Photo: Joan Baez (L) and Patti Smith (R)
by Steve Heilig
PART 1
It was the wondrous Patti Smith’s 70th birthday and she gave a rousing show at San Francisco’s fabled Fillmore, complete with a birthday cake, a thousand fans singing her the happy birthday song, and a blazing encore of The Who’s 1960s signature anthem “My Generation.” “Not tryin’ to cause a big sensation / Just talkin’ ‘bout my generation,” she roared. On the way out and down the stairs, elated by her energy and commitment, I overheard a young voice behind me say “She really shouldn’t do that last song — her generation screwed everything up for everyone.”
Ouch! That hurt, even though she was referring to folks a bit even older than me. And yes, the 2016 presidential election had gone very badly for the kind of values Smith’s generation evoked and espoused. I cringed, looked back in anger at them, but bit my tongue, and just shook my head a little. She just rolled her eyes and they walked on. But her blanket accusation, ignorant though it might have been, is a common one that left me thinking.
“The sixties” have been re-hashed to oblivion but there are big reasons why all that reflection and examination and yes, nostalgia exists at all. The very term “counterculture” implies some kind of opposition to something, or multiple things. People were talking about a “revolution” — but what might that be? It seemed vague, ill-defined. However, if one looks at the constellation of what were often called “movements,” there was indeed “revolution in the air,” as Bob Dylan sang.
I’ve tried to count the movements, and for convenience sake come up with a baker’s dozen. Your results may vary, but here’s my list: Civil rights, feminism/women’s rights, environmentalism/ecology, peace/anti-war, healthcare as a right, healthy nutrition/vegetarianism, gay/lesbian rights, back-to-the-land living, drug decriminalization, Eastern spirituality, Native American rights and values — and of course the musical and artistic freedom that was a soundtrack and documentary for all of it.
Each movement has had varying lasting impacts in the past half century and more. The Revolution didn’t quite arrive …
PART 2!
The movements fractured into distinct crusades that often didn’t talk to each other very much. The underlying economic and political structure hardly changed, and in fact gradually worsened, making many of the ideals unattainable. But think of some, or most of those movements. There were many major advances, on, to pick a few, reproductive and voting rights, expanding healthcare access, employment law, reducing smog and other pollution and development, helping stop a pointless unpopular war, marriage equality, free speech, and more. To say none of that mattered is ahistorical nonsense. Had the life and trajectory of the 1950s proceeded unchanged, we’d all be in much worse shape, if here at all.
But yes, it’s hard to claim real victory on many fronts, as then came the backlash, ignited by the Reagan years. And now it’s come to putrid fruition in the form of Making America Great Again – as in, back to the fifties. The MAGAs seek to roll back virtually every movement listed above, and more, and the crucial dictum learned back in the Watergate era – Follow The Money – is good advice now too. The new broligarchy, a cadre of men often with seemingly arrested adolescent development, cares mostly for wealth and power. That’s nothing new of course, but many MAGAs also seem genuinely terrified of diversity and immigrants and even women. Above all, underneath all their diversionary social issue shouting about trans people and wokeness and so on lies classic grifting and profiteering, including but far from limited to tax cuts for the already rich. The post-sixties emergence of climate warming as an existential global threat just adds to the doomsday feelings. Calling all this greed and bigotry “Christian” just piles on the pain. It’s no wonder so many young folks don’t want to have kids – no matter what the maniacal Mr. Musk advises while waving his chainsaw around.
Cynicism is an understandable and easy trap. By the 1990s Timothy Leary lamented that seeing young people sitting around, smoking pot, and listening to the Grateful Dead was profoundly depressing to him. Reflecting on the Sixties here in San Francisco, Peter Coyote, one of the original Diggers which sparked the brief Haight-Ashbury flowering, called the 1967 peak the “summer of nothing” – yet has remained a committed activist for decades. Leary’s beloved psychedelics are now the subject of much mainstream research for healing varied maladies – including addiction, irony upon ironies. Our friend Dr. Dave Smith of Haight Free Clinic renown is very dismayed at the national turn but retains his “sixties” values and remains committed to resisting where he can, out of “a sense of obligation to do right by my community and my country,” as he concludes in his new autobiography.
Right now we are in a dark era. Some sort of idealistic, committed, functioning counterculture is now more important than ever. In a time of such conflict that can and must, at a minimum, take the form or organized “resistance.” Right now we know, or should know, who the enemy of truth and justice and equality and the health of both humans and planet is. And only a short time into the new evil regime, resistance is building, as more people awake to the unprecedented scam unfolding from the MAGAverse. There’s no space here to lay out all the tactics, people, and organizations mobilizing to preserve freedom and democracy (OK, old stalwarts like the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, Amnesty International, and many more are stepping up, as are many professional associations of scientists, health advocates, etc.; support them how you can. If you wish just two best daily online sources of informed perspective and advice, see historian Heather Cox Richardson and Simon Rosenberg’s the Hopium Chronicles).
The counterculture in this crisis time must be a true “movement,” which implies action. But that action arises from inner conviction and spirit. We can’t realistically demand a utopia but we can insist on truth, sanity, and compassion. Legendary poet Gary Snyder has long called for living with values and action based upon “community, not competition” – in the interest of not only humans but other species too, and for the young among us and future beings. And the values of Peace and Love and “ecology”must never be allowed to go out of style, no matter what generation arrives. I bet that’s part of what Patti Smith intends in still singing that old Who song. Time flies but some things might well be eternal, if we’re lucky and insist on them. In fact let’s end here with a brief slice of Snyder’s poetic wisdom, from a poem titled “Front Lines,” putting things in the big wide perspective…
As the crickets’ soft autumn hum
is to us
so are we to the trees
as are they
to the rocks and the hills.
