A Song of Protest

 Come gather 'round people / Wherever you roam /

And admit that the waters / Around you have grown /

And accept it that soon / You'll be drenched to the bone /

If your time to you is worth savin' / And you better start swimmin' /

Or you'll sink like a stone – Bob Dylan

 In the long ago, not so long ago, when ignorance was bliss, we had no problem standing on a street corner, sitting on a lawn, picketing in the streets, our signs and fists held high and waving, “Make Love Not War,” “Power to the People,” “Hell No, We Won’t Go,” and we didn’t mind the jeers and the stares and the name calling, “damn hippies”; we had no fear for our lives, feared nothing, feared no one, except perhaps the Pigs standing their ground armed with batons and bullets and tear gas, their stoic figures a wall against which we pressed, taking a stand for justice, for what was right, for our own lives, our futures, against “the man,” the “status quo” unchanging in a time demanding change, change slow to come, a tide slow to turn, but turning … slowly … change inevitable, inevitably changing us, each of us, all of us; and now, another time, unchanging, demanding change, change slow to come, inevitable change to change us all inevitably, comes again, like the not so long ago, so long ago, and fearless, we must press again against the walls of ignorance, taking a stand for what is right, what is just, what is true, for our own lives, for the future, for the days ahead, and the generations to follow.