I confess I passed over this thread several times thinking of Clint Eastwood's line, in one of those Dirty Harry films, about opinions.

I understand exactly what you're asking, Kendall. I sang, and still sing, a great many of the old labor and protest songs. I was proud to march with Dr. King, I was proud to be on strike, I was proud to be a voice of dissent at labor conventions and, at the time, I felt as though we were making some progress. I didn't go to Woodstock 'cause it was only a rock festival and I thought, at 27, I was pretty well beyond that. I didn't see rock and roll as being about peace, I saw it as being about money.

The young leftists were either competing to see who could become the most radical or, like Jerry Ruben, chucked the movement and joined Wall Street. They lost track of making the world a better place and settled for just attracting attention. As Charity suggests, a lot of people joining marches may merely have been curious and not really thinking for themselves at all.

At the time, we thought we were working to make society live up to its potential. We'd been raised to think citizens had some responsibility in that area. We didn't really mind taxes, they were just the price of having this amazing country. We thought mainstream society had lost its bearings and needed some help getting back on track. The situation today is far, far worse than our worst fears of forty years ago. Begining in the '70s and lasting into the '90s our society abandoned its focus on the success of the larger group and replaced it with a completely narcissistic veneration of ego. Everyone was admonished to "do your own thing" without regard to consequences or the needs of others.

We (Kendall, me and others of our advanced age) were raised on quaint slogans like "I am third" and actually took the golden rule seriously. We thought having such amazing relative wealth also came with certain responsibilities. Today, it's everyone for himself and damn the rest.

No one today really believes that a protest will have any effect. Perhaps it began in Ohio at Kent State. It was completely unthinkable that troops would actually shoot unarmed students, but there it was. We were back in Ludlow Colorado or the 1913 Masacre. We wondered how soon people would be hanged in Haymarket Square.

Fuled by undreamed of avarice, unbridled capitalism together with organized crime has literally purchased or stolen everything on a global scale. Our governments, our representatives, our watchdogs, our media, our natural resources, our religious institutions… everything.

Forty years ago, the idea that regular folks could just make their own music was radical for most city people. We'd come out of the social straightjack of McCarthyism, we'd figured out that ducking under our desks wasn't going to protect us from a nuclear (nucular?) blast. We'd seen, through Ghandi and King, that a large mass of peacful protesters could have an effect and we were in the midst of that short period during which governments thought twice before pulling the trigger. All we had to do was remind people of their best instincts and let them see what they were condoning by inaction. Once they saw the connection, most people were, to some extent, behind the movement.

The value of protest was in how it was viewed and reported by the media. If police were photographed beating people because they wanted to vote or go to school, there was outrage among nearly every segment of society. People could be persuaded to vote for the best interests of the whole society. Today's "me first" electorate can't see beyond the two SUVs in the driveway.

I don't know how to fix any of this stuff but I keep thinking Canada and France look pretty attactive.

      - Mark