[Warning this is me typing off the top of my head... sorry for any typos]
It is depressing to see the world hold huge protests this week and the US holding such small ones ... I was waiting to see when at least some group was going to stand up and shout something as radical as ""Revolutions Begun -- Off the Pig -- Pick up a Gun !!"" These lines were used by the Black Panthers at Cornell in May '68 and later adopted by the Weatherman in their Days of Rage in Chicago, October '69 .... but it GOT THE MEDIA's ATTENTION -for bad or worse

One should also keep in mind that the 60's anti-war movement was a direct off-shoot of the civil rights movement and the collegiate free speech. Other movements sprouted; womens lib, environmental, black power, AIM American Indian and even gay rights movements all blossomed out of the late 60's. Not only are we lacking leaders in today's minority communities --people like MLK and even radicals like Bobby Seale and Fred Hamilton .. The anti war movement lacks leaders the likes of Abbie Hoffman of the Yippies (well, not "leader" but damn sure spokesperson) and Tom Hayden of SDS. The one contribution that Abbie Hoffman did was take the anti-war movement and at LEAST GET IT ON TV through agitation propaganda and guerrilla theater. With his antics, AND LARGE PUBLIC PARTICIPATION, he was able to get middle America to see that there was at least an anti-war movement going on through "put on's" such as Levitating the Pentagon in '67 - throwing money at the stock exchange in New York. Even the actions of the Weather Underground would be an interesting question to debate today about -- what is truly defined as terrorism?

I think either the American public has become too complacent .. or even worse .. those that want to protest -- are reading articles in the paper about such issues as the FBI infiltrating the anti- war movement -- just like the COINTELPRO operations in the 60's and 70's. The media is keeping the anti war movement out of the papers. And of course when it is mentioned, such as all the protests this past week, AROUND THE WORLD... all they could talk about were the number of people "Expected" to show up against who did.

I feel that 9/11 has changed alot of the perception in that it has transformed a large amount of our society into an unified acceptance of these various wars (Iraq, Terror, Afghanistan... and Iran?? ) with little or no rhyme or reason or evidence. The bottom line is that 9/11 has placed our society into a division similar to the sixties. In the 60's it was the coldwar "parent" generation vs. the counterculture "kids" generation. a division based on the old adage of 18 years and no liberal - noheart - over 30 and still liberal - no brains. The simple problem is there is not really a counterculture movement today that has any cohesion to form a strong unified movement. Which is sad considering that the sixties counterculture "communicated" through millions of underground magazines and newspapers.... Today, we have the internet -- but has so much information it is in "information overload" and unfortunately dilutes any cohesive movement.

So, overall, getting the media's attention with strong leadership and adequate and unadulterated means of communication to get the message across is they key. This not only goes for the anti-war movement but also the 2006 congressional and 2008 presidential election. It is time to take this country back from the corporatocracy and get back to grass roots McCarthyism like in 1968 (That's Eugene [not Joseph] McCarthy for you youngsters).

By the way, I am 31 years old. So I am a Gen Xer that is neither from the sixties nor "under 30" (but still proud to be liberal as hell!!, therefore I have no brains) but Oh hell -- Like they used to say in the 60's FREE SPEECH IS THE ABILITY TO SHOUT THEATER IN A CROWDED FIRE!!!.

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denying funding to the war machine here in the US in the same way investors/investment funds put pressure on South Africa to end it's racist ways.
Organize a movement of telling our reps in Congress that we don't support the war and it's time for Congress to close the wallet. of course there are those in Congress who are profiting from the war and they will have to be exposed and voted out.
Retirement/pension funds should be lobbied and told to divest their holdings in any publicly traded co. that profit from the war effort. tell them to invest in something like renewable energy or in some co.'s that have a sustainable business model.
Personal investments should also be examined for where they could effect change in a positive way.

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Activity against injustice seems to come in spurts after many people learn they have been lied to, propagandized, conned and otherwise brainwashed. Most people today have learned that they were conned by the Bushies but there is a big bunch of people (most Republicans) who still haven't realized that they were conned too. But a growing mass of Republicans/independents are now feeling resentment against being conned. The final spurt to justice is near to being ready. Activity now can push toward the desired results: censure, impeachment and really free elections.

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You all may have read and are bored by now of `ol Marvy`s
constant barage of "We Gotta March"! Well thank you Don
Hazen for an artical that suggests that "hey,maybe we NEED
to do this soon and on a grand scale"!! SOON! This is the most
imediate way to spread truth to people and start nudging the
entrenched legislators to look at us.A peaceful way for old and young to alike to most importantly..UNITE and protest all the wrongs we the people are currently being dealt.Oh and
Don...think we could talk Cindy into leading it?

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Maybe the left is a bit stupid. I say this coming from the left. I distinctly remember arguing with people about what the neocons were planning, but nobody took them seriously. They were all too busy starting petsonline.com and other self-serving attempts to get rich. I guess it is a BIG lesson in life; that you can't just cuddle up with a glass of red wine and a copy of The Nation (or No Logo) and think your clear-headed thinking is going to make the world better. I think the left lost its integrity in the 1990s. People on the left in the 60s, 70s, 80s were far more sociable, friendly, open to people of all classes (instead of looking down their noses at anybody who doesn't have a university degree). They are now generally caught up in the shallow game playing best exemplified by that green room, capucciano 'socialist' Naomi Klein. It is why there isn't any deep unity on the left and why the neo-cons and conservatives in general can run circles around you. To change the power dynamic in the world will take more than a clever/clever little media hit with nice graphics and design. But then that would take hard work and sincerity, and that's something most on the left these days don't do.

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How about we oppose ressurecting the 60's! Sure, we should learn from the 60's just as we should learn from any other decade, but I for one oppose ressurecting anything from the past. Instead, we should build the future and think up new things to go for. Now we have the internet, we have international travel, we have technology and numeorus other things. Build on that, not the past. So forget the past, there is nothing to see there, because we can't go back. It was fun while it lasted, keep those memories close. Now move along.

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I confess to being one of those GenXers (technically at least, born 1966) who has grown somewhat tired of hearing baby boomers prattle on about the glories of the 60s (in part because so many of them turned around to become Reaganites and contemporary neocons). But I see and agree with the point that it would be nice if some sort of political action could counteract this feeling of helplessness that so many of us are experiencing. But my one big gripe about this article (and correct me if I've misread it), is that I don't see a single reference to the Draft! What annoys many liberals of my era is the false sense that this sixties social activism grew out of a different set of "values," and a sense of inherent commitment to fighting injustice that later generations just haven't had. Well, sorry, but had there been an all volunteer military during Vietnam, one would have to be pretty naive to think that 10,000 people would have been arrested in a massive staged protest. The injustice of the draft hit far closer to home among a typical high school senior in 1968 than the injustice of the war. Having scores of friends shipped off to fight a hopeless war in Southeast Asia, and the fear (among men at least) that you'd be there soon too was what got baby boomers off their cans and into the streets. Not their more profound value system or inherent commitment to justice. Self-interest played a role that it simply doesn't play as loudly in the present age, for better or for worse.

I agree with the premise of the essay, but without the draft I'm not sure what the tipping point would be to engage the left-leaning public so actively. I enjoyed the essay, but I think it's important to make this point about the draft in order to properly contextualize 60s/70s social activism.

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You have echoed much of what I've been thinking lately. I was watching a documentary on John Lennon recently. Much of it focused on his involvement with the late anti-Vietnam war movement and the governments efforts to get him out of the U.S. In the background of the piece were the images of the early 70's we're all familiar with... riots, protests, national guard troops on college campuses; and voices...lots of angry, loud voices.
Why can we not muster a remnant of that passion in a time when we need it so badly?

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This may be pessimistic, but I think that the populations in the US and UK are too apathetic about the Iraq issue. Yep, a few thousand people may go on a protest, but the majority of the population are mostly concerned about their own lives and the next consumer purchases/fads than anything political. They may come up with an opinion when asked to do so by a pollster, but they then revert back to their apathy. If at first you think I'm wrong, just remember I am not referring to people like you (i.e. people who can be bothered to search out something like Alternet, read other people's opinions and contribute your own), I'm talking about the people right now who are either slaving away in one or two jobs to keep their families above the poverty line or are hanging out in the local shopping mall exchanging gossip about celebrities. Again, if you still disagree with my self-admitted cynicism, question why there aren't more people attending marches, why the crescendo of voices against Iraq has not reached an anti-Vietnam high. The way forward is think about how to motivate people to get off their backsides to protest - and perhaps to do this, you will have to demonstrate how Iraq is bad for them and their country (it may be apparent to people on this website, but for a lot of people Iraq is someone else's problem (i.e. the Iraqis' problem).

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I am reminded of a quote I heard recently that says:Let the Future Look Back on a Generation That Looked Ahead.

I wasn't around in the 60s, but I am glad that there were people that were politically aware of what was going on to actually do something. It seems my generation has had its social conscience short circuited by shortened attention spans, soundbites and an ever growing encouragement of total independence. I agree, if we do not act now, the future we get will be one that we could never imagine. People need to wake up and figure out if they want a future that they, themselves create. Or do they want a future envisioned by bush and his fellow christian fascist?

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Act how? People taking to the streets are ignored or rejected as "fringe elements." I honestly believe that if 100,000 people led by Iraq Veterans Against the War were to march in Washington now, they'd SwiftBoat us all. We don't because we know it's just walking. And yes, the lack of a draft keeps youth and their parents quiet -- you can shrug off a volunteer war.

Few sane people want to live the extroverted round of wakes and fundraisers of a politician (not to mention the scrutiny of your entire life), so we can't take over the system.

Exactly how can we act effectively?

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There are good reasons the spirit of the radical Sixties, yes that brief era, as Don Hazen writes, from 1967 to 1973, is waning.

Affluence is one. Look how many once radical, even Communist, students are now stock brokers, accountants, real estate salespeople, high school principals, etc., etc., etc ad nauseam. In short the hippies, freaks, heads all cut their hair, put down their hash pipes, got married and be came straight people. In effect they (we) became their (our) parents. I wonder how many members of the Radical Students' Brigade are now card-carrying Republicans.

With affluence comes fear of incarceration. To be sure there are those who yet man and woman the peace lines and spent a night or two in jail for peace. But they for the most part are viewed by "mainstream" society as part of the permanent fringe: Quakers, Catholic Workers, Buddists, Cindy Sheehan.

The radical chic of theSixties is dead and buried. The late Jerry Rubin was an investor, Bobby Seale is a self-described "the old cripple-footed revolutionary humanist," Jane Fonda a twice-born Christian, Abbie Hoffman's dead these 17 years. Who is there left?

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Revolutions are dependant on media for communication. In 1776 it was the printing press and in the Viet Nam era it was television. Today, both the press and television are owned and controlled by the corporate establishment. The establishment that the hippies fought against. Today we have the Internet. It is free from corporate control. This is the medium to use for information exchange and to call for action. Internet groups such as AlterNet spread the word to take action. This is working well. This is the modern media.

There are three facets of the Viet Nam war protest that I think are important to consider. One is that it wasn't organized. That is, there wasn't one organization. There were diverse groups that sprang up inspired by the scenes on television. Each group acted more or less independently, unified only by the common goal of ending the war.

The second is that the action was taken outside our two party political system. In the beginning neither party was anti-war. In the end the movement forced both parties to accept its view..

The third is the enemy. The corporate establishment and the two political parties backed the war. They had to be defeated and they were..

The internet isn't as public as television. Each individual sits alone at his/her computer. I believe that an unorganized movement of individuals can force both parties and the establishment to accept our view.

Unlike the hippies with only one issue, we have multiple issues. Each individual has his/her one most important issue, ending the war, clean air and water, public education, campaign finance reform, and a host of others. These are the issues of the ordinary citizen, the majority. What we must do now is decide the one issue that can unify us. Not as an organization but as individuals with our seperate and maybe even conflicting views.

I believe that this issue is Democracy, "government of the people, by the people, and for the people". Voters aren't represented by either party. We are living in the days before the Revolution when the batllecry was "Taxation without representation is tyranny".

I believe that the threat of a massive protest can restore our Democracy. I don't believe that we need an organization. We only need individuals each pursuing his or her own goal, to take action. I don't believe that we need marches and public demonstrations. These are largely ignored by the corporate televsion and press.

I think that the appropriate threat is a protest vote. The action to take is to tell both parties that you won't support any candidate who doesn't support your most important issue. To vote for a third party or to not to vote at all isn't a protest. A protest vote must be an "in your face" unmistakeable protest. I suggest a write-in vote for "Honest Abe".

Now is the time to act. Now before the election. Now is when our votes have power, once they're cast their power is gone. Click on Join Us Today

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i read the article and comments above and it echoes something i've been feeling for a while. i felt a certain urge to write about these things...

I am 29 years old. I have a profund admiration for the 60/70s political movements. The impression i have is that most of them had all its ideologies head's chopped off by capitalism ideals. It seems they walked in, killed everyone and bulldozed the house down. There is no room left - a dream existed in the 60s and people really believed it. Believed that everything was going to change. Well, we are here in 2006 and things seems worse than ever. I look back at that era with a bit of an envy for the belief in a dream - the belief that things could change forever.

I grew up as one of the first breeds of hardcore advertising and marketing. I wanted the nike shoes, i wanted the consumerism... then later, i realized it was all fake. And since then i have started to look for a way out - and it's been hard finding it. I have a deep belief in the dream of change, i have to keep believing it but everywhere i look seems highjacked by this huge black sexy nightmare. So it seems i have to fight myself everyday to oppress the cynic me and lift the me believer. And i try to do this, but as you walk down the street, turn on the TV, flip the newspaper: the nightmare is here and this is it.

It is frustrating.

The means to do change is something i struggle with. Somedays i believe in changing one person is all we need to do. Sometimes i believe that we have to change everyone. Sometimes i believe we have to act urgently in an anarchic way disrupting everything everywhere. Some other times i believe in non-violent action, in peaceful means.

But then again, there is always hope: Everything counts and nothing is enough.

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Interesting article, but I would suggest everyone who reads this article and the comments pick up a copy of "Doing Democracy" by Bill Moyer. I am reading it right now and he melds theory and practice in describing the 8 stages of social movements. The fact is the Civil Rights movement took decades and guess what it is still importance because we have not eliminated poverty or economic injustice (the gap between the top 5% and bottom 20% continues to widen). The Vietnam War anti-war movement didn't start immediately with our entrance into the war in place of the French, but took years to educate the population before it became effective. And if you think about the era 67-73 as mentioned in the article (and as Moyers points out in his book) the war did not end until 1975, at least 2 years after the major protests were over.

Commitment to Social Movements takes time, new people with energy because people get burned-out, discouraged, some may even get coopt'd by the government when they make false promises. But we need to be in in this for the long haul.

I agree with the comment about the draft and the military was falling apart at the end of the Vietnam war. I was a draft and war resister during the Vietnam War and was in Federal prison from 1971 to 1973. I used to like to take some of the credit for ending the war and the draft. I agree also with Moyer's assertion that we often did not celebrate our successes. The flip side of the coin is that the power holders figured out they could not continue to fight imperialist wars with an army of conscripts so they naturally wanted an all volunteer army of mercenary trained killers to fight their wars.

But at the end of the day, when social movements are successful, the changes come about, we end segragation and most of the goals of the civil rights movement become mainstream beliefs and it forces the government and corporations to make the changes the masses of people demand. However, they are still in charge and the economics have not changed (only gotten worse for the poorest people) due to Bush's tax cuts for his rich friends and budget cuts on the backs of the poor.

I also agree that we need to take action, take it back to the streets. Direct political action and yes a lot of sztreet theather helps educate the general population to move to the stage where we can effectively change the course we are on now.

In addtion to building this social movement, we need to build a new party (or maybe adopt the Green Party) because as you have seen repeatedly the Democrats are the same as the Republicans and get their toast buttered by the same corporate lobbies. There was a time when a political party had a platform that spelled out their beliefs and the programs they wanted to implement.

I think we need to put together a group of committed progressives to develop the platform, spell it out clearly and then only support candidates that back the platform. It will take some time to put this together, but it needs to include all the sub-movements that progressives support, but this is the best way to communicate to the masses that their beliefs are the same as our in the principles of true democracy, which by the way the Bush administration hates. When you have a true democracy you might not like what you get, as in Palestine or Venezaula right now.

The party platform should begin with a fundamental shift in the economic view of the world. We need to focus on building a peace time sustainable economy where the people in the country can make a living wage, have national health care and we take care of the environment. It needs to be people centric not corporate centric. Until we take the profits out of war, we will not get away from the war time economy, which basically Eisenhower warned us about after WWII.

Peace,
Jim

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I ran out of room on the last comment, so here is what I had to delete...

Then we build a progressive party that addresses, nuclear power, the environment, all people's civil rights, and restore some of the dignity and programs for poor people.

We need a foreign policy that is 180 degree from where we are now. Just imagine if we truly gave money and training to empower the people of Iraq for war reparations (like Germany after WWII). If they could have electricity for more than 1 hour a day, clean water and sewage systems, meaning and gainful employment we would not be so hated in the world.

I did not mean to get so long winded here, but it just has been waiting to come out for some time.

It is time for people to be in the street. We need to walk the walk and not only talk the talk. I encourage you to read Moyers book.

Let dance in the street. And when we are successful, we can then prosecute the war criminals for what they truly are, just like Nuremburg.

Peace,
Jim

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We're doing our part to try!

Political Rock.......
Check out
http://www.JohnnyPhilko.org
or
http://www.myspace.com/johnnyphilko

Peace,
Mike
http://www.JohnnyPhilko.org

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I agree that a little civil disobedience is called for. It’s getting bad. But the local peace movement is run by folks who remember the 60s too fondly. This is a college town with tens of thousands of students. Yet, I see very few at the rallies here. It is my strong suspicion that students can’t relate to the 60s iconography. Acoustic guitars, long hair, and patchouli don’t seem to appeal to them. Rather than recalling the glory days of the 60s, I think it’s more useful to recall the mistakes and success of protest in that era to inform protest now. Nostalgia isn’t useful in and of itself.

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Being an activist since '64 I can tell you for sure those folks and visionaries are still with us. Yes some are in Spirit. The vast majority are still here. Along with the 'Week-end Warriors'. The kids who,due to their 'social stature' could only don longhair wigs on the week-end and get involved in what they thought being a 'Hippie' was all about. Mostly they thought it was about the partying. We celebrated Life,no doubt about it,but while enjoying being alive we also expanded political philosophy,social philosophy and recognized the futility of centralized power and wealth. The
Folks that were there for the party only had 'seeds' planted.
Those of us that were 'involved' then,are so now. The resurgence of 60's style activisim,is some of those seeds sprouting. If the rest have'nt been laden with too much manure,there should be a massive movement of People to 'Re-Construct' this System soon. I think it's underway already. We know what and whom the enemy is,we know our Rights. We taught our Children. We are the Volunteers.
We're 18-66 and we know you can't trust The Govt.
The time is now to become the civilization we said we'd make
back in the circles in our history's short past. POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!!

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We here in the U.S.A. do not have it so bad. We are not suffering for lack of basic needs. We think we have a democratically elected government. We think our country does much in the way of aid to the poor peoples of the world, and the recipients of that aid turn on us. This country of ours is a nation of fat and happy, ignorant slackers. We have so much stuff in our lives. Stuff that keeps us occupied to the point where we just do not want to do anything else. The internet keeps the politically interested occupied, t.v. keeps most everyone occupied with whatever they are interested in that the t.v. provides. And there is religion as it can be utilized to achieve whatever the individual desires. We are litterally bombarded by advertizing to the point that we feel compelled to spend on stuff. The point is, to get the attention of the youngest adults to respond to the improprieties of our government, they must feel threatened. Re-instate the draft. If that does not get them to act, nothing will. The Bushes do not want the draft because they know it will awaken the sleeping dogs.

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We are capable of a peaceful, well-organized revolution...

The Blue Party.net
(http://www.theblueparty.net)

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no more 60s nostalgia please. we have no more new deal liberalism left to lean on. no mass movement of direct action captivating popular attention. lsd is not new. cost of living has gone up while wages and social safety net has gone down. ngos have proliferated everywhere. the entire dlc is built upon buying into the republican charicature of the 1960s as having gone too far (ie women's rights and affirmative action)-- it's pointless to try to play into the way they frame politics, to play into that culture war. movement thinking needs to learn from the past but address the present with something new. so that our opponents have to wrestle with our ideas, rather than just typecast us as a bunch of longhairs.

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It's interesting that we are more likely to see a PETA member assaulting a shopper at some fur emporium than a anti-war activist doing any more than holding a sign and singing songs. It only bothers us a little to torture innocent people and make an entire country unsafe for typical life, but killing an animal for its fur, now that really gets us riled up. I am not knocking PETA members or any other activists. I just think it's strange to see what types of things motivate the strongest types of reactions.

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"The lesson of the Sixties is that people who cared enough to do right could change history. We didn't end racism but we ended legal segregation. We ended the idea that you could send half-a-million soldiers around the world to fight a war that people do not support. We ended the idea that women are second-class citizens. We made the environment an issue that couldn't be avoided. The big battles that we won cannot be reversed. We were young, self-righteous, reckless, hypocritical, brave, silly, headstrong and scared half to death. And we were right." -- Abbie Hoffman

Is it coincidence that the accomplishments Hoffman mentioned seem to be the very ones the Republicans have dedicated themselves to reversing?

As for reinstating the draft, the Pentagon has already started scraping the bottom of the barrel, lowering recruiting standards to admit those with criminal records (including, bizarrely, convictions for making terrorist threats) and history of alcohol and drug abuse. If they're that desperate now, it can't be long till they roll out the draft.

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my dad went to Woodstock. Painted his car and all, too.

Then on 9/11 he stuck a flag on his SUV and supported Bush on his war against Iraq. Imagine that, Mr. Lennon. I wonder if you can.

The anti-war movement didn't get us out of Vietnam. The funding was cut off. The war got too fucking expensive for Congress.

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One of the lines that we (the fifty and older crowd) use amongst ourselves is "if you remember the sixties you weren't there." But, you know what? We actually were there. That is to say, we were together in public places. Not thousands of us together, but five or ten of us together in small groups that totalled thousands all together.

It was before we decided that being in our house, car, or dorm room, was preferable to hanging out to discuss politics, art, or each others lives and pain. It was before the idea of "public space" was eliminated by the powers that be. Before they started "improving" cities and towns by omitting the "center of town." It was when coffee shops, bowling alleys, and diners, were locally owned, and the owners were not afraid of people hanging around for hours arguing vehemently about politics, philosophy, and life.

It's easy to call someone an idiot, moron, nutcase, when you don't know them up close and personal, such as is the case online.

We've been fragmented into narrow "causes" where the proponents of one cause don't want those of another because they disagree on another, periphrial issue -- as though the periphrial issue upon which we disagree, were an indicator of our unworthiness, our stupidity, our "moroness." Online conversations are somehow less real than ones in person. And the "in person" discussions are starting to look more and more like online discussions.

I've actually seen four people stitting at a table at a restaurant where three of the four are on cell phones. In answer to the phone question, "Where are you?" the response is "having dinner with some friends." Well obviously the friends you are sitting with are somehow not as important as the "friends" you are on the phone with. Can anyone really have a conversation when ringing phones interrupt every couple of minutes? Or text messages? Or PDA email checks?

You want a solution? One: Put down your technology whenever you are in the company of another human being -- even a stranger. Do you remember when starting a conversation with a complete stranger about a book they were reading was okay? How is reading a book different from being on a computer? Does anyone start a conversation when someone sitting at the next table is "working" on the computer?

Two: Take up smoking. Smokers (of which there are many less nowadays) have ten minutes to do nothing while they hang around to smoke a cigarette. And I say this only half-assessed facetiously.

Three: Write a pamphlet; Hand it out to people. Talk to them.

We all seriously need to start talking to each other.

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When was the last time you dove into expanding consciousness like you did in the 60's? When was the last time you actually "did" love and freedom beyond all boundaries, for real? Those of you who were around back then and were a part of that know what I am talking about.

What has really changed? The adventure of it? The COUNTER-culture nature of it? Your youthful embrace of it? World conditions have certainly turned. New generations have come into being. Loyalties have shifted. The empire we formerly protested and the culture we were counter to is in fact now in the process of crumbling.

In other words, the revolution SUCCEEDED. We're just seeing some of the more unpalatable results now.

A lot of the idiocy and suffering we are seeing is evidence that the empire is actually crumbling. Before it comes crashing down, there will be much more pain, much more hurt. Isn't that obvious? Did we think we could have our materialistic possessions, our capitalistic strangehold on the world's resources, our military superiority forever? Weren't those exactly the things we were protesting against in the 60's?

Look at the fall of the Western Roman empire. Sure, that empire lasted longer, but the parallels with what's happening in the U.S. are too obvious to ignore. Let's see, there's that darn decline in morals and values, public health problems, political corruption, ramapant unemployment, urban decay, inferior technology, military over spending... Sound familiar?

Is George W our Caligula, our Nero, perhaps even our Romulus Augustulus?

The establishment is going to clamp down all that much harder now because we're in the midst of our decline. You can take that to the bank. They really don't want to let go. But they're going to have to, eventually. Sometime realtively soon, the new boss ain't gonna be like the old boss.

The new conquerers/rulers will be our own form of visiGoths. Maybe they will be Muslims. Maybe Indians. More likely they will be Chinese.

So, be ready. Dive back into expanding consciousness and love and freedom beyond all boundaries, for real again. In the 60's it started with music. It started with drugs. It started with an idea and a heart feeling. And it unfolded the fabric of society at its very core.

Our young will adapt, in their own way.

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There's an outrageous war, there's the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, there's certainly repression, plus a couple of thousand other things. People nowadays are too busy choosing their interior color for their SUV's or the threadcount of their carpet to be bothered. Most people just don't care period and that's the travesty. People have become so numb and asleep that it's shameful and pathetic. Where the hell are the songwriters? Clipping coupons? There are people doing things, but far too few. People are terrified to speak out. It's an entropy state that has hyponotized the country's psyche. Enough already.

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The solution to war will be found and understood by reading Victory Before War. It will also end the corruption of government officials or cause their removal. READ THE BOOK AND GET INVOLVED, PLEASE! DO MORE THAN RAVE AGAINST THE CORRUPTION, ARROGANCE, IGNORANCE, STUPIDITY. THIS IS 100% SUCCESS-CREATING.

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The earlier comment about what would happen if the draft was reinstated hit the nail right on the head. Violent acts against the government won't work in this day and age. People only get angry when an issue hits home (or their pocketbooks).
What we need are for people NOT to sign up for the military. Perhaps this will force our government to start up the draft again. It is then that you will see real pressure from the general population to put an end to "pre-emptive defense" moronics. It would also scare the shit out of the defense contractors.
One can learn from history, whether it's the 60's or the fall of the Roman Empire.

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I was discussing the media's refusal to speak truth in covering protests with an anarchist friend of mine, right after the IMF-World Bank actions in Washington, DC during April 2000 and prior to her leaving for Los Angeles for the Dems convention. We concluded at that time that if the media were harassed and kept from being able to record ANYTHING they could lie about, it would soon cost them enough that they'd change their tune & start telling the truth. Keep the reporters locked in their vans. Don't let them out. The Washington Post took note, printed a story about it from LA. We need to try it some more. This is a REVOLUTION. It doesn't take ten thousand to surround a TV van. Thirty can scare the bejeezus out of those sell-outs. We have no friends who wear a badge, work for the government, stand in front of a camera and lie, watch, infiltrate, lie in court, who do nothing while others are murdered, practice a hypocritical "religion or disclaim the actions of patriots. We are everywhere!

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Many good and not so good things happened during the counter-culture, anti-war, women's rights, consumer rights and other movements that happened during that time. There was no one monolithic 'movement'. It was a whole kaleidoscope of groups that allied or went it alone based upon their needs and conscience. The fact that to this day the advancements are taken for granted speaks to their wisdom and rightness.

The '60's', more than anything else, were the product of three things:
1) The New Deal
2) World War II
3) The Trade Union Movement

The New Deal changed America in ways that are still incalculable to this day. Basically, it was the first time our national government acknowledged that people were entitled to certain help and protections from our society on the simple basis that they were people. It also caused a massive migration of poor white and black people out of the south into the industrial Midwest and the coasts.

World War II caused more migration, brought tens of millions out of their local areas and opened them to a wider world, put millions of women and people of color in the workforce for the first time, and birthed the GI Bill and the VA Home Loan. Prior to that time, the majority of Americans rarely, if ever:
1 Travelled more than a few miles from their home area.
2 Owned their own home or even hoped to.
3 Were College Educated or had any hope of getting a higher education.

The Trade Union Movement taught the masses the power of organization. Prior to Unions, most people had only political parties to organize through and, just like now, the well-off and well-connected controlled the local and state parties.

The generation of the '60's' were the offspring of the WW II generation and the first to have the full benefit of all the change. They were the first generation that was universally well educated, fed, housed and expectant of going to college. They also were the first to grow up with Television, Modern Radio and almost universal car and telephone ownership. Think about all of that. What a paradigm shift. It all looks very obvious in retrospect.

Despite all of the change the times were very different. No cell phones, e-mail, blogs, websites, 250 channels of Cable, community radio, 24 hour news channels, etc. Back then, few companies, politicians and trade associations had professional PR staffs or media advisors-- everybody has someone to spin things now. Even activist organizations have professional PR people in the beltway playing the same political games the corporate interests play.

The moral of all of this is that we cannot bring the 60's back, but there are a few lessons:

1- If a lot of dedicated people organize and stick with it-- the world will change and can be changed.
2- Education and opportunity are the most powerful agents of change and always will be.
3- A liberal and open society is always the parent of the kind of society and world you want to live in and raise your children in.
4- The enemies are always the same: Ignorance (lack of education), Intolerance, Intransigence and Apathy.

Consider yourselves Educated.

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I’m so angry that I can’t see straight and I just pray that this will make some kind of sense. Having lived in the 60’s I have also wondered where the hell did all the real liberals go. Lots of the comments above are IMHO, mostly nothing but whine, whine, whine! And another thing that bothers me is that the comments just sit there and nothing ever happens. Delete?? People are so smart with their points of view but where is even one half-assed plan and someone to take it into action? Don’t you get it folks? This is bigger then the one area that may interest you and your lifestyle. There seem to be many elements that need to be addressed and that is leading to no or divided action. That was the same case in the 60’s but we didn’t wait around for the perfect plan. And it’s not a job for sissies. Are you all self-medicating? Pot did not cover up the pain I felt. There was a time when most of the world looked up to America. Now even it’s citizens are beaten down. Well you can call me anything you want and I will be proud to put on my tin hat. American people seem to try so hard a being perfect in every way. But, you better get off your collective butts. How long will we let others pay our way?

I always go back to civil rights. That was my thing. And I think it has a lot of comparisons but today THEY are suppressing, maiming, and taking the rights away from all of us and not just the Afro-Americans. Last night on Larry King I saw a short clip of Malcolm X. Mike Wallace asked if he was afraid of losing his life. Malcolm X got a twinkle in his eye and a smirk to his upper lip and said; Yes, I think about that. I’m probably a dead man right now.” He was. But he was a man that knew how to stand on two feet and tell it like he saw it. MLK said the same thing. Younger people don’t remember and I’m sorry for you that you seem not to have been taught to recognize the slow careful teaching it takes to turn your back on others that don’t fit into your comfortable life.

There is a new power game in the universe. But does anyone recall what happened to the Jews in the 30’s and 40’s? Do you ever ask yourselves, how did so many people get put away, tortured and killed? I got my lesson on that part of history from a neighbor lady that lived through Auschwitz. I was 13 and she with my mother’s permission told me what I should know about what happened to her. Later she committed suicide over her shame. She had been slowly beaten down. Thank you till the day I die, Magda.

I do apologize and hope that some of my feelings have reminded you of something in your souls worth fighting for. The point was that our gut feelings told us that the US of A was going to hell in a hand basket. That people were doing things we felt were a CRIME! Get it folks. A CRIME. I feel a world better.

Mr. Don Hazen, I have a question for you. How much of that spirit do you have left in your soul? I’ve been ready for 6 years. Are you ready? Do you need a permit to hang a sign around your neck “My Government is Committing Crimes in my Name” and to walk Wilshire Blvd from downtown LA to where it ends at our beautiful beach? You have my email address. I'm sooo angry and NEED to do something soon. We can not afford to wait or hope for `06. Don't you feel it?
I’M BACK AND I’M PROUD!!!! SAY IT LOUD!

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Thank you Baby Boomers whose romantic embellishments of 60's refer to the decade as a tributary of profound political change, limitless possibility, and active civil participation. Thank you for your consequence-free lifestyle, delusional perception of reality, and your inability live your ideals in the 70's, 80's, 90's and 00's. Thank you for you for consumerism, suburbanization and rise of the global economy. Thanks for leaving the world with a steaming bowl of crap.

When will people of the 60's stop embellishing and start acting? Don, your call to action is so incredibly weak. "We need to show we are not down and out and able to act.."? Then say how, get busy and write about your results.

People of the 60's - time to pay for your consequence-fee life style. Start by doing something beneficial with your time and retirement savings. People who embellish Don's view of the 60's - others with different views are embellishing the 60's as well; W, Cheney, Rummy - they are winning and kicking your butt. Baby Boomers - don't leave the world in worse shape than how you found it.

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I sat in my car the other day in front of a super-sized Wal-Mart store and watched the swarms of mindless consumers coming out with carts heaping with, probably, junk made in China. I wondered, are these people ready for self government? Do they understand the essence of democracy? When they voted in a cowboy of highly questionable morals and intelligence for TWO terms, they certainly exhibited a lack of intelligence and common sense. So can we expect these folk to raise smarter, more sophisticated kids necessary for honorable governance and a peaceful future? Don't make me laugh. The great "experiment" in democracy, to quote dead-eye Dick (referring to the insurgency in Iraq), "is in it's last throes." When the president can trash the Constitution and illegally invade a sovereign nation, among other crimes, the lack of public outrage is sickening. But Sex in the City, American Idol, and Desperate Housewives will continue to highlight our wonderful culture.

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if nature abhors a vacuum, maybe a new movement should not be ANTI war but FOR peace. what if we act to create peace instead of trying to destroy the present insanities? it's a shift of thinking, but if we just continue the present cycle of fighting violence with violence we're not going to change anything.

there is a new group of "love" artists emerging -- everyone wonders what the next big thing will be, and i think it will be love.

that's why my art practice is a study of the words, "I love you". www.iloveyougalleries.com.

if we could all say "I love you" to everyone else, no one will ever pollute the oceans, destroy your homeland, wage religious wars, or cut you off in traffic again.

love,
sharon

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Sharon,

Purely in physics terms, your suggestion makes sense. Why make even worse enemies of people who are already scared and defensive? Not logical. Love=Logic on those terms.

Thank you for having the guts to not pick the next fight. The opposite of misery and destruction is love and creativity. People who do that look happier than the ones who don't. That's an advert for folks to switch occupations and start enjoying life. Dark Ages have been abandoned to the light of a Rennaissance before, who knows?

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I am 17 and was born 20 years after the heart of the great social movement occuring in the late 1960s. However, I have done some research on the issue, and often compare it to today, longing for a return of the spirit of that time. However, I fear that the political and social climate of today is quite different than it was then. While today one state has already made abortion illegal and a right wing christian movement to re-criminalize abortion is under way, the spirit of the 1960s caused the Roe v. Wade case, ultimately legalizing abortion. Despite the overwhelming numbers of people opposing the idiot we call President, more than 50% of American voters elected him into office. Is it possible to start an intellectual, revolutionary movement at a time like this?

It will certainly be decided by my generation, and I hope for the best. But sometimes I do wonder whether it is truly possible.

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I'm a veteran. I marched on Washington, I dodged billy clubs in Chicago in '68. And ultimately, we won. But we weren't up against a monolithic media and a self-serving Congress whose hands were tied because they had long since sold their souls to a corporate oligarchy. So regardless of the feedback from their readers / viewers / consituents, these guys have little choice but to look the other way while their corporate sponsors rake in obscene profits from Bush's rape of Iraq. Which may be one reason why we're not seeing massive demonstrations of popular rage. Most people realize it's falling on deaf ears.

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It was so much easier to mount a counter-revolutionary movement when you're ass is on the line and you're maybe going to get drafted. That's why college-aged kids and their scared parents united in such a show of force. Right now, there seems to be apathy because of who is actually doing the sacrificing. Our media is AWOL in bringing the madness of war into our livingrooms unlike the gruesome coverage we were deluged with in the 60s and 70's. And, of course this disinformation-slinging bunch of inept and greedy fools use them briallianty to promote their propaganda and decompose our democracy. They are expert in using fear to lead us into the most truly fearful situations with almost blind loyalty. We need to use fear with the same passion and speak out at any venue we are accorded to proclaim that those of us who trluly love our country must fight to stop the takeover by these facistic lunatics before their mission of destruction is completed.

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A remarkable book, "The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People are Changing the World" by Ray and Anderson, alerted me to the fact that there are lots of us who feel this way - we just somehow aren't aware of how many of us there are - and often feel isolated. When in fact, it could be that our neighbors feel exactly the same way.
I have wondered if the internet in an odd way has contributed to this semi-paralysis. While we are daily inundated with email about political issues, and regularly take advantage of the easy way to write our senators and representatives, could it be that the very ease of this kind of action substitutes for the real action that is required in a vital and responsive democracy?

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This really is nothing more than a bunch of computer chair revolution unless people start practicing what they preach.
I think the people today are lazy, scared, or don't care enough about what's going on to get involved.

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If everyone who is against Bush would stop buying things, we would win overnight. Eat hemp flour from manitobaharvest.com and watch the empire fall.

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In the 1960s I was a very young social worker,trying to help families keep together and get ahead- and it was an uphill battle.

If a student, especially one with a family to care for, wanted to attend college to learn in order to get a job that would provide enough income to support a fmaily, he/she did not get this in the public colleges, There frequent riots and "pig roasts" were the order of the day to the point where schools closed down for days at a time. This spilled over into the neighborhoods, which had been quiet, middle class areas. The Black Panthers, the Hari Krishnas, the Hell's Angels, even the Mormons as well as other groups that I no longer remember, took over, luring young teens aways from their families with promises of freedom from supervision (which of course the kids responded to) and excitement. Families were hard pressed to stay together and emphasize their values with such strong pulls against them.

Drugs spilled out into the suburbs, with young children (middle school age) aided in running away from home, or hidden in college dorms away from anxious parents. After months on the streets, I can't tell you how many children who had been bright, enthusiastic students, were permanently burned out on drugs, unable to function in any capacity, some admitted to mental hospitals, a few chose suicide. There were many.

And street riots breaking out in the city, with destruction of stores and fires; it was frightening for ordinary people to leave home. In many instances I had to take children home because they were fearful of what might happen to them if they did not have an adult with them. Even adults could not walk down a main street without being accosted, annoyed and even threatened.

There were dreadful conditions in the country that needeed shaking up- the McCarthy investigations, the Vietnam war, the Watergate scandals. And these absolutely needed to be changed. And many of the groups did have positive agendas. However, the excesses of the period did not just address the problems of the time. They also created problems for innocent families with actions unrelated to changing the things that needed to be changed.

I know. I was there. Trying to help families hold things together.

Perhaps those who remember those days are the ones now who are fearful of taking any action with regard to the many problems facing us now.

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Ain't going to happen. I'm a product of the 60's generation now in my mid-fifties. I was present at the May Day event in 1971. I remember well the running through the streets of D.C. I also remember the speeches of that weekend which by my standards today were largely incoherent. Lots of drugs.....music.....and very dirty and smelly people. The crowd being chased through the streets of D.C. was the highlight of the event. The problem with the "new" anti-war movement is that our children just aren't buying it. There is no draft and we don't see hundreds of body bags coming home every week. We don't have the personality of a Walter Cronkite telling us that the war is lost every damn day. The biggest problem IMHO is that few people trust much of what the modern media has to say about the Iraq war. The alternate medias paint an entirely different picture of what is happening in the Middle East. To them it isn't all bad news. There is no urgency in today's youth to rise up and challenge the war since there is no draft. There are no real leaders like an Abbie Hoffman to storm the bastille. Cindy Sheehan doesn't do it as the face of the anti-war movement. Too ugly, too stupid and too much enamoured with the attention she gets from antique media. My view is that the anti-war movement is nothing more than the aging hippies of the 60's and 70's engaged in an attempt to capture the nostalgia of those times again. Too fat, mostly bald and too busy paying for the B'mer, a too expensive house and little Johnny and Janey's tuition. The kids dont care much and without them the movement goes exactly nowhere.

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The activism of the 60's was driven by the protest college folk music of the early 60's and protest rock of the later 60's. Music then had to have, at the very least, symbolic meaning, and in most cases, an overt message to be heard at all. Even a corporate-created entity like "The Partridge Family" in the 70's had to have some sort of meaningful message in much of the music, and the show had to deal with the antiwar sentiment of character Laurie Partridge. That kind of music, and the importance of music in general to younger generations, went right out the window with the corporate lock on pop music in the 80's, when music became consolidated, controlled, distilled, and denigrated to "pure" "entertainment". These forces backed by millions of dollars over decades did their very best to create the impression that political music, and any music with a message, was corny and dead, to the extent that brilliantly groundbreaking Grammy winning CD's like Green Day's "American Idiot" are still incredibly rare, and don't start movements or even trends. As long as Clear Channel and other GOP contributing corporate controllers own the airwaves, and as long as the public continues to believe the eternal myth that only cream rises to the top of the heap, and correspondingly, unless they hear of something or hear music backed with millions of dollars of advertising everywhere they go (unfortunately, even on the internet), it just can't be any good, the situation will remain bleak, for music, politics and political movements. One simply cannot happen without the support and reinforcement of the other. Protest music is the liturgical spiritual music of any movement.

The sooner EVERYONE realizes that nothing at all succeeds in this country, music or otherwise, unless backed by millions of dollars of paid airplay, the sooner they'll start relying on their own sense of what's good, and the sooner they'll begin seeking out music that MEANS SOMETHING, and will become more important to their lives precisely because it MEANS SOMETHING to THEM beyond a soundtrack to PARTYING and escape from life. THIS was the magic of the 60's and early pre-disco 70's, why the music lives far beyond its time, and resonates with today like never before.

Thanks for reading!

theforeverfamily.com

theforeverfamilyonmyspace

Feel free to post comments in our forum

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In the early 70s, Generation Gap was a word we heard often. And it was an anti-establishment movement, against the war, the military machine, government authority, institutionalized education, bras, shaved legs, combed hair, processed foods, pollution, consumerism, racism, stereotypes, hypocrisy, etc. If anything, it was an indictment of accepted truths and values.

Today, I do not hear Generation Gap. We expect our children and grandchildren not to rail against us, but to march lockstep with us, in this replay of our revolution. It is true that we seek the nostalgia of our youth, as perhaps every generation before us did. I can't imagine being as passionate about a movement if I had been following in my mother's footprints, tied to her apron strings. So, why do we expect this generation to be content to follow us?

It was a proud moment for me, to march alongside my grandson in DC September 24. But my sons were not there. One has told me that marches accomplish nothing; that those in power control events, and that we're just wasting our time. This movement is lacking spontaneity among the younger set, perhaps because we have not trusted them to lead, or allowed them to be hurt enough to rise up on their own. We're doing what parents have always done, trying to protect our young.

We have the hindsight of 40,000 body bags returning, and we can see clearly where this catastrophe is headed. And most of us have the perception to know that this situation has the potential to be much worse than anything we saw in the 60s and 70s.

To make matters worse, our kids are subjected to a government-owned media, much larger and more persuasive than anything we witnessed during Vietnam. At the least, it creates doubt in the message we try to put forth, which is all that is necessary, and the government damn well knows it.

There is no easy answer to how we get this generation to own this movement. But own it they must, if it is to take flight. As others have stated, the lack of a draft contributes to the complacency. Also, the lack of TV coverage of bodies coming into Dover, and the warped media in general. I don't remember a deliberate government manipulation over distracting issues like abortion, gay marriage, or posting of ten commandments in the 70s. I don't remember this blurring of the lines between religion and government, and believe it would've been rejected had it been attempted.

These attempts at brainwashing and behavior modification by the government actually frightens me more than even the war.

I have led you down a dead-end road. I offer no more solutions than those already posted. Still, for my own sanity, I must keep marching, and hope one day soon to see my kids in the rearview mirror. There is the internet, and kids are curious by nature.

I did hear a call from one of the younger set, in Fayetteville last weekend, for us "seasoned" protesters to show them the way. We will do what we can, and hopefully have the wisdom to fall in behind when they take the lead. This is their march, but at least we can carry the water.

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We knew it then, we know it now...

LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED!

And I mean that.

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Given all the complaints about apathy and what doesn't work, maybe you should just go with your strengths and use what you have left. Do nothing.

Like when you start to buy that thing you don't need. Stop it. Do nothing. Save your money. More is a bore.

There you are at work making your little hamster wheel go round and you think to yourself, "I'm going to put in an extra half hour and make this thing go faster." Just knock it off. Don't do it. Take back some of your life and start expanding those spaces between the hours you've devoted to making this country go in a direction that you know is wrong and has squeezed off all of your fundamental options.

I'm not saying this for critical services or for people who are working at preventing things like global warming. But really what's most of this frenetic activity for anyway?

You're creative. I'm sure you can think of lots of ways to do little or nothing at all.

P.S. The sixties are gone, man. Turning the clock back is soooo Republican.

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Instead of a real revolution that changed the industrial paradigm destroying the earth, we had a bunch of bourgeous, self-entitled white brats that made some superficial social progresses and left us in a situation worse than before. Now the mainstream of America is desensitized to anti-war rhetoric. I can't have long hair without being thought of as a "hippy". Take a bath.

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....America. Good Night...and Good Luck.

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The big difference between now and the 60s was LSD. Back then this sacrament pulled the wool from our eyes and woke us up. We had "Hair", and "Jesus Christ Superstar", Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Allen Ginsberg and Dylan who were the spokespeople for a changing consciousness that knew no bounds. Who and what do we have now? There is ayahausca and sensimilla, "American Passion Play" , E. Rugh and India Jones and Alternet but not much more...

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Remember the article about whiney kids growing up to be conservative adults? The same is true of nations and cultures!

When a nation is on the rise, it is more liberal, as it 'feels' that it can afford to try new things. When it is on the decline, it gets more conservative. Rush Limbaugh is a post- American Peak phenomenon.

Do you realize that in 1971, the U.S. was the world's largest oil exporter? Since oil is practically the lifeblood of the modern civilization, its abundance might have had a lot to do with the 'high' that was felt during that era. American technology was also ascending, quickly surpassing most of the rest of the world. Only Russia, which had a less developed infrastructure at the time, was seen as a viable challenger.

And it's not technology or wealth in absolute terms which counts in this 'equation'. It's the movement of the country relative to other nations which contributes to the 'high.' The United States is simply not rising in the world stage today, relative to other nations. The Iraq invasion is evidence of a nation absolutely desperate to maintain its former glory. (PNACs anyone?)

Ultimately, the solution is for America to 'grow up,' and grow out of the adolescent phase it's stuck in, and learn to accept a more equitable role in the world scene. Like a hipster. Cool. Confident. Unperturbed.

Can't happen with the oiligarchy in charge, though. The Bush dead-enders are nothing but heartache for this country. We need wisdom, not obeisance.

PEACE!

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The right wing has spent the best part of the last forty years trying to undermine the Sixties and dismantle the progress that was made, and as a result, repeating this idea enough, people now confuse nostalgia with idealism. In a sense, it's reactionary, people wanting to hark back to this 'golden age', but that sense has been used to tarnish the whole philosophy of rebellion, individuality and even creative thought so that all protesters get from the average Joe Six-Pack is rolling eyes and ennui, which I think is unfair, self-damaging and even disrespectful.

People want us to believe the spirit of the Sixties was laughable and naive. I don't believe that. Since when were ideals naive? It's not about 'reviving the Sixties,' it's about having and upholding principles, asking questions and demanding answers, practising revolution if necessary, but people have been brainwashed into a 'been there, done that' attitude. A generation of smartasses have turned the Sixties into a punchline, and now, we're paying for it.

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“I’ve got to do for me and my mine.”
~Wash Hogwallop
O Brother, Where Art Thou?

I believe our representatives have abdicated their stewardship of democracy for all. Congressman Hogwallop has betrayed us. We don’t ask more in taxes from the rich simply because they hold most of the wealth. They also hold a greater responsibility to keep our democratic system well oiled and running smoothly. The rich and powerful have their hands on the wheel of America’s prosperity. When they act irresponsibly, they drive the working poor into a ditch. It is a purposeful and calculated act against the well being of us all. I say to those who are starting to understand this: We can no longer just boo the rascals from the bleachers. The officiating is all corrupt. The players are on steroids, the hotdogs are carcinogenic, and skyboxes overshadow everything. It’s time to get in the game!

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Protest is dead. Dead, buried, and rolling over in its grave. The media today is not what it was in the Vietnam era- we can have our symbolic marches within our fenced off Designated Free Speech zones and all the 'other side' is ever going to see of it is Bill O'Riley's sneering dismissal of a bunch of dirty, freedom-hating hippie traitors. They're certainly not going to see any photos of the depleted uranium babies.

The present Democratic party is an absolute joke, and all liberals know it. It's a sock puppet of and a punching bag for the Neocon power structure. The Right is so far to the right that they see Democrats as socialist radicals- the extreme left pole of the American political spectrum. Which, sadly, they pretty much are. The 'real' political parties (Greens, Libertarians) are marginalized beyond all significance.

The whole movement is like 50 people holding hands and swaying and singing "give peace a chance" outside the fence of a Nuremburg Nazi rally.

And inside, these people really are Nazis. Genuine red-white-and-blue brownshirts, solidly to the right of Nixon. They won't put up with much. The minute you start to resist in any REAL way- not just half-assed symbolism- you're going to get dissappeared, fitted for an orange jumpsuit and a bag for your head and shipped off to some offshore CIA torture prison.

Maybe more people would be willing to go to jail if they didn't think it was in vain. But the country is absolutely divided right now- two separate-but-equal echo chambers- with both sides preaching to the choir. The ones with the yellow ribbons and flag magnets and Bush / Cheney '04 stickers on their Ford SUVs are blissfully unaware of the issues. And they already know you are their enemy, because their leader said so...

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Several of the above posts have touched upon but not directly addressed the points I have. In short, the 1960's were a point in history that will not be repeated. In general,

*Real incomes in the United States have been in decline since the 1970's. We are working more and living farther from our jobs, schools, and other daily destinations.

*The children of the World War II generation inherited the idea that the U.S. was saved from Nazism and that the U.S. could save the world. (The children of the Vietnam era inherited the idea that the U.S. acted imperialistically for its own interest.)

*In the 1960's you did not have to go through background checks and have arrests/convictions for dissent show up on a potential employer's, volunteer school committee's, or other group's desk.

*In the 1960's, young men did not have to register for Selective Service or be forced to give up college loans and numerous other forms of assistance.

*In the 1960's, CEOs were not saying that they have noticed a serious problembecause their younger workers have not learned how to look beyond the flashy glitz of the moment.

Over the weekend, I saw a CNN program projecting the chaos that would (could/will?) happen if a hurricane wipes out the Texas oil refineries and terrorists take the opportunity to knock out Saudi oil fields. I do not see such a dire outcome because I see many people who have been working very hard to make sure there are sidewalks, bicycles, and local food sources and local jobs/markets for products.

This is what keeps me going when I feel alone in my fights against city hall, state offices, and the federal government. Or, as I put it when people ask me why I obsess so much about having sidewalks and making sure they are clean of snow/ice in winter and of weeds and obstacles in summer: I want to fight now while I still have some energy so that in a few decades when I am 80 years old, I will have those sidewalks upon which to walk.

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It never ceases to amaze me. I come here every morning looking for something more than just "let's rally" and "let's get serious about impeachment". For THE LOVE OF GOD people wake up!! There will be no popular, peaceful solution to this problem. I have said it before and I will say it again. Americans need to begin preparations for an all out assault on our goverment. Bushco is in command - make not mistake about it. His approval ratings may plummet but there is no way impeachment will succeed. And if it does . . . ? Then what? Trade one stupid dictator for another more erudite, sophisticated, indoctrinated and perhaps even more fanatical ruler? Bush has always been a puppet and you all want to put Cheney (the puppet master) in the driver's seat! Anything but that!

Bushco has demonstrated its willingness to kill Americans as a pretext for petro-wars so why assume they won't do it again to call for martial law? They will and the KBR camps being constructed as we speak will be wonderful places to hold all the sheep who failed to react to this broadening problem. What I am saying is that this thing goes much too deep to have the plug pulled now. Halliburton, Blackwater, the Carlyle Group et al are too heavily invested in this thing not to mention the big oil boys. We are in it to win it and that means coopting all petro-resources we can get our hands on. We have reached peak oil and that signifies that the moment of truth has arrived: will we continue as the world's only superpower or will be slump to 2nd rate status. Buscho says negative to that charlie!! We will apporpriate as much natural resources as possible while increasing military spending. Has it occured to anyone that 750 to 1 trillion seems like a lot to be spending - even in Iraq. Don't think they aren't diverting much of that money to developing hypersonic missiles and laser guided whatnots. 750 billion and we can't afford armor plating? Get fucking real. Bushco is going to unleash another 9/11 attack on its own people, declare martial law and put those KBR internment camps to good use. What do you think they are for? Does Ford build cars it does not intend to sell. Does HP make a computer it doesn't forsee being used? Think poeple. Connect the dots. Did anyone notice that Charlie Sheen had the balls to admit that Bushco was behind 9/11. I hate to say it but what we need are more celebs doing likewise. I know that panders to the lowest common denominator in this TV wasteland but at least some of the chimps will put down their toys and take notice.

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Yes - Revolution. I fear that is the only way out as well but as you stated, it would be a difficult task to gather the moment to make that happen. I have some very liberal friends but they look at me as if I'm out of my fucking mind when I even suggest Bushco had anything to do with 9/11. This is the real problem - complete and utter apathy. Deep down inside they may even accept that Bush was responsible but as long as their upper-middle class lives remain unchanged, why rock the boat. They just don't have the historical perspective to realize that government dictatorships do still happen - even in the good ol' US of A. How in the hell do you make them understand - pry their eyelides open and make them watch Steven Jones videos?

I am busying myself with preparing for the shitstorm in my own way. That means building a yurt in an isolated part of unnamed state, using solar panels and as I have a green thumb, growing my own plants. I will keep quiet and try not to appear to wacky lest I be singled and shipped off to some KBR "re-programming" facility. It is hard to admit that this could be happening but we all know this is where it is heading don't we? I would suggest putting together a website that puts people in touch - if only just to say I hear you brother and to have an idea of what kind of numbers we are talking about. Regional alliances so to speak . . . Good thing we are still able to bear arms eh? This is what our forefathers anticipated and feared - another king George!

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Please leave the 60s where they belong. In the rose scented memories of people trying to relive imagined glories from their past.

I'll be glad when that generation finally retires and quits seeing "injustice" in everything they see.

Geez, it's been 40 years! Quit tilting at windmills!

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To all those calling for violent revolution:

Violence is not neccessary, and will always be counter-productive. Some who advocate violence here are like the infiltrators of the peace movement of the 60s, who tried to push the peace movement over the edge into the realm of criminality, in order to discredit them.

I got news for you: Just as the evolution of a faster cheetah leads to the evolution of a faster gazelle, the strategies of the good guys is pacing the strategies of the Bush gang, and those of the cabal that pulls their strings. We will not be baited into a trap!

Sun Tzu said 'every war is already won before it is even fought.' Peak oil is here. The 9/11 terrorist attacks have been exposed. The excuses given for America's invasion of Iraq have been proven as lies. America's leadership is clearly lacking in imagination, solutions, and a working 'moral compass', and it has become glaringly obvious. It's not difficult to maintain the moral high ground, with the cabal in power being as outrageous as they are. Even if we suffer some emotional discomfort today, putting off our natural desire to seek justice, we know that we will win tomorrow. The Bush cabal is already toast, and has been even before 9/11/01.

Any Bush dead-enders who come to this forums to bait the 'radicals' needs to rethink their postions. Please, treason is not a secure career path. Fly right, while you still have a chance. It's too late to keep fighting. Your days are numbered.

Should it come that the United States absolutely needs to be dissolved, (at least for a little while), it will happen without violence. Life will go on. There are people in every level of state and local government, willing to maintain the peace and good order. Those in the federal govt who do real work for real good, like testing cattle and monitoring pollution, will offer their services to their state governments, and life will go on.

It's an illusion that the people are hopeless, while the federal government is all-powerfu. The notion that any government has any power outside the people's consent, is a ridiculous lie.

We're not buying.

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Wow ... the history one reads is nothing like the history one lives through ...

At least Don Hazen seems to be aware that most of the '60s took place in the 70s.

Of course the idea that the Peace and Freedom Feminist Sex Drugs RockandRoll Movement was ONE movement, and that it sprang full grown from the guitar of Bob Dylan is at least half our problem.

With the exception of the Rock and Roll part EVERYTHING we think of as 60s Radicalism or Bohemianism has roots in the 1850s, and an unbroken organizational pedigree from that time to the First of Reagan.

And while we all like to remember the cute and cuddly tie-died long haired hippies as the icons of that time ... hippies weren't even a fraction of the picture.

There's a little question of a trade and labor union movement, that included 1/3 of ALL employees, nationally without counting the municipal employees such as police and sanitation workers. Key industries such as steel, rails, mining, and "heavy" manufacturing were all heavily unionized -- those Unions had enormous power to endorse and fund political candidates -- and when strikes were called, unions honored each other's picket lines.

None of the work done by union labor could, at the time, be 'offshored' or 'outsourced.'

There was also :

Veterans against Militarism: all the GI Joes and Dogfaces were jusifiably proud of having saved the world from Hitler -- but except for the American Legion superpatriots and war nostalgists most Vets were happy to take their GI benefits as patrtial compensation for the loss of their own youths, but weren't so very eager for their own sons to be soldiers spreading freedom at gunpoint.

Urban Unrest: basically the balance of force between mobs and police was far more equal : inner cities could burn ... did burn ... and insurance companies and real estate investors, not residents, suffered the loss.

Hunger in America: today we're concerned about people without healthcare and pensions ... in the '60s we still had people living in a chronic state of semi-starvation.

Jim Crow Law: it didn't take a moral genius to figure out the the Klan, lynch law, racial disenfranchisement and a legal system that justified them needed some modification.

Independent media: Broadcast media functioned under a 'fairness doctrine' and news was not a profit center ... it was 'public service' neccessary for license renewal.

Communist Partys: Although we didn't like to admit it Overseas Communists contributed money, leadership and inspiration to a large number of independent dissident groups ... and there were TWO domestic Communist Parties whose members showed up in union, peace, civil rights, and academic freedom movments.

Assassinations: yes, everyone was energized and motivated by the War and the Draft ... but the assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK, Malcom, resondated all the way back to the judicial murders of Sacco and Vanzetti, Joe Hill, and the Rosenburgs.

The Committees: in case anyone was getting too comfortable in their own liberal skin, there were always the House and Senate Un American Activities Committees' hearings to remind leftists that none of us were really safe.

The Abortion issue: was still very much life-and-death. The consequences of an out of wedlock birth were horrific enough for the woman ... but young men had 'shotgun wedding' and similiar cultural sanctions to fear -- and that in turn led to some equally fraught issues concerning marriage and divorce in the late 40s and 50s.

Flower Power -- was basically a joke ... those who took it most seriously were laughing the loudest.

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I don't think anyone is baiting the radical left to overthrow the government. I think many of us are waking up to the fact that when the moment demands action for our own self-preservation and liberty, we will be ready. You will notice that nobody said anything about firing the opening salvo. I think people like you will be singing a different tune when Blackwater Security starts patrolling your neighborhood after another "terrorist" attack and begins collecting weapons under the guise of national security. I guess the constitution really will be just a piece of paper at that point won't it?

More importantly I don't give a shit what Sun Tzu said in antiquity ok! Our forefathers said a lot of things that are already outdated - abortion, nuclear proliferation and the IAEA - please spare us that tired line. Yes I am talking about those same forefathers who defied Britain and created this once great country. I suppose we should have gone on being taxed without representation though eh? Your argument holds no water. We hardly have to look past what Thomas Jefferson said to realize that times are changing incredibly fast and they demand fresh perspectives. Yes let's all start falling back on Tiberius Gracchus and Sun Tzu and see where that line of thinking gets us. Russia crushed generations of people who could have risen up and destroyed the Lenin-Trotskyite cabal (which was astonishingly small and un-sophisticated in nature) before it seized power. There ARE times when revolution is necessary. You can speak like this because you have never lived under a Pinochet, Peron, Ceacescu or the fortcoming Buscho dictatorship we are about to realize. My ex-girlfriend grew up in Romania under Ceacescu and she would beg to differ with your non-violent approach. Many times there is no solution and blood will be shed so that future generations may endure.

Do you want peaceful revolution within Pakistan, Egypt or Saudi Arabia? They are longing for freedom but are repressed by American puppet regimes. Even if those transitions were peaceful they could end in absolute disaster, especially in the case of Pakistan. Peaceful or not I do not want a radically Islamic regime with it's hand on the button, frightening its next door neighbor who, thanks to Bushco, will soon be matching it nuke for nuke. Sometimes brutality, revolution and the likes are necessary. I love the Gandhian ideal but unless we all lay down our arms simultaneously it just means that someone is left holding a gun while the rest of us are just left defenseless.

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OK. For inspiration, take a look back at the '60s. The fact that BushII makes Nixon and even Reagan look good (or not so bad) makes the USA look pathetic.

Justice is For Sale. Those with money can buy it. Freedom is For Sale. Ditto. Healthcare, insurance, family life, etc. etc. all are For Sale because Americans believe that "Democracy" means being able to buy whatever you can afford.

To me, it means permitting natural and inevitable social change to happen without violence and chaos. That means that the governing class, whose vested interests are always threatened by social change, need to be replaced by working class stiffs--non-violently. Term limits only means one plutocrat steps aside for another plutocrat.

At bottom there's the American worship of celebrity. Until Americans get our heads out of "Self" "Me" "People" and all the rest of the printed garbage, and until we blow up our TVs and throwaway our newspapers -- ain't nothin gonna change. We gotta start the winds blowin' again.

So enjoy your nostalgia while you can.

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Want to stop the war. Stop paying taxes. Al Haig once said."Let them march all they want to so long as they pay their taxes."

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Here's your chance to make a difference. Atlanta, April 1- go to: www.georgiapeace.org for details.

We have to take a stand NOW. More and more people are waking up to the reality that we live in a police state already. We have to take back control before it is too late. They are tagging us, our animals, our children. Who do you think they are building the "detention camps" for? They cannot build enough of them to hold us all if we act now. They are tagging the animals now. We are next. Once they mandate the chip, they will have us. We will just be rats in a maze with no way out.

Be responsible for creating a powerful, positive future for yourself, and your family. One does count, and one can make a difference.

Stand up for yourself, and for your children. We cannot wait any longer.

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Writing to you all from Jerusalem and I am filled with the spirit of the '60's and loaded for bear from what I have witnessed and experienced these past 14 days living in the little town in occupied territory of Bethlehem.

Spent today with left wing radical Israeli atheists, Jews, progressive Palestinian Muslims and Christians in the lower Galilee, who are STANDING UP to Big Brother with nonviolent resisitance
And we won't back down.

New and exclusive interview with the ICON of the Spirit of the 60's MORDECHAI VANUNU will appear soon on WAWA

20 years ago Vanunu stood up to Big Brother when he told the world THE TRUTH:

That Israel had gone nuclear.

Vanunu has been held captive ever since and is now being tried for speaking to the media.
The USA media has failed to report on his historic FREEDOM OF SPEECH case which bagan 1/25/06

But WAWA has
and
We won't back down

http://www.wearewideawake.org/

"If I can't dance, it's not my revolution."-Emma Goldman

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YA see, "they" don't care about money because there is no such thing. The only way to stop supporting the war is by killing the value of the fiat American dollar.The only thing to use as a weapon is Credit. Charge the hell out of the whole banking system. It's the only way to brake the banks control and create our own destiny. Because no one can pay off the debt with debt. Then you find that the war is not being run on funding. It's running by participation in the economic model. Stop participating and change the game.
If people need pension funds, retirement, just charge it! That's the only way the government can make it happen just do it yourself and get the government out of the loop. You charge it instead of them. Then you have the control.
As far as investing in businesses with sustainable models, well forget it. As long as we participate with a foundation of fiat money and credit based economy, your only return on investment is debt!
The war is financed with debt. As we speak, Condoliza is going to give 200 billion to help another country to help them over come their problems. Where does that money come from? This country is flat broke. Let China give the money out, they own this country. Otherwise she's giving away somebody elses money. Oh, hell just charge it! I can't help someone else until I can help myself.
Yup, Chinas going to start using Euros instead of Dollars and it's going to devaluate the buck fast. So the best investment you can make is hard goods. Now! Thatis a better savings than sticking "money in the bank at 1% interest.

The only thing our country has in the bank is Nuclear bombs. That is the currency of power we wheel. The treat of annialation.

There is a plan underfoot most everyone doesn't realize, to create a one denomination world currency. That way the debt of the United States will be taken up and "lost", never to be paid back! Because, really, THINK, there is no way 9 trillion dollars can be paid off. Especially when Bush supports the neo-con corporate economic model that is the root of the whole debacle. It's absolutely impossible when "they" keep raising the debt limit. And even if the Democrates get in office and create and raise taxes, ask your self, "What is the debt being paid with, what is the substance of the tax? " It all a smoke screen. They stoled the wealth of the people, long ago. What you have in your pocket is a bank note from a bank without a country, without anything but the ability to create "money" out of thin air, Debt.
It's all blood money. The fruit of everyones labor has been stolen.
Everyone needs to get as many charge cards as they can and just run'm up. All "they" will do is increase your limit!
By food, gas, and what ever you think is necessary! then "get the hell out of Dodge"!
(Oh, for all you younger folks that don't know what that means, it is line used in old western movies when the sheriff chased the bad guys out or anyone got fed up with the town of Dodge City, Kansas.)
This whole war thing is a smoke screen, a distractive tactic. Mean while the resources of the world are being controlled and sued at unpresidented rates, beyond the capcity of production and demands of a growing 3rd world stiving for the same American dream that has caused the whole mess.
The oceans are being mined for food, the oil production is over the hump of peak production and going down fast. The weather paterns are changing so fast it will start erratic food production problems before long. The worlds rain forests are being chopped up and burned for short term profits and demand that is causing droughts through out the world. The populations are screaming for land, space, food, power and on and on.
And all of this is because the economic model that is perpetuated is one of Growth for profits (for a few).
So to fix it first we need to break it.

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Even though I was born in the 70's, the 60's in America and to a lesser extent elsewhere, brings me a lot of inspiration. I think it was a delayed backlash to all the kids whose parents got decimated in WW2 from around the globe (the human holocaust) and also all the groups who were supressed by the mindset which took us into that tragedy and the Vietnam war, remember all those assinations as well. In England we had our own mini 60's during 87-92 peaking in 89 (which was called the summer of love, ironically:) During the mid to late 70's fascism began to rear its ugly head again, we had a slight reprieve with the punk movement but then the 80's hit full force with Thatchers consumerist revolution.

We all started to get together around a lot of American culture during the 80's like Graffiti, Break Dancing, Electro and Hip Hop, then later all the House and Techno started to have an effect. Once the drugs like LSD, Ecstasy, Speed and the old favourite Cannibis started being taken everything just came together. You would go to a Rave and see loads of different people, dancing, smiling and hugging, diferent classes, colours, sexes and sexualities all together it was really surreal. Before this people would go out in segrgated groups, men would try and pull and if they couldn't would just end up fighting. At raves people would just chill together and talk about loads of different things as well as dancing their teets off.

We had a Conservative government at the time (your equivalent would be the republicians) who hated what was going on, alchohol sales plumeted and different people were treating each other as family, not fighting or causing trouble. They cracked down big time, you would see loads of riot police at Raves with sheilds and batons beating the crap out of ppl on acid, most of the newspapers were in a frenzy talking about the dangers of drugs and this new Rave menace. This didn't stop it however it just got bigger, loads of parties going off left, right and centre it overwhelmed the police and government. But eventually we all got segregated again, Alcopops were introduced to lure the young, tough new measures were bought in to break up parties and people (anything over ten ppl was illegal) meeting, even on their own land, your house and car could be confiscated. Loads of sly measures were bought in aimed at travellers, gypsies and squatters and for a while things seemed to grind to a holt.

But as the cycle spins back round the human spirit is in the ascendency once more, we live in far more dangerous times, global warming, crazy men desperate to hold onto power, sacrificing loads of people (nothing new there then) and our new enemies, it used to be Communist's now its the Muslims turn, down with scape goats and distractions, viva la people. Btw we did our fair share of protesting, but the real revolution is in how we treat each other:)

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I was at The Fillmore in San Francisco during one of the Last Days concerts. Laying flat on my back on one of the crash benches that lined the walls completely blotto, somehow I knew it wasn't only the end of Fillmore, but of an era too. I recently went to my old neighborhood at the corner of Haight and Fillmore the energy was totally different. We were a neighborhood where gays, straights, blacks, whites, punks, and politicos lived and loved. I saw a neighborhood that appeared to be nothing more than a tourist trap. I felt disjointed there and disappointed too.

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Mistakes were made, some brutally wrong. But the sum of all the plusses and minuses still comes to a very positive outcome. Rember when Lake Erie caught fire because it was so polluted? The EPA was formed. Civil rights, equal rights women's rights, abortion choices, a war ended, a crooked president was ousted schools were desegregated, and for the red blooded patriots out there, the bald eagle was saved from fucking extinction.

Conversely, not all mistakes were from the protesters and activists. People were beaten, killed, jailed, spied-on and framed by a crooked FBI. The National Guard fired on unarmed students at Ohio and the University in the south (anyone remember the name?) killing them. I remember the Chicago police force brutally clubbing anything that looked black or had long hair until blood splattered onto the lens of the TV camera. So not all the bad came from the drugs or the "hippies."

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There is a good chance that a combination of a gigantic earthquake and the eruption of the Yellowstone volcano (yes Old Faithful is a volcano) will drive us together lest we cease to exist. The earthquake is called Cascadia, it has happened before and there are signs that it could happen again, soon. This is also the case at Yellowstone. These two events could actually interact geologically, thus happening in unison or close thereto.

I am talking about a good bit of the Northwest coastal region disappearing, and the ash borne winter from the Yellowstone eruption would put us in a deep freeze for many months.

Would we come together, or wait for FEMA? Could we come together without these catastrophies. Some here think we can't. Guess what? The greatest catastrophe will be the loss of democracy in this great nation. Why can't that one bring us together, NOW?

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Today's headline in the L.A. Times reads "500,000 Pack Streets to Protest Immigration Bills"

That's a lot of folks. Check it out at www.latimes.com/news/local. They also have a neat photo layout and a video as well. That's progress, though many might not see it...those with very short or no memory, wont remember the young Chicano students who walked out of high shcool class and University classes to protest the war and racism in the U.S.beaten in the streets by LA's finest and a leading Chicano journalist shot and killed by the same.

But it is not enough of course, I don't mean in any way to imply that. However, getting 500,000 people in the streets to protest and "petition the government for redress of grievances" is as American as you can get...our good side that is. The cops did not freak out and the magnificent protesters did not riot.

Reading through all the postings to Don's article has been quite an experience for me. Sometimes I felt sad that folks really had that negative view of the late 60's and 70"s activism. Other times I felt contemptuous for the writer and the vindictive and ignorant things the writer was saying.

In an earlier post on here I got so angry I forgot for a moment what I was doing. I finished up anyway. Drank a couple beers and listened to some Bob Dylan, old and newer. He used to piss me of sometimes, and sometimes I flat loved him deeply. Same way I think of late 60's and 70's...a mixture of hatred and love, anger and joy, brutal ugliness and ecstatic beauty.

We did the best we could to do things differently, to try to make love a real possibility for all of us, to oppose evil as we saw it and maybe help bring forth a better world.

I am proud of us all.

Joseph

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I am a product of the 60's. Unlike many of my contemporaries I stayed pretty close to the original theme of the 60's. I home-birthed, home schooled and manufactured the first all natural citrus based organic products in the U.S. Our family of 5 was independent, self reliant, well rounded, and most importantly, happy. We never cost the state a penny in education, rehabilitation, medical, or welfare. We never did drugs of any kind. We worked hard, honestly, proudly, and though I would not change the choices we made I am not happy with the results.

Currently because of our choices, which never harmed one other person and only produced positive results, we are living in abject poverty. My husband and I are homeless as a result of a court decision brought against my company by a greedy, dishonest, lying, cheating, s.o.b. of an attorney. That was 10 years ago. The attorney has since been disbarred for cheating every client he ever worked for out of thousands of dollars. We were his first clients. The courts gave George Lasko Jr., attorney, my company of 17 years simply for the asking. And instead of processing my complaint against Lasko, Jr. the San Bernardino superior court and Judiciary Council ruled it 'frivolous.' Frivolous in legalese means, " you can't win. This simply means the court will rule against you. It has nothing to do with right, wrong, fair, or just. But it is legal and polticial. This criminal ruling gave Lasko an additional 10 more years with the courts blessing to screw more than 50 people, under color of office, out of their livelihood, and future earnings.


As a result of corrupt courts, my kids are starting out in the hole. They had to borrow money to go to school now strapped with student loan debt, high rents, impossible closing cost and down payments, they struggle working very hard to, not get ahead, but to just get even. Our little company was their future. It was going to make life for them a little easier. The American dream in progress. Corruption at the basic fundamental level of our democracy, in the court system, is our greatest shame and failure. It is what is wrong with America today. Life would be very different if the courts would have played fair. Corruption is always harmful and many many lives are worst off and finding the American dream a nightmare.

If the system we fought and so many died for in Vietnam, World I, II , shoot, you can go all the way back to the revolutionary war, is democracy then I am convinced. America is about justice. Justice is about due process and equal access. Without due process and equal protection you have tyranny and oppression. Oh yea, we are there. Gitmo, Abu Gharib, Iraq, Iran, is action without due process and equal protection. Due process was the battle cry of the 60's. With due process we would never have gotten into Viet Nam. Without due process we got into Nam, Laos, Cambodia. It is a license to kill.

Congress is DUI, the supreme court is DOA, and the president is MIA. The only thing working in this country is the people. We still barely have the right to vote. Voting non politicians into office is the only way to get our country back and out of the hand of corrupt politicians.

I am a mom and grand mom. I am not a politican. I don’t care about politics. I do know the difference between right and wrong. If I was running for congress I would have just 3 simple goals I would want to get done if elected to congress. First, I would want to forgive every student loan. Second, I would ban legalese. If it isn't in plain English it is an automatic no vote. Third, I would propose a Bill that makes the Bill of Rights the Supreme Law of the land. Right now the Bill of Rights is not ratified and has no legal standing within the States. Simple things we understand is where change can start to make a difference.

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The Revolution is already here but it isn't the one you were hoping for. The hunt is on and your civil liberties are the target. You have no money ergo you do not exist - period! That is our reality. Your children should be less concerned with making down payments and meeting closing costs and more concerned with staying out of a KBR internment camp. As you have no money to speak of you will be targeted first, along with minorities and the 5th column (watch out Alternet posters).

I am hard pressed to find a more defining moment than September 11, 2001. It amazes me each and every day that Americans still insist on living in a state of utter denial. Not since Hitler's Germany have so many people buried their heads in the sand. Remember the Reichstag fire? If we have a chance of de-throning this regime it is by exposing the lie. The evidence is there (and more importantly, it contradicts the official story). If Americans would just step up and admit what they know to be true in their hearts - Bushco killed 2800 Americans as a pretext for petro-wars and neo-imperial plundering. I am begging Americans to demand the re-opening of the 9/11 investigation so we can start to put the pressure on these assholes. Imagine how quickly their house of cards would collapse if 60-70% of Americans believed and acted on their anger over this traiterous, cowardly act. If we could prove Bushco was behind 9/11 we can begin thinking bigger than impeachment - we can start talking in terms of hangings!

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The Draft, (with a capital D), may create protestors, selfish or otherwise, but wars will not end because a draft is in place. The Vietnam War would never have lasted 10 bloody years without a draft, nor would 58,000 names have been etched into the Vietnam memorial.
The draft is a manpower tool that provides the government with a pool of young people that can be used as cannonfodder for military adventurism, whether against Iraq, Iran, Korea, or Canada if the Leader decides the United States has been threatened, (by terrorists, the new communists).
The draft, we are told, will radicalize young people against their government's imperialistic wars.
To the contrary, draftees will be just as vulnerable to propaganda and lies as soldiers in a volunteer army.
Some say the draft will democratize the military.
Only if draftees and enlistees can question their commanding officers, or resign if they discover they have been lied to regarding their "mission". Only if soldiers are paid a living wage, and as veterans are entitled to the benefits and health care that are enjoyed by the politicians who sent them into harm's way.
The rich will avoid serving in war, whether or not there is a draft. There will be chicken hawks ready to send others to die, with or without a draft.
Outraged by the PATRIOT ACT?
Then how in heaven's name can we accept a military draft that usurps our most basic freedoms?
A military draft has no place in a democracy, representative or otherwise. It belongs in a police state, where the citizens become the property of the government.
Protest against the obscenity of Bush's war against Iraq, but don't enable the war makers to provide additional troops to add to this pointless carnage.
Peace, now.
Lee Lears

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Mr. Hazen,

It must be painfull to live in the past.

Our generation learned and was taught an entirely different set of values.

Sincerely,

A Baby Boomer

P.S.

I would say that a lot of the demonstrators back in the 60's were motivated not so much by patriotic loyalty as they were by pot and acid.

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we are at the crux of a new civilization. We are empowered technically to communicate ideas and thoughts and hopes of peace to the entire planet. We should take this "window of opportunity" to join with other cultures and nations who are also sick and tired, and dying, of this world as it is. It cannot go on like this much longer. We should challenge the world to a day of peace. For one day no one will be killed or tortured. Everyone will turn the other cheek. We will overcome our hideous connection to religions, which are man made. there will be no armageddon.If we can do it for one day, then we can do it for eternity because we all know thart there is only this monent at which we exist , there is no future or past. Nothing is worth taking the life of another one of God's creatures for any reason. There is no excuse.

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george orwel and his animal farm veiw of the future::

a foot on the face of a man forever...

could this be happening? LET THIS PLAY END!

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Orwell's "Reflections on Ghandi" more or less describes all the reasons why the 60's revivals are stillborn. This could raise the question of "What is enough?" but my faith in the 101st keyboard commando brigade is sufficiently low I put more stock in fleeing the country than any positive outcome.

We are witnessing and in thrall to something considerably larger than a mere confluence of crises. We are being confronted by something so cruel, so evil, so sinister, so insidious that we are not prepared to confront or even acknowledge its savagery or existence. The military apparatus previously directed at Third World neocolonial regimes is being turned inward. Most people in the US have no idea what that means or what's been done in their name in El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Nicaragua, Iran, Indonesia, Greece, or anywhere else. Most people haven't the faintest idea of the gravity of what's happening. A good place to start booking up is the the Third World Traveler, in particular see the Global Rollback Network excerpt to get an idea of who you're up against.

Do not attempt to bring back the 1960's. You can and will be massacred or mass imprisoned, and I'm talking about by the millions, not some Kent State farce with only a couple of casualties or a couple of isolated political prisoners framed up by the FBI. You are dealing with something vastly more brutal than Nixon, and you will pay dearly for underestimating it.

Do not attempt violent revolution. That's essentially akin to threatening a cop with a squirt gun to get him to shoot you. You are so outgunned it's preposterous. It's also immoral, in case you were wondering, but the balance-of-power argument settles the debate when morality is set aside as some other than myself are wont to do.

You will need to devise a new movement with a fundamentally different character, using fundamentally different tactics, in order to cope with the drastically differing circumstances. You must discover and act on the de facto not de jure power structure. You must think in timescales of centuries and millenia. You must think of how to render the changes you make irreversible. Above all, you must think of how to carry out your program without getting exterminated, for the dead do not exert political influence. Martyrdom is dead; the martyr is now subject to character assassination as well as physical assassination.

It's probably obvious what I think of the chances of succeeding in any of this, but I'll refrain from saying it outright in order to avoid discouraging whoever may succeed. In any event, if you ignore my warnings you do so at your and your cause's peril; this is not frivolous fearmongering or mere excessive risk aversion.

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Bring back the draft! That'll end the war faster than anything.

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Yeah. Let’s grow our hair, go out and have lots of fun, love and sex! (we will think about the ideological framework later. At least we will have no time to fight our own people and other terrorists ;-)

Hopefully this time people will not take their ideology to serious.
It just doesn’t work that way. In the end, it will only lead to more pain and suffering (the Jedi is right) Awareness is the key, let the Universe take care of the rest. Now, does that sound familiar? ;-)
Peace from Holland.

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The Haight

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The Haight

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My parent's generation was exhausted at the end of the Vietnam era. So much so, that they turned inward and remain there. They were too exhausted, or so it seems to me, to even pass down or instill some of their zeal to us when my generation came around. People my age (generation Why) are used to structure (everything from school systems, block scheduling, choosing a college 2 yrs before grad etc, planning a lifelong career, to lists of the only 100 music albums we SHOULD own). We're not prepared to take risks (especially when it comes to our views and opinions) and we're afraid of what's outside the norm, or 'accepted'. Why do you think we havent a clue as to how to manage our finances, and are in serious debt, but all we do is whine about it, especially the people who have more than most? We're used to everything being mapped and planned out for us like when our parents provided their helicopter of guidance over us, signed us up for youth baseball and paid for our guitar lessons. We're spoiled. Yet we're in uncertain times (the war(s), economic crises, global warming, the fact that maybe 1 in 1,000 of us will be able to retire someday). We're uncomfortable with that, but most of us just ignore it. Information overload today doesn't help either, like the Internet. Easy distraction. Instant gratification. 'The war is being filmed on a soundstage in Burbank, isn't it?' We're disconnected from what's happening, and each other. Not everyone. But enough to make the task at hand more difficult than it should be. Everything is too scattered for there to be some cultural tidal wave that unites many groups of people. People only seem to be united in the worry about costs of living and many other personal matters, on TOP of war and corrupt government, hypocrisy, greed, injustice, racism, corroding of ethics and education, and so on to infinity. We're either shallow and insular (like kids my age) or just exhausted from the past 40 years, (like people my parents age). We're not even in good physical shape, with the obesity epidemic etc. So it becomes 'alright fine I'll pay $4 for gas just leave me alone and let me buy more stuff' kind of attitude.' I don't think I'm crazy in thinking this, but I just don't know what to do, except go to the store.

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