Funny how the same revolution keeps spiraling down through our history. Different issues for different times but, alas, after stripping away all the rhetoric, we face the same bigots, hate mongers, zealots and treasonists that we faced a generation ago, or two or three or four for that matter. In the 1940's they savaged Roosevelt's New Deal populism because it dared to put forth the proposition that even the poor and middle class had rights in America. In the 1950's it was Joe McCarthy and his infernal blacklists. John Kennedy's catholicism (and youthful exuberance) brought him the most horrific of personal attacks by the moral pygmies of the Chrsitian fundamnetalists of the day. It was church going, God fearing, "born again" Christians that brutally beat MLK and his followers on the Edmond C. Pettis bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965.

There was a ritual I tended to every morning in high school, back then. I would rise and play the song "Stand!" as ooud as I could on my stereo, fist clenched and full of defiance, righteous indignation and the willingness to fight back against the madness.
This habit also served to really piss off my grandmother with whom I lived at the time which made it even more of a treat.

Recently, I listened to this old song, recorded by Sly and the Family Stone in 1970, and was struck by how applicable it was an an anthem of resistance even today. Thought I'd pass it along.

Stand
In the end you'll still be you
One that's done all the things you set out to do
Stand
There's a cross for you to bear
Things to go through if you're going anywhere
Stand
For the things you know are right
It s the truth that the truth makes them so uptight
Stand
All the things you want are real
You have you to complete and there is no deal
Stand. stand, stand
Stand. stand, stand
Stand
You've been sitting much too long
There's a permanent crease in your right and wrong
Stand
There's a midget standing tall
And the giant beside him about to fall
Stand. stand, stand
Stand. stand, stand
Stand
They will try to make you crawl
And they know what you're saying makes sense and all
Stand
Don't you know that you are free
Well at least in your mind if you want to be

Everybody
Stand, stand, stand
more Sly And The Family Stone Lyrics