An anthem from the 60s

One of my favorite songs from the 60s was a critically acclaimed hit by The Youngbloods in 1967, the year it was released. But the group itself remained relatively obscure, despite the success and impact of “Get Together.”

I was a junior in high school then, and I was starting to hear about our country’s involvement in the Vietnam War. I didn’t get the album, but I must have listened to the song hundreds of times over the decades since. It was reissued in 1969, the “Summer of Love,” the summer of the Woodstock Music Festival in rural New York State, and the summer when protests against the war were ramping up on college campuses across the country.

Now it’s 50 years later and racism has been rearing it’s ugly head in a violent way yet again. The country is in turmoil, not only from a terrifying coronavirus pandemic and new Great Depression, but now from anguished soul searching about racism, inequality, and the state of police departments and the federal government and their handling of peaceful protests. We see the open-sore state of racism in the country as we’ve not seen it in many years. After the murder of a black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer in Minneapolis this past May 25, a lit fuse went off. Peaceful protests in my city and many others, were followed by a night of rioting and looting. It was horrendous that amidst the peace and harmony of the earlier protests came that violence.

Protests the following week spread to more than 450 cities and towns across the U.S. and in other countries, again, mostly peaceful.

Two weeks later I was listening to music on YouTube and there it was, the song from the 60s by The Youngbloods, an anthem for peace and brotherhood that almost sounds innocent or quaint in comparison to the vitriol and political and racial animosity that’s been festering in the land, presided over by a president, attorney general and administration in Washington that condone violence. Tear gassing peaceful protesters near the White House so the president can walk across the street and hypocritically hold up a Bible in front of a church was an act of violence. Tear gas is a very dangerous and toxic chemical whose use in war was prohibited by the Geneva Protocol of 1925. It’s unfathomable that we have gone from being the laughingstock of the world to a now dangerous and yet pitied, fallen giant.

What’s to become of us? Can we even pause to heed the words of love and brotherhood by the Youngbloods, so memorably sung 50 years ago, or was that only the rallying cry of a long past generation? I don’t think so. From the outpouring of passion and youthful protest the past two weeks, I am convinced that change is coming upon the land, at last.

Get Together
Words by Chester Powers
Sung by The Youngbloods

Love is but a song to sing
Fear’s the way we die
You can make the mountains ring
Or make the angels cry
Though the bird is on the wing
And you may not know why

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now

Some may come and some may go
We shall surely pass
When the one that left us here
Returns for us at last
We are but a moment’s sunlight
Fading in the grass

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now

If you hear the song I sing
You will understand (listen!)
You hold the key to love and fear
All in your trembling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
It’s there at your command

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now

I said, come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now

Right now
Right now