Forty years ago, with bag-less, dewy eyes, someone, somewhere was moved to plan it. They advertised– we all chipped in - probably in the Times, while local, like-minded groups organized. Then someone hired a bus and before the sun was in the sky, we climbed aboard.
Hours later in the shadow of national marble, we gathered amidst the port-o-potties. Our permits were filed and we marched.
Our full heads of hair shone in the sunshine and the PA echoed across the croud. Familiar voices sang familiar songs and we all sang along. Mort Sahl. Harry Belafonte. Peter, Paul and Mary and Pete Seeger, of course.
We were against the war. Whatever war. And I like to think we helped end it. There was a sense, as we sat together determined to overcome someday, that the songs and the signs we waved along with the two minutes we'd get on Walter Cronkite that night, would start national sentiment rolling in our direction. And while our sentiments were not popular at first, there came a day that the country changed its mind and we put down our guns if only for a while.
We went down to Wall Street last weekend to check out the protest there. When we got out of the subway car and made our approach, the population of the street thickened. At the core, if you took off your glasses, you could vibe right back to the Washington mall. Noise and smoke and signs in the air. Drums and chants. Folks of all ages and stripes.
But it was different.
In the 1960s, the marches in Washington swelled out of the grassroots efforts of organized people who believed in the uniquely American concept of free speech and our right to peacefully congregate to protest. We held a fundamental belief that if enough of us said something: our voices would be heard. But it took months to get the word out and dollars to place the ads and dimes to make the phone calls and sweat to get the job done.
The Wall Street movement, with the aid of technology and the need for the global news media to fill 24 hour cycles of news each day could have been sparked by a single well-worded "tweet." This brought the world to the park in Manhattan, before they could even come up with a clear agenda. Sure, the sentiment is visceral, but so visceral that it almost has to be expressed with a belch or a sneeze. It is not controversial to say here that the balance of wealth has tipped and it is becoming almost impossible to exist on the low side of that balance. And most of us, alas, reside there.
My children grew up with keyboards as extensions of their fingertips. They have subsequently proven to be expert typists, rattling like castanets while dear old dad hunts and pecks. I have heard that some of our youth are so facile that they can "text" on a cell phone while it is in their pocket. So the organization of this protest is topsy-turvy – where the participants show up and then the organization starts.
The crowds in Manhattan were different than the ones who sat on the Washington mall. They are pierced and tattooed and plugged in and unlike the peaceful throngs who wore headbands and bellbottoms and passed around flowers, these protestors, while peaceful, seem to have an angry edge. I don't know why that is. It may just be the times and the frustration, but I wonder if it is the fact that the information is two way and instantaneous and unfiltered by the dulcet, avuncular tone of Cronkite at seven o'clock.
I believe in social protest. I believe in the first amendment. I believe the most patriotic thing I can do as an American is to publically question the government even if I have to get on a bus to do it.
I used to watch news all day but it got be an endless loop and, if there is a breaking story, they will focus on nothing else even if there is nothing new to add to the story for hours. And if it turns out there actually IS no story, they start the loop over.
I used to have a smart phone, but I down-sized, because I realized I was a lot less stressed if every time got an email from an Ethiopian prince, offering to make me a millionaire, or a drug company promising to restore my inner stallion, my pocket ceaselessly dinged and vibrated. I cashed in built-in GPS for Rand-McNally.
I still usually have a cell-phone in my pocket, but I seldom receive a call. The kids, thumbing their tiny keyboards like African Kalimbas, communicate with me exclusively in text messages. The old flip phone, like the Dude, abides.
After we circled the Wall Street park protest, we headed back up town. We passed “Ground Zero” on the way. Suddenly, up in the sky, we saw a small airplane. That was a bit off-putting. After a moment of staring skyward, it appeared that the small airplane was writing a message.
A park of emotional placards, a place of national tragedy where planes were used, in a most violent way, to send a message, and now, while we were there, a plane in the sky over the park, over Ground Zero, writing words in the sky.
A few of us on the ground looked up. The cops and security guards seemed unimpressed.
“Last Chance.” It said finally. But what does it mean? All the news stations on the drive home offered nothing. An at-home Google search proved the stunt to be an innocent art project, but the whole thing was strange.
And it wasn’t on the news.
This is why Bob Ross should always be on somewhere.
