The Answer Is Blowing In The Wind

The death of Mary Travers of Peter, Paul & Mary marks ,once again, for many of us baby boomers, the passing of an era when citizens disenfranchised from involvement in the political system, organized en masse to change their government’s wrongheaded policy and course of action. You may ask yourself why we note the passing of Mary Travers on this site. Although considered by many as a supporter of liberal causes, she was a voice for her generation during a particular dark period in our history. Ms. Travers’ passage is particularly poignant to this writer. I remember being just a few feet from Mary, Peter & Paul in the park across from the Conrad Hilton in Chicago in August of 1968 during the National Democratic Convention. Still a teenager, the trip to Chicago was a birthday present from my parents since I was an organizer in Minnesota and Northwest Wisconsin for the Students for McCarthy and the newly elected first female president of the Young Democratic Farmer-Labor Party at the University of Minnesota, in Duluth, Minnesota.  The folk music of Dylan sung by the trio that night gave us courage and strengthened our conviction in a better America even as fellow citizens in the National Guard aimed their rifles with drawn bayonets at our heads.

In many ways, the times are not a changin’ from that period of our history. Government is still too intent on pursuing objectionable policies and citizens are reeling at being ignored and disenfranchised from the process. Like then, the opposition to  the current power brokers is characterized as  a small group of radicals. However, finding their voices falling on the deaf ears of our politicians, citizens are mobilizing to voice their opinions when it is obvious that the America they knew is in the process of being destroyed, or at the least,  irrevocably changed by a charismatic leader who asks all members to follow blindly, without due deliberation. The party line has become more important than independent judgement and critical reasoning.

But As For Me…

In the 1960’s when we faced impediments to the exercise of our civil rights, we brought down the walls of an intransigent government with the revolutionary cry of “up against the barricades.”  When peaceful citizen protest  is ignored by the powerful or dismissed cavalierly by them–when lip service is only given by our leaders  as the train of government continues to railroad their agenda through the halls of Congress at an unparalleled speed–when leaders lie by omission, then a rallying cry  for a Second Revolution to take back the government to its’ original precepts becomes the only choice left!

Rest In Peace Mary Travers

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