| Power to
the People: John Lennon’s Legacy Lives On
By John W.
Whitehead
“You
gotta remember,
establishment, it’s just a name for evil. The
monster doesn’t care whether it kills all the
students or whether there’s a revolution. It’s not
thinking logically, it’s out of control.”-
John Lennon (1969)
December 08,
2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- Militant nonviolent resistance works.
Peaceful,
prolonged protests work.
Mass movements
with huge numbers of participants work.
Yes, America,
it is possible to use occupations and civil disobedience
to oppose government policies, counter injustice and
bring about change outside the confines of the ballot
box.
It has been
done before. It is being done now. It can be done again.
For example, in
May of 1932, more than 43,000 people, dubbed the Bonus
Army—World War I veterans and their families—marched on
Washington. Out of work, destitute and with families to
feed, more than 10,000 veterans set up tent cities in
the nation's capital and refused to leave until the
government agreed to pay the bonuses they had been
promised as a reward for their services.
The Senate
voted against paying them immediately, but the
protesters didn't budge. Congress adjourned for the
summer, and still the protesters remained encamped.
Finally, on July 28, under orders from President Herbert
Hoover, the military descended with tanks and cavalry
and drove the protesters out, setting their makeshift
camps on fire. Still, the protesters returned the
following year, and eventually their efforts not only
succeeded in securing payment of the bonuses but
contributed to the passage of the G.I. Bill of Rights.
Similarly, the
Civil Rights Movement mobilized hundreds of thousands of
people to strike at the core of an unjust and
discriminatory society. Likewise, while the 1960s
anti-war movement began with a few thousand perceived
radicals, it ended with hundreds of thousands of
protesters, spanning all walks of life, demanding the
end of American military aggression abroad.
Most recently,
after months of protests over the construction of a
pipeline that members of the Sioux tribe insisted would
harm their water supply,
the Army Corp of Engineers has agreed to look for an
alternate route for the Dakota Access Pipeline to
cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota.
This kind of
“power to the people” activism—grassroots, populist and
potent—is exactly the brand of civic engagement John
Lennon advocated throughout his career as a musician and
anti-war activist.
It’s been 36
years since Lennon was
gunned down by an assassin’s bullet on December 8,
1980, but his legacy and the lessons he imparted in his
music and his activism have not diminished over the
years.
All of the many
complaints we have about government today—surveillance,
militarism, corruption, harassment, SWAT team raids,
political persecution, spying, overcriminalization,
etc.—were present in Lennon’s day and formed the basis
of his call for social justice, peace and a populist
revolution.
Little wonder,
then, that the U.S. government saw him as enemy number
one.
Because he
never refrained from speaking truth to power, Lennon
became a prime example of the lengths to which the U.S.
government will go to persecute those who dare to
challenge its authority.
Lennon was the
subject of a four-year campaign of surveillance and
harassment by the U.S. government (spearheaded by FBI
Director J. Edgar Hoover), an attempt by President
Richard Nixon to have him “neutralized” and deported. As
Adam Cohen of the New York Times points out,
“The F.B.I.’s surveillance of Lennon is a reminder of
how easily
domestic spying can become unmoored from any legitimate
law enforcement purpose. What is more surprising,
and ultimately more unsettling, is the degree to which
the surveillance turns out to have been intertwined with
electoral politics.”
Years after
Lennon’s assassination, it would be revealed that the
FBI had collected
281 pages
of surveillance files on him. As the New York
Times
notes, “Critics of today’s domestic surveillance
object largely on privacy grounds. They have focused far
less on how easily government surveillance can become an
instrument for the people in power to try to hold on to
power. ‘The U.S. vs. John Lennon’ … is the story not
only of one man being harassed, but of a democracy being
undermined.”
Such
government-directed harassment was nothing new.
The FBI has had
a long history of persecuting, prosecuting and generally
harassing activists, politicians, and cultural figures,
most notably among the latter such
celebrated names as folk singer Pete Seeger, painter
Pablo Picasso, comic actor and filmmaker Charlie
Chaplin, comedian Lenny Bruce and poet Allen Ginsberg.
Among those most closely watched by the FBI was Martin
Luther King Jr., a man labeled by the FBI as “the most
dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.”
In Lennon’s
case, the ex-Beatle had learned early on that rock music
could serve a political end by proclaiming a radical
message. More importantly, Lennon saw that his music
could mobilize the public and help to bring about
change.
For instance,
in 1971 at a concert in Ann Arbor, Mich., Lennon took to
the stage and in his usual confrontational style belted
out “John Sinclair,” a song he had written about a man
sentenced to
10 years in prison for possessing two marijuana
cigarettes. Within days of Lennon’s call for action,
the Michigan Supreme Court ordered Sinclair released.
While Lennon
believed in the power of the people, he also understood
the danger of a power-hungry government. “The trouble
with government as it is, is that it doesn’t represent
the people,” observed Lennon. “It
controls them.”
By March 1971,
when his “Power to the People” single was released, it
was clear where Lennon stood. Having moved to New York
City that same year, Lennon was ready to participate in
political activism against the U. S. government, the
“monster” that was financing the war in Vietnam.
The release of
Lennon’s Sometime in New York City album, which
contained a radical anti-government message in virtually
every song and depicted President Richard Nixon and
Chinese Chairman Mao Tse-tung dancing together nude on
the cover, only fanned the flames of the conflict to
come.
However, the
official U.S. war against Lennon began in earnest in
1972 after rumors surfaced that Lennon planned to embark
on a U.S. concert tour that would combine rock music
with antiwar organizing and voter registration. Nixon,
fearing Lennon’s influence on about 11 million new
voters (1972 was the first year that 18-year-olds could
vote), had the ex-Beatle served with deportation orders
“in an
effort to silence him as a voice of the peace movement.”
As Lennon’s FBI
file shows, memos and reports about the FBI’s
surveillance of the anti-war activist had been flying
back and forth between Hoover, the Nixon White House,
various senators, the FBI and the U.S. Immigration
Office.
Nixon’s pursuit
of Lennon was relentless and misplaced.
Despite the
fact that Lennon was not plotting to bring down the
Nixon Administration, as the government feared, the
government persisted in its efforts to have him
deported. Equally determined to resist, Lennon dug in
and fought back. Every time he was ordered out of the
country, his lawyers delayed the process by filing an
appeal.
Finally, in
1976, Lennon won the battle to stay in the country and
by 1980, he had re-emerged with a new album and plans to
become politically active again. The old radical was
back and ready to cause trouble.
Unfortunately,
Lennon’s time as a troublemaker was short-lived.
Mark David Chapman was waiting in the
shadows on Dec. 8, 1980, just
as Lennon was returning to his New York apartment
building.
As Lennon
stepped outside the car to greet the fans congregating
outside, Chapman, in an eerie echo of the FBI’s moniker
for Lennon, called out, “Mr. Lennon!”
Lennon turned
and was met with a barrage of gunfire as
Chapman—dropping into a two-handed combat stance—emptied
his .38-caliber pistol and pumped four hollow-point
bullets into his back and left arm. Lennon stumbled,
staggered forward and, with blood pouring from his mouth
and chest, collapsed to the ground.
John Lennon was
pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
Much like
Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X,
Robert Kennedy and others who have died attempting to
challenge the powers-that-be, Lennon had finally been
“neutralized.”
Still, you
can’t murder a movement with a bullet and a madman:
Lennon’s legacy lives on in his words, his music and his
efforts to speak truth to power.
As Yoko Ono
shared in a 2014 letter to the parole board tasked with
determining whether Chapman should be released: “A man
of humble origin, [John Lennon] brought light and hope
to the whole world with his words and music. He tried to
be a
good power for the world, and he was. He gave
encouragement, inspiration and dreams to people
regardless of their race, creed and gender.”
Lennon’s work
to change the world for the better is far from done.
Peace remains
out of reach. Activism and whistleblowers continue to be
prosecuted for challenging the government’s authority.
Militarism is on the rise, all the while the
governmental war machine continues to wreak havoc on
innocent lives.
For those of us
who joined with John Lennon to imagine a world of peace,
it’s getting harder to reconcile that dream with the
reality of the American police state. And as I point out
in my book
Battlefield America: The War on the American People,
those who do dare to speak up are labeled dissidents,
troublemakers, terrorists, lunatics, or mentally ill and
tagged for surveillance, censorship or, worse,
involuntary detention.
As Lennon
shared in a 1968 interview:
I think all
our society is run by insane people for insane
objectives… I think we’re being run by maniacs for
maniacal means. If anybody can put on paper what our
government and the American government and the
Russian… Chinese… what they are actually trying to
do, and what they think they’re doing, I’d be very
pleased to know what they think they’re doing. I
think they’re all insane. But
I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing
that. That’s what’s insane about it.”
So what’s the
answer?
Lennon had a
multitude of suggestions.
“If everyone
demanded peace instead of another television set, then
there’d be peace.”
“Produce your
own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It’s
quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the
leaders….You have to do it yourself.”
“Peace is not
something you wish for; It’s something you make,
Something you do, Something you are, And something you
give away.”
“If you want
peace, you won’t get it with violence.”
“Say you want a
revolution / We better get on right away / Well you get
on your feet / And out on the street / Singing power to
the people.”
And my favorite
advice of all: “All you need is love. Love is all you
need.”
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is
founder and president of The
Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield
America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks,
2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead
can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.
The views
expressed in this article are the author's own and do
not necessarily reflect Information Clearing House
editorial policy. |
