It’s 1, 2, 3 ... this is what you protest for

I grew up when the background music of the era was protest songs. When there were nightly TV news reports about anti-war (Vietnam) protests, civil rights protests and women’s rights protests.

The tumultuous world of the 1960s raged above me with thunder and lightning and drenching rain. I was a child looking up at a societal tempest from safely below the waves.

In the tiny living room of our tiny duplex house I watched on our blackand-white television as civil rights marchers filled the streets of American cities, walking arm in arm, singing “We Shall Overcome.”

The kids in my school used to flash each other the peace sign, not really understanding what is stood for but believing it was cool.

Our older brothers and sisters were into tie-dyed T-shirts and Bob Dylan songs, like “The Times They Are AChangin’.”

There were sit-ins, teach-ins, loveins and (whatever that was).

There were also important, legitimate causes. Good reasons to protest.

Just as there are good reasons to do so today.

There were protest signs in my adolescence that read, “Say it loud! I’m Black and I’m proud!” and “A woman’s place is in the House ... and the Senate” and “Make Love Not War.”

The first time I saw film of Country Joe & The Fish performing “Fish Cheer & I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” at Woodstock, I was stunned. (Google it.) All those f-bombs. The older brother of my friend Champ called the song “obscene truth.”

There are similarities to what’s going on today.

There were some obscenities spoken at recent protest rallies sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

There were plenty of chanted slogans.

“No justice. No peace” and “Black Lives Matter” and “I Can’t Breathe.”

And while all of them are honest and true and heartfelt, none is the slogan protesters should call to mind this coming fall. As the street demonstrations have begun to wind down, those who were most energized by the protests may begin to lose their enthusiasm. It may lead to the kind of lethargy that prevents change from happening.

At a rally in Phoenix recently there was a phrase chanted by the crowd that will have more to do with reform, with genuine change, than anything else. In fact, it shouldn’t even be thought of as a chant or a slogan, but as a command, a summons, a responsibility.

The crowd at the Phoenix rally chanted: “Remember in November.”

Nutshell.