and programs that would assist them in getting food. What about those children whose parents homes have been foreclosed on. They were so quick to respond back in 2008 to bail out Wall Street, why no bail out for those families? Oh yeah, that’s socialism.

  About the author: Bryan Boone writes from Brewton, Alabama and is a special contributor to the Capital City Free Press.

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