I was teaching during the Vietnam war in a high school full of protesters. My students actually stopped traffic on I-5 by marching up the middle of that freeway. They burned draft cards and had sit-ins and lay-ins and boycotted businesses. They got out and demonstrated their ideals. A lot of their enthusiasm and courage came from the music they listened to and the poetry they read. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and practically every voice in the arts and especially in music, pushed the movement on. Where are those voices now? Where are the people with hearts and courage? And today it takes a lot of courage to fight the power of lawlessness that is trying to take over our country, because a powerful felon is actually threatening the citizens who oppose him. It brings back memories of police with water hoses turned on citizens who disagreed in the south, and gas chambers for those who disagreed in Europe. Perhaps the singers and poets are scared. Perhaps music no longer “hath charms to sooth the savage breast”. But I keep hoping and looking for the voices of brave young people who are smart enough to see the danger and sing out about it. This poem that my choirs sang now seems a mockery: ” Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores; Send these, the homeless tempest tossed to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” That golden door has slammed shut except for billionaires who receive gold cards and an immigrant who wields a chainsaw like a movie madman.
SING WRITE CARE LEARN .” Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” (Margaret Meade)