Found this posted on YouTube tonight... I get the feeling the spirit of the '60s is

[1monster]

reincarnating.

[Scootaloo]

1. It would be nice if "the 60's" stopped trying to take credit for what everyone else does

[1monster]

3. You must be to young to remember when the young people led the way.

It is nice to see young people so eloquently standing for what is right again. Recognizing that this spirit has risen again (and BTW, I never claimed that the 60s invented resistance, it's been around in one form or another for millennia) to stand against oppression in no way detracts from those doing so fifty years later.

I've never understood those who foster generational divide. It makes no sense and is a waste of energy.

[Scootaloo]

5. It never went away. And by attributing it to a single generation, as you do...

You are taking the credit.

This is 2015. You're looking at 2015. That's what spirit this is. You can either fall in or stay out. Just stop trying to shove your way to the front.

[1monster]

6. As it happens, I was too young to participate in the 60s; 13 in 1969. So

just how am I trying to take credit?

I really don't understand people who look to cause dissension when there is no reson for it. While I would appreciate it if you would stop hijacking this thread (and start your own if you feel that strongly on a non-issue), I doubt you will, so welcome to ignore.

[cascadiance]

8. Yep, we went through many years of less prominence, but the movement is returning...

[Scootaloo]

20. I would appreciate it if you realized the 60's only existed in the 60's

I'm sick enough to vomit at the gouty old jalopies who keep running around jabbering about "the 60's" as if they were halcyon days that defined the entire fucking world. They weren't, they didn't. It's aged teenagers waxing nostalgic and demanding that all others accede to their fantasy.

This isn't about the 60's. This is about now. if you want to go pleasure yourself while imagining that you changed the world by purchasing a Strawberry Alarm Clock album that one time, I don't care. Just don't do so while waving around our activism and claiming it's yours.

because we wouldn't have to be be out there, if it weren't for you and yours.

[jtuck004]

7. Maybe if we had been together with a more inclusive group we wouldn't be doing this again. n/t

[drynberg]

10. Why did the Vietnam war end? Look it up, we of the 60s moved the Nation, and we can do it again

But not if we play silly "you're taking the credit games", be real, of course it's 2015 and new techniques that may not even be known now are required, but the "spirit of the 60s" is a rally cry, not a claim of anything. We are faced with more profound problems right now, Global Climate Change and Citizens United being among the greatest, and we just can't afford a pissing fight to play games with words. No, much work needs to be done NOW.

[Scootaloo]

17. And see, this is what i'm talking about.

Protest and mumbled dissatisfaction did not end the Vietnam war, just as it did not end any war before it, or after it. Up until Afghanistan, Vietnam was our longest war - eleven years. The North Vietnamese out-fought the United States and won the war, by making a continued campaign in Vietnam more expensive than victory would be profitable.

Protesting wars hasn't ever prevented them, much ;less stopped them. Ask your great-grandparents about the ire agains WW1. Or their parents about the spanish-American war. or their grandparents about war with Mexico. Ask your kids about iraq and Afghanistan, where we adopted the "tactics" of our parents and discovered, oh, still doesn't work.

Saying that protests ended Vietnam is like saying Reagan tore down the Berlin Wall. Not only is it false, but pretending it';s real offers insight to a conceited mind that prefers self-aggrandizing fantasy to researchable reality.

You had your chance. And here we are now. As i said. Join in or sit out, just stop trying to shove your way to the front.

[raindaddy]

16. The Headline Stated the "Spirit" of the 60's

Spirit is a universal quality it can't take credit for anything. The spirit of the 60's is the spirit of Gandhi's salt march, Martin Luther King's civil rights revolution and the labor movement in this country.

[Scootaloo]

19. If it's universal then it's not "of the 60's" - one decade cannot lay claim to universiality

Ghandi's salt march happened in 1930
Martin Luther King's activism began in 1955, and was part of a movement that had been happening since 1909 at least
The Labor movement began in the eighteen fucking forties. Abraham Lincoln was discussing labor theory before the Civil War, dude.

Funny how the only thing "the 60's" doesn't get credit for... is shit that happened in the 60's.

[raindaddy]

21. You're missing the point..

Because someone references the 60's it doesn't exclude other era's of civil unrest. They're simply referencing a turbulent time that lot's of people have "personal" connections with.

The major "protests" that led to the Voting Rights Act and ended Jim Crow occurred in the 60's. As did the major protests that led to the ending of the Vietnam war along with the free speech protests in Berkeley. So whether you acknowledge it or not, the 60's were significant.

The poster could've referenced the spirit of Ghandi's revolution in the 30's or even the French "fucking" revolution but they decided to choose a time and a place that people can relate to because they actually participated in the shit that happened.

[misterhighwasted]

2. I've also had that eerie 'been there done that' feeling lately also

Think the Nation learned anything from that time?

[1monster]

4. For a very long time, I've thought that the lessons had been lost or that the wrong lessons

had been learned.

But, unbidden, (and even unwanted) I find that hope does spring unexpectedly... I hope the young people of today hold out longer than others did in the past.

[maddiemom]

12. The Sixties started, for me, in junior high, and ended in early graduate school.

I even had the experience, in the mid-sixties, of working summers as a camp counselor near Woodstock, N.Y.: well before the famous "festival"; always a very interesting place. If we had use of a car, we'd cruise the back roads, checking to see if Bob Dylan might be spotted around the house where his "backup band" were living (you couldn't miss it because it was PINK). Honestly, a lot of those Sixties rebels, were, in the words of my daughters' generation, outrageous "posers." I came from a very liberal family, but never pretended to be a "revolutionary," mainly because I wasn't rich enough. A comparison of what the "Sixties rebels" were outraged about, with what we REALLY need to be outraged about NOW, is insane. Perhaps if the Sixties "revolution" had been real, the country would be in a far different place today (and anti-war protests would have had an impact). At this point, the "spirit of the Sixties" IS needed, because those raising the protest are those who are affected by it in their real lives.

[LiberalElite]

14. Ever hear of COINTELPRO?

That's what happened to the Sixties "revolution". Infiltrated and rendered harmless to the establishment under the guise of protecting the U.S.A. If the "revolution" weren't real, think the F.B.I. would have gotten involved?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

[maddiemom]

15. Yes.

And my point was not that the "revolution" wasn't real. Among the intellectual and well-educated classes, it was (still somewhat arguable) real foresight. These people were usually not wealthy, however, aside from being able to be well educated. Remember the film "Joe" in that era? Nothing bad was really hitting the working class, let alone the middle class, back then. J. Edgar Hoover ( I had an aunt who was on his office staff, and thought he was bizarre in his obsessions long before it was common knowledge) let organized crime run rampant, and worried about protestors and "Commies". My point was that there were too many "posers" who'd had a privileged life. Real revolution comes from real need and oppression. As has often been pointed out: FDR understood this (as did the Kennedys) and moved to alleviate the threat of real revolution. Right Wing Republicans never seem to catch on.

[ReRe]

9. Kicked

Great find. Very inspirational, and it's not a movie. The problem We the People face is real, 1monster.

[chervilant]

11. knr, 1monster!

Thanks for posting this (and for addressing the divisiveness that seems so ubiquitous these days...)

[randr]

13. Everyone needs to get out in the street

and quit the whining!

[grahamhgreen]

18. I like to say the South is stuck in the sixties.... The 1860's