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"No, we don't really believe that we can get anything we want at Alice's Restaurant (excepting Alice). But it takes us back to a time when we believed we might get anything we wanted, even though we wanted the world, and we wanted it now!" (Photo: NightFlight)
A Thanksgiving Ritual for Sixties-Style Activists
The world keeps doing all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly things. But kid, it's never too late to rehabilitate yourself, to start once again creating enough of a nuisance and singing loud enough to end war and stuff
Nov 21, 2018
Out here on the left fringe of '60s-style activism, we don't go in much for ritual. We lefties are about freedom, innovation, always finding a new and better way to do things.
Even if you are a devotee of '60s-style chaos and anarchy, though, I bet that on Thanksgiving you do some kind of ritual, something old and familiar, too. Maybe you gather with the same folks every year to share a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat. Maybe you fix the trimmings in the same way as always. And maybe, like so many of us, you sing along with Arlo.
No, we don't really believe that we can get anything we want at Alice's Restaurant (excepting Alice). But it takes us back to a time when we believed we might get anything we wanted, even though we wanted the world, and we wanted it now! Everyone we knew really could imagine 50 people a day--I say 50 people a day--walking into the draft board, singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out, creating the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement. And all we had to do was sing along the next time it came around on the guitar.
Isn't that why so many of us wait eagerly each Thanksgiving for the sound of Arlo to come around on the guitar? It isn't just to recapture our lost youth (though perhaps there is nothing wrong with that). It's also because we were young at a very special time, when it seemed that the whole world would soon shed its aging body, worn down by war and greed and dehumanization, and regain its lost youth.
Never again, we believed, would anyone be arrested for littering. Never again would anyone be fined $50 and have to pick up the garbage. Never again would anyone be injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected, and selected by their government to join the army, burn women, kids, houses, and villages.
Soon, we believed, the whole world would be full of loving people who would take out the garbage whenever it needed to be taken out, bring it down to the city dump, then go back home to have a dinner that couldn't be beat. And not just on Thanksgiving, because we believed that every day would be Thanksgiving. Every day we would feel awestruck and thankful for the little miracles of life, like sharing food and song with people we love. Every day, we would do just a bit more to right the world's wrongs, to make sure that justice really was blind. And all the while, we would remember to laugh and play with the pencils there on the Group W bench.
Well, it hasn't worked out quite that way, yet. The world keeps doing all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly things. But kid, it's never too late to rehabilitate yourself, to start once again creating enough of a nuisance and singing loud enough to end war and stuff. If you've been doing it for 50 years, or more, I bet most of you are prepared to do it for another 50 years. I bet most of you still have high hopes that we can rehabilitate the world. I bet most of you are not proud--or tired.
The golden age of the 1960s is long gone, but anything is still possible. So perhaps you can get anything you want, as long as you remember to sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar--with feeling. Because it is, indeed, a movement: The "Give Thanks and Remember Why You Started Doing This and Why You Keep On Keepin' On" Movement.
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Ira Chernus
Ira Chernus is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of "American Nonviolence: The History of an Idea."
Out here on the left fringe of '60s-style activism, we don't go in much for ritual. We lefties are about freedom, innovation, always finding a new and better way to do things.
Even if you are a devotee of '60s-style chaos and anarchy, though, I bet that on Thanksgiving you do some kind of ritual, something old and familiar, too. Maybe you gather with the same folks every year to share a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat. Maybe you fix the trimmings in the same way as always. And maybe, like so many of us, you sing along with Arlo.
No, we don't really believe that we can get anything we want at Alice's Restaurant (excepting Alice). But it takes us back to a time when we believed we might get anything we wanted, even though we wanted the world, and we wanted it now! Everyone we knew really could imagine 50 people a day--I say 50 people a day--walking into the draft board, singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out, creating the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement. And all we had to do was sing along the next time it came around on the guitar.
Isn't that why so many of us wait eagerly each Thanksgiving for the sound of Arlo to come around on the guitar? It isn't just to recapture our lost youth (though perhaps there is nothing wrong with that). It's also because we were young at a very special time, when it seemed that the whole world would soon shed its aging body, worn down by war and greed and dehumanization, and regain its lost youth.
Never again, we believed, would anyone be arrested for littering. Never again would anyone be fined $50 and have to pick up the garbage. Never again would anyone be injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected, and selected by their government to join the army, burn women, kids, houses, and villages.
Soon, we believed, the whole world would be full of loving people who would take out the garbage whenever it needed to be taken out, bring it down to the city dump, then go back home to have a dinner that couldn't be beat. And not just on Thanksgiving, because we believed that every day would be Thanksgiving. Every day we would feel awestruck and thankful for the little miracles of life, like sharing food and song with people we love. Every day, we would do just a bit more to right the world's wrongs, to make sure that justice really was blind. And all the while, we would remember to laugh and play with the pencils there on the Group W bench.
Well, it hasn't worked out quite that way, yet. The world keeps doing all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly things. But kid, it's never too late to rehabilitate yourself, to start once again creating enough of a nuisance and singing loud enough to end war and stuff. If you've been doing it for 50 years, or more, I bet most of you are prepared to do it for another 50 years. I bet most of you still have high hopes that we can rehabilitate the world. I bet most of you are not proud--or tired.
The golden age of the 1960s is long gone, but anything is still possible. So perhaps you can get anything you want, as long as you remember to sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar--with feeling. Because it is, indeed, a movement: The "Give Thanks and Remember Why You Started Doing This and Why You Keep On Keepin' On" Movement.
Ira Chernus
Ira Chernus is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of "American Nonviolence: The History of an Idea."
Out here on the left fringe of '60s-style activism, we don't go in much for ritual. We lefties are about freedom, innovation, always finding a new and better way to do things.
Even if you are a devotee of '60s-style chaos and anarchy, though, I bet that on Thanksgiving you do some kind of ritual, something old and familiar, too. Maybe you gather with the same folks every year to share a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat. Maybe you fix the trimmings in the same way as always. And maybe, like so many of us, you sing along with Arlo.
No, we don't really believe that we can get anything we want at Alice's Restaurant (excepting Alice). But it takes us back to a time when we believed we might get anything we wanted, even though we wanted the world, and we wanted it now! Everyone we knew really could imagine 50 people a day--I say 50 people a day--walking into the draft board, singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out, creating the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement. And all we had to do was sing along the next time it came around on the guitar.
Isn't that why so many of us wait eagerly each Thanksgiving for the sound of Arlo to come around on the guitar? It isn't just to recapture our lost youth (though perhaps there is nothing wrong with that). It's also because we were young at a very special time, when it seemed that the whole world would soon shed its aging body, worn down by war and greed and dehumanization, and regain its lost youth.
Never again, we believed, would anyone be arrested for littering. Never again would anyone be fined $50 and have to pick up the garbage. Never again would anyone be injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected, and selected by their government to join the army, burn women, kids, houses, and villages.
Soon, we believed, the whole world would be full of loving people who would take out the garbage whenever it needed to be taken out, bring it down to the city dump, then go back home to have a dinner that couldn't be beat. And not just on Thanksgiving, because we believed that every day would be Thanksgiving. Every day we would feel awestruck and thankful for the little miracles of life, like sharing food and song with people we love. Every day, we would do just a bit more to right the world's wrongs, to make sure that justice really was blind. And all the while, we would remember to laugh and play with the pencils there on the Group W bench.
Well, it hasn't worked out quite that way, yet. The world keeps doing all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly things. But kid, it's never too late to rehabilitate yourself, to start once again creating enough of a nuisance and singing loud enough to end war and stuff. If you've been doing it for 50 years, or more, I bet most of you are prepared to do it for another 50 years. I bet most of you still have high hopes that we can rehabilitate the world. I bet most of you are not proud--or tired.
The golden age of the 1960s is long gone, but anything is still possible. So perhaps you can get anything you want, as long as you remember to sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar--with feeling. Because it is, indeed, a movement: The "Give Thanks and Remember Why You Started Doing This and Why You Keep On Keepin' On" Movement.
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