In defense of the Woodstock generation

A lot of posts critical of Woodstock have appeared on DU today.

What the critics don't realize is that without the boomers and the social revolution in the 1960s, which are symbolized by Woodstock, there would be no Obama (African-Americans had no rights before the 1960s), no equal treatment for women (I'm an expert on that one), no sexual revolution (we would not be discussing birth control, much less abortion).

The peace movement which is so dear to all of us on DU would not exist had a small segment of the baby-boomer generation, often moved by the spiritual and religious awakening that occurred during that time along with the drugs and demonstrations, embraced non-violent protest as a means of changing our world. A surprising number of those who experienced spiritual and religious awareness also experimented with LSD, marijuana. Their experiments, however, did not culminate in drug addiction. Rather most of them rejected drug use eventually. Nevertheless, drugs were a step in their loosing the shackles of the social and intellectual restraints that had made the lives of their parents so visibly miserable.

Every time you hear the voice of Martin Luther King, think about the fact that the people who walked with him and voted with him in the 1960s were the cross-over generation. The music of our time was a part of that whole cross-over. I will never forget the first time I heard Elvis Presley at the Junior High dance in the 8th grade. I was already a musician. Presley sang in a blues style that was influenced by the gospel music that originated in African-American churches and bars. A few years later, I, a white girl who played the violin, became a regular listener to the Sunday morning service on WMOZ, the Black Spot on Your Dial. You who are younger have no idea how revolutionary that was.

So it was Presley who popularized a sound, a vocal style, that opened average Americans to the sound of soul music. (which was very different from sophisticated jazz music) Aretha Franklin, Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan and the rest are history.

Woodstock is a tribute to the oneness of mankind, as were the marches of Martin Luther King. You cannot love one part of that time and hate the rest. Even the violence (which I deplore) signaled the impatience for change that is common among very young people.

Imagine how it was in the U.S. when a huge portion of the population was under 25. It was a world in which adolescence was the norm. Were we, even those of us well over 21, immature? Yes. But -- were we looking at the world without the stain of disappointment that comes with age? Also yes. And that was the beauty of the time. The hope of the time. Was that dream unrealistic? Yes. But it was ours, and to this day I am so grateful for having lived at that time, having dreamed that dream. Never again will there be a time of such hope, such idealism in this country.

If you like cynicism, I can understand that you hate Woodstock. But if you love hope, if you have ideals that you believe in, if you are still willing to fight in a peaceful way for what you want, you are part of the Woodstock generation no matter when you were born.

I think some of it is that they felt like they missed the big party -- instead of making their own party.

What cultural phenomenon did they actually precipitate?

I almost said they could lay claim to Michael Jackson, but that's not even true...he actually started his career way before some of the "me" generation were born.

didn't they one time try to copy Woodstock with Woodstock II?

How did that work out?

What big cultural changes have they fought for? They grew up in a time when there was no military draft, and no big threats of them having to go to war. Their parents (us) indulged them...Big Wheels...Cabbage Patch Kids dolls....Walkmans....Boom Boxes...Video games...Designer jeans, etc.

lots more stuff than I ever had.


Aside from having given them a world in which they could have rights my parents couldn't have imagined, we also indulged them materially.

The big "thank you"?

We are called self-centered, self indulgent, arrogant, self important, and God only knows what else.


As Shakespeare said,

"How sharper it is than a serpent's tooth to have a thankless child"

:shrug:

and in the end it will be the keyword for another generation of ageist griping. The details really aren't important. It all amounts to "they fucked up and messsed EVERYTHING up for US. Why don't they get lost?" I've heard it and said it and heard it again. I'm that old.

I wouldn't trade that experience in that era for anything. To quote an old English guy, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". And there were a lot of "high" times. It was cool, it was far out, it was groovy, it was hip.

And the music was the backdrop, and in some cases, the 'instigator' for all the changes that were going on. I was pretty small back then, but even as a child I understood that what was going on was very significant, and I've never forgotten it. Perhaps Woodstock did not bring about radical social change or the Age of Aquarius, but it was a representation of how far we had come since a decade earlier, and in that moment, for 3 days, people really believed we could live that dream, and I still believe we will. Whenever I'm feeling down, I go to YouTube and put on some Woodstock- 'Soul Sacrifice' or 'Suite Judy Blue Eyes' or some Sly and the Family Stone.

But it was an unbelievably inspiring time, and everyone I know who was part of it loved it.

As far as I'm concerned, the only "excesses" were Viet Nam, Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover and the like.

And it truly was something to see history exploding before your eyes and people just about my age REALLY making a difference in the world. It breaks my old hippie socialist heart when I wonder how many of that generation are now right wing town hall thugs and teabaggers and left behind the ideals they once embraced.

I went to the 25th anniversary in which many of the original acts appeared. About fifty thousand Woodstock veterans showed up and it was quite a nice feeling once more. I was pleasantly suprised to run into Wiyona Ryder back stage. I think that it was a good sign that so many showed up for a concert that wasnt really legal or promoted.

i believe it was the first year girls were allowed to wear pants in my elementary school. i was too young to understand all that was going on at the time, but i do know it was a revolution...an awakening...progress. and the rw has been pissed off ever since.

one small quibble: elvis presley brought soul music to white americans. i grew up listening to soul and jazz music almost exclusively until i was 13 or 14.

... the generation that turned away from cooperative and hopeful American roots toward the extreme individualism of a spiteful Austrian economist (Hayek) and Russian propagandist (Ayn Rand).

What generation is that? Well, the free-market worshipers are scattered among all the generations. Find out which generation has more anti-tax government-is-the-problem free-markets-fix-themselves proponents.

:rofl:

I have no complaints.

The Vietnam war, the racial strife, the assassinations and the fear of a nuclear war happening any day is what we took as the norm.

We said NO! to the authoritarians and they hate us to this day. The things we see happening at the town halls and the tea baggers are what's left of the authoritarians. They never got over the 60's. We often wonder why they vote against their own best interests and I think it is partly because they still believe in authority and the idea that if you play by the rules you will win.

The Dalai Lama said learn the rules so you know how to break them properly. That just what we did in the 60's

The George Bushes (b. 1946) and Karl Roves (b. 1952) were always there. But in the 60's, they were jealous, left out, wondering why the lefties seemed to get all the best music and the hot chicks/guys.

What changed was that during the Nixon administration, the hippies and the anti-war protesters got their heads bashed in or were generally demoralized -- while at the same time a lot of rich old white men who'd gotten the shit freaked out of them by the late 60's started setting up right-wing foundations and think-tanks and CIA front groups and subsidizing the frat rats and dirty tricksters.

The other thing that happened in the 70's was that the right-wingers, not satisfied to play the traditional conservative role of simply trying to keep things the way they were, decided they needed their own revolution if they were going to seem hip and cool and with it. And under Reagan, they actually got one -- if by revolution you mean financial deregulation, cutting taxes on the wealthy, and undermining the ability of the federal government to look after the needs of ordinary people.

I saw it suggested back around the late 70's, by someone who had been there, that the 60's generation had effectively sidelined themselves from ever being able to attain real power and influence in American society. That there was a de facto blacklist that prevented the juvenile idealism of Woodstock from ever maturing into mature action for change.

I think there may be something to that. Clinton managed to squeak through to the presidency, after repeatedly making himself over in more and more conservative terms. But nobody who had been to the left of Clinton's very moderate anti-war positions has ever made it through that blockade. Even a legitimate war hero like John Kerry got swiftboated into irrelevance.

The crucial transition was in the 70's, though, especially around 1976-77. Classic rock was killed off or coopted -- replaced by disco, country, and one glitzy pop star after another. Colorful and exotic hippie fashions gave way to stodgy, preppy, and vaguely country/frontier/traditional styles. And the idea that the US is a center-right country and "liberal" a dirty word were firmly implanted in the general population.

So don't blame the Woodstockers for what happened then and since. Instead, blame the people who pulled off a cultural coup under our noses without us ever noticing.

:yourock: :toast:

Woodstock people simply aren't cutthroat and mean enough to fight the likes of psychos like Rove and W.

I was reminded of this during Sotomayor's nomination process where she was cursed at for possibly being sympathetic or empathetic. If she is going to serve on the Court, she must abide by and protect the rich white male.

When Raygun came along, I was so shocked to think that Americans had voted for a B-rated actor to be Prez. It was like someone punched me in the stomach.

I enjoyed your post very much...thx.

We left the U.S. in 1973 for a number of reasons. We could see the big Nixon controversy coming. It was obvious when we watched him deny his involvement in Watergate on TV that he was lying, lying, lying. But most of our neighbors believed his denials. We saw the war in Israel on the way. We left for Europe where we could find work. Universities in the U.S. were closing down their liberal arts program -- one of Nixon's methods of shutting down protests was to punish those he believed to be leading the American youth astray by defunding a lot of university programs. Nixon did not limit his revenge on liberals to guns and batons. He also bludgeoned us economically as much as he could.

the hippies. While there may have been some crossing over between the two groups, they were different.

I grew up during that time and my dad was in the military so I changed schools frequently as we moved to different parts of the country. I can remember lots of young people who hated the civil rights movement, didn't grow their hair long, wouldn't do drugs, and were very conservative. They were the "Okie from Muskogee" part of that generation. I was in a rock and roll band in Georgia back in the middle 60s and two of us wanted a black singer to join the band while two other guys broke up the band over it because they wouldn't perform in public in the company of a black person. I remember talking to conservative kids who were dying to graduate, join the army, and go over to Vietnam as late as '68, because they couldn't conceive of the U.S. doing anything wrong in the world and didn't oppose the war.

Anyone who blames the hippies or the Woodstock generation for the actions of the older folks of today who are the right wing obstructionists at the Town Hall meetings over healthcare is just ignorant of that fact that not everyone was a longhaired, pot-smoking proponent of peace and love back in the 60s. In fact, a lot of that generation wasn't carrying peace signs and I think those conservative kids have grown up to be conservative adults.

Though I had it all but memorized before exiting my teens, it's still giving me chills of pleasure and joy.

Of all the nuttiness on DU at times over the years I must admit some real shock and despair at seeing the Woodstock criticisms in the past few days. It’s as if your good friends just turned zombie and forgot history.

It might have been only 10 or 20 percent of the whole boomer generation, but it was significant. And after all, a fair number of those peaceful Woodstock-gen rebels not only moved the progressive vision, the geekier ones among us chaffed at using authoritarian mainframes and developed an open, PC-based network. So there you have it, no Woodstock, no DU.

Ever read the book "The Fourth Turning" by Neal and Howe?

It's a good antidote for the "Millennials are a generation of narcissists" BS I see bashing my generation.

:hippie:

This trivializes the tens of thousands who fought and marched for civil rights before WW II (i.e., before the boomers were born) and made significant progress - the most notable being the enactment of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, which almost all subsequent cases cite to enforce the constitution and overturn unjust laws based on race, etc. MLK was not a boomer, nor was Malcolm X, nor Thurgood Marshall, Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Dubois, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Nat Turner, and on and on. Brown vs Board of Education was not a boomer ruling and didn't come as a result of Woodstock. My African American parents and grandparents and great-grandparents could vote and DID vote WAY BEFORE the 1960s (back into the 1800s as northerners). After reconstruction, there were African Americans in Congress... until Jim Crow reared its ugly head.

I am not arguing about the impact of Woodstock as an event of the times, not unlike Live Aid in later years. But IMHO, I don't agree with trivializing those who fought for civil rights for African-Americans throughout the history of this country, as far back as the abolitionists who pushed to establish civil rights (ability to own property, attend school, own a business, etc.) to many free and freed African Americans centuries ago. It has been a long and arduous process that didn't just begin out of thin air in the 1960s and there is definitely alot of work that still needs to be done. And yes, I am a (young) boomer (same age as our President).

My own ancestors were on both sides passionate abolitionists. But it was the baby boomers, the post-war generation that made it possible for Obama to be elected not to the House or to mayor of a city but to the presidency. Now, mind you, I'm not claiming that baby-boomers did this all by themselves, but the changes that baby-boomers marched for made all the promised civil rights a reality -- or more of a reality than was thought possible even in the 1950s when Brown v. Board of Education was decided.

As for MLK, he was not a boomer, but boomers of all races followed him. He was a leader for the boomer generation -- or at least the liberal part of it. Of course, I did not mean to suggest that the entire liberation of African Americans occurred in the 1960s. But the 1960s was the great turning point. It was at that time that a broad cross-section of white American became aware, sometimes reluctantly, of the extent of the injustice toward African-Americans.

I would add to your list that WWII was also an important step in consolidating broad support for the promised rights that had not been realized.

And let's don't forget that many African-Americans fought in the Revolutionary War. I'm reading an interesting book on Washington's Crossing of the Delaware that emphasizes that point (at least in the beginning pages).

By the way, Brown v. Board of Education was a little early for the real boomers, but it made a huge, huge impression on me as a child.

Whenever I see someone saying that the folks in the past got it all wrong, I think corporate PR people and right-wing activists must be rejoicing. Any dismissive attitude toward your political compatriots in the past helps the bad guys. Why is this so hard to see?