This Just In – Buffalo Springfield had it right:
“Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away”
In the classic 1960s song “For What It’s Worth”, Stephen Stills makes prescient observations about cops shutting down a nightclub in West Hollywood. Interesting enough – its name was “Pandora’s Box.”
The LAPD arguably over-reacted to the fact that a crowd of young people were in the street. In the book “Neil Young: Long May You Run: The Illustrated History,” Stills describes the incident:
“[Officials] decided to call out the official riot police because there’s three thousand kids sort of standing out in the street; there’s no looting, there’s no nothing. It’s everybody having a hang to close this bar. A whole company of black and white LAPD in full Macedonian battle array in shields and helmets and all that, and they’re lined up across the street, and I just went ‘Whoa! Why are they doing this?’ There was no reason for it.”
The song was out in 1967 and from that point forward, it was an anthem about Vietnam and about Americans’ right to bring an immoral war to its end by way of lawful assembly, protest and petitioning of our government.
That’s an important point right there. Although there were calls for revolution and violence during this time, most college students and young people were following King and Ghandi and engaging in non-violent protests.
Sending young Americans to Southeast Asia to fight and die for a murky cause led the baby boomers to raise their hands collectively and ask insistently … “Why?” When the Nixon administration repeatedly lied about “progress” in the war, bringing it to an end and about all things Watergate, the unraveling began and could not be stopped.
And now … a corrupt government is lying and allowing many more thousands of Americans to die violently for self-dealing reasons of power and control – not policy. They are complicit.
There are 50 Republicans (in the U.S. Senate) who stand in the way of the U.S. Government taking action to restrict the ownership of weapons of war. There is no philosophy or legitimate argument here. There is only corruption. The GOP in the Senate is simply owned by the gun manufacturers and they have orders to block all regulation. In order to keep their power, these Senators are willing to violate their oath and let innocent children die in their classrooms again and again.
It’s not complicated. There is no grey area. The American public has more common ground agreement on this topic than whether or not we like apple pie. We’re not confused. We’re frustrated and sure as hell exhausted. We have been lied to repeatedly about the country being split on this. We’re not.
WE ALL need to go grocery shopping.
WE ALL want to trust that we can drop off our children at school and expect them to live through the day.
WE ALL want to attend worship services un-assaulted.
WE ALL want OUR freedom of assembly to be secured.
Paranoia strikes deep, the song says. The NRA is marketing guns to people who already own guns. Half of all the guns in the US are owned by 3% of Americans. The NRA is flooding the political system with fear-mongering messaging. The more powerless we feel, the more likely we are to arm ourselves.
We must demand that the Senate passes HR8 -The Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021. It was passed by the House of Representatives. Something we know from Congressional staffers is that a ringing phone gets the attention of elected officials. Not emails. A ringing, disruptive phone. They log the calls. They count calls in favor/against any issue. Please, please CALL THEM.
Senator Thom Tillis
113 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-6342
Senator Richard Burr
217 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
P: (202) 224-3154
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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