I was about probably about 7 or 8 years old, when it happened. One of my most vivid memories, the one that probably gave me the passion to make peace my mission in life and feeds my purpose today was of waking up to screaming at the neighbors house one saturday morning. It was a large family of about 9 kids, something that doesn't exist today. A version of the Brady bunch, combined family because the father was dead, in the vietnam war, and the new husband had added 6 kids to the bunch. The family was screaming and running outdoors, crying...because their brother had been drafted. I still get tears in my eyes when I think of it today. It was the horror in their screams. The sheer fear in their voices. The songs of the seventies, the protest songs, filled my soul and fed the fire that exists in me today. We sang them around campfires. We discussed the very issues that plague us today. Many good liberals of the past saw this coming, knew it was coming back then. Let's dig up those songs. Let's fill our souls with the passion. Some folks will be too young, but I invite them to listen to the wisdom and the fire of the past. You might find something new to remake or bend and mold for today. And I would invite newer songs to add. There are many wonderful new protest songs that are building a fire today.
There is another diary, Linked here, http://www.dailykos.com/... that includes a link to the song by CW McCall, called "Convoy". That diary got me fired up and on a search for other songs that had stoked the fire for me...and continues in my soul today. One, that we used to love to sing around the fire was "If I had a hammer". I will include the link below. The recording is a live version of Peter, Paul and Mary singing with amazing mesmorizing passion about JUSTICE...WARNING AND DANGER. So perfect for our situation today.
Or this one...version of "After the Gold rush" written by Neil Young. Powerful and haunting about what we were doing to the earth.
Or "The Sounds of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkle
"And the people bowed and prayed to the neon Gods they made, and the sign flashed out it's warning.
In the words that it was forming,
And the sign said the vision of the prophets are written on the subway walls,
and tenement halls,
echoed in the sounds of silence"
Or "The Last Resort" by the Eagles
Or One Tin Soldier, from the movie "The Legend of Billy Jack"...who could forget the scene of him as an American Indian walking out of that small cabin with his fist in the air as this song played in the back ground?
So now I invite folks to add their own, there are so many. I loved the diary about CW MCCall, but it reminded me of so many other songs of the past that had fed my soul, that have keep my passion for peace, and the mission of the occupiers on wall street, freedom, justice...to have those words come back again. Oh, I have missed this. The soul of the rebel. It's time to wake up the rebel in each and everyone of us, and I know what does that is different for each of us. Please share!