A Thanksgiving Day Ritual For 60’s-Style Activists
Out here on the left fringe of ’60s-style activism, we don’t go in much for ritual. We lefties are about freedom, innovation, always finding a new and better way to do things.Still, there is something to be said for ritual. Repeating the same activity year after year creates an illusion that things never change, that we can turn back the clock for a moment and pretend things are still the way they used to be. So I’m going to repeat a column I published at Thanksgiving time several years ago-but with a new twist at the end, since the best rituals combine the reassurance of repetition with the joy of new creation.
Even if you are one of those ’60s-style anti-ritualists, I bet that yesterday you did something old and familiar. Maybe you gathered with the same folks you share dinner with every Thanksgiving. Maybe you fixed the trimmings in the same way as always. Or maybe, like so many of us, you sang along with Arlo.
No, we don’t really believe that we can get anything we want at Alice’s Restaurant, excepting Alice. But it takes us back to a time when we believed we might get anything we wanted, even though we wanted the world, and we wanted it now!. Everyone we knew really could imagine fifty people, I said fifty people a day walking into the draft board, singin’ a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out, creating the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement. And all we had to do was sing along the next time it came around on the guitar.
Isn’t that why so many of us wait eagerly each Thanksgiving for it to come around on the guitar? It isn’t just to recapture our lost youth (though perhaps there is nothing wrong with that). It’s also because we were young at a very special time, when it seemed that the whole world would soon shed its aging body, worn down by war and greed and dehumanization, and regain its lost youth.
Never again, we believed, would anyone be arrested for littering. Never again would anyone be fined fifty dollars and have to pick up the garbage. Never again would anyone be injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected by their government to join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages.
Soon, we believed, the whole world would be full of loving people who would take out the garbage whenever it needed to be taken out, bring it down to the city dump, then go back home to have a dinner that couldn’t be beat. And not just on Thanksgiving, because we believed that every day would be Thanksgiving. Every day we would feel awestruck and thankful for the little miracles of life, like sharing food and song with people we love. Every day, we would do just a bit more to right the world’s wrongs, to make sure that justice was really blind. And all the while, we would remember to laugh and play with the pencils there on the Group W bench.
Well, it hasn’t worked out quite that way, yet. The world keeps doing all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly things. But kid, it’s never too late to “rehabilitate” yourself, to start creating enough of a nuisance and singing loud enough to end war and stuff. If you’ve been doing it for 35 years, or more, I bet you are prepared to do it for another 35 years or more. I bet you’re not proud, or tired.
Now here’s the new twist: The first time I published this column, I got a thank you note from Arlo Guthrie himself. Really. Who knows what might happen this time! The golden age of the 1960s is long gone, but anything is still possible. So perhaps you can get anything you want, as long as you remember to sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar - with feeling. Because it is, indeed, a movement: The Alice’s Restaurant Let’s Give Thanks and Remember Why We Started Doing This and Why We Keep On Keepin’ On Movement.
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. Email: chernus@colorado.edu
Some people talk about the ’60’s as if it were all about tie-died t-shirts and acid trips.
It wasn’t
It was about saving lives, too. And seeing justice done, the way it’s supposed to be. It was about shucking off the stultifying chains of divide-and-conquer capitalism and finding a new way, a better way, to live and to love, a little closer to ourselves, to each other and to the earth.
Seems a lot of that generation, my generation, apologize for it now. Chalk it up to wild, impetuous youth. As if hating war and all it portends were a childhood phase you go through and grow out of.
Well, not me, pal.
What’s right is right, what’s wrong is wrong and murder is murder in 2007 just as much as it was in 1967.
And I won’t quit.
Maybe I’m too stupid, maybe I’m to stubborn.
But as long as I can stand up, I’ll be throwing leather. I know we’re way behind on points, but even if we take a real bad beating first. we always have a puncher’s change to win by knockout, And truth packs a hell of a punch.
Just speaking for myself.
Liberty & Justice,
SJ
www.spartacusjones.com
I have great appreciation for this and other articles. I count them in with the things I am most thankfull for, so Ira Chernus Thank you.
You can get anything you want at Alice’s restaraunt just walk right in it’s around the back…
ArloNet
Address:http://www.arlo.net/
First, something I’ve been thinking about for a while which is if there’s anything I can think of - at least at this moment - about which I am intolerant, it’s this idea of labeling.
Now I know this article only infringes on this territory in a minor way. But there’s only one kind of label I can think of that even remotely comes close. That’s “free spirit.” Bot the terms, “free” and “spirit” make some vague kind of sense to me and allow me to be whatever I want at any given time if it suits my thoughts.
Being such, yesterday was just another day. I think there’s a place for ritual in human behavior, sure, but most of the one’s going around these days have been so corrupted, and for so long, it’s hard not to see through them.
I did sit down with family and I shared a meal. But god I hope there’s nothing out of the ordinary with that idea.
Next comes on our calender, the shortest day of the year time. That’s just about the only virtue still remaining to it until the climate has been banished too, along with nature, and followed by “free spirits” who can’t tolerate a world where even the air is going to come with a price tag soon.
I have great appreciation for this and other articles. I count them in with the things I most thankfull for, so Ira Chernus Thank you.
You can get anything you want at Alice’s restaraunt just walk right in it’s around the back…
ArloNet
Address:http://www.arlo.net/
I am very grateful to have come of age at a time when it truly did seem we were headed in the right direction as a species. I’m not so optimistic these days, but can only hope there is a crop of young, wild, energetic kids out there who will move us forward.
My Blessings to you, Professor Chernus. Everyday, not just Thanksgiving.
Spartacus Jones; A+ Perfect! I’d love to see Ira fit your comment into his article.
blessthebeasts; I know the feeling. More and more of our younger kids are beginning to see the light and taking action. This is one reason the US military is using our hard-earned tax dollars (besides what they borrow from the anti-democratic Chinese) to ‘lure’ them in with big enlistment bonuses and to keep the cannons full of fodder, big re-up bonuses.
“The times, they are a changin’ “
anyone for a sing along ?
Arlo Guthrie/Alice’s Restaurant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_7C0QGkiVo
GOEFF29—-I have been trying to convince my family for years that,free spirit that I am, I hate being told when and how to celebrate ANYTHING. I’m kind of a holiday anarchist. I loved your post. But if you followed the long thread yesterday on pardoning turkeys and animal rights, the only real question regarding your family meal yesterday is: DID YOU EAT MEAT?
It is amazing and disheartening to observe how many different ways people, even thoughtful, gentle progressives can find to create a sense of OTHER-ness. Nothing will change unless we start overlooking differences, stop evangelizing our favorite cause, and look for common ground.
Our shared concerns and dreams are so numerous and so obvious, but so damned often we shove them aside in order to dig in—–and I’m not referring to the pumpkin pie, either.
Guess maybe I should order Alice’s Restaurant from Netflicks and see it, again—it’s been awhile and it does make you smile.
Hey, Spartacus…Nicely put, My Friend.
I visited your site and enjoyed your music. Excellent!
Nope, we can’t give up even though you gotta stand up at the nine count sometimes–you STILL gotta stand up!
I had to prepare a small chicken for the elders who have never lived with any other diet.
My folks used to play this record every thanksgiving when I was a kid!
yeah it was so long. didn’t you think?
Peace is just another word for nothing left to lose…and we all hang on o on, and the wind and rain and the su u un. I don’t understand why major political parties can’t come to terms with peace and the fact that most of us at this point are prepared to die for it. Anyway, here’s to our life long struggle and happy solstace soon.
An interesting holiday, Thanksgiving, it doesn’t celebrate a religious figure, or a religious event, or a political event, or a war, or a war hero. Despite it’s controversial roots in the nations history, it’s really a nondenominational, nonreligious, nonpolitical, non patriotic day. It was set aside as a day for people to gather, if they chose to do so, and express gratitude.
It’s my favorite holiday.
How much better a thanksgiving holiday would be if everyone in the world was able to celebrate such. As long as there is conflict in the world, especially since such conflict is usually promulgated by the very governments which promote such “thanksgiving” holidays, then any celebration of such is only an obscene celebration at the expense of the exploited.
I agree, jmacneil -
As I ate Thanksgiving dinner with my girlfriend’s family, I had the same thought I usually have every Thanksgiving, during many other holiday meals, or whenever eating out at popular restaurants (which I only do to fulfill family obligations).
There’s enough damn food here to feed a Third World village for a week. Kind of spoils any enjoyment of the meal, as well it should. Perhaps this is one of the reasons I just applied to the Peace Corps at the age of 55.
Live simply, so that others may simply live.
I’ve always enjoyed the song about Alice at any time of the year.
Wild turkeys don’t live here, so I bought mine. For my stuffing, I don’t use the turkey neck or giblets, instead 2 par boiled grouse chopped up added to the crumbs and other seasonings. It’s excellent. My guests and family in past years would fight over it, and I’d be lucky to get a taste. This year, a small gathering and I’m happy to have plenty to eat.
how about valentine’s day? that seems pretty harmless and under the radar.
To me, Thanksgiving is the one day that people can sit down and enjoy a feast without feeling guilty–or too guilty. There is always something to feel guilty about, some issue that needs addressed. So why not have at least one day out of the year to just hang out with friends and relatives and enjoy others cooking? For one day you can just forget all your woes and burdens, and you can stay home and have one day for enjoying good food and loved ones company. Tomorrow what with Black Friday will come soon enough and you have all of the rest of the year to again feel guilty for eating meat, for not giving an arm for the many charities that will bombard you, for not working hard enough, and for worrying about the economy, the Nation, your health, and diets,etc. Just one day out of the year is all people ask so I would hope all those who criticize this one Holiday would save it for another day.
Yessir Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie… I recited the song from memory at the dinner table up to “… and didn’t get up until the next mornin’ when we all had to go to court.”
Had to stop at that point. The mashed ‘taters were getting cold.
This is one of the few holidays that resonates with its “celestial” season. Thanksgiving, for Americans, the quintessential “bless our abundance dinner” fits Sagittarius, sign of plentitude.
Valentine’s Day in Feb, the season of detached Aquarius, the sign that opposes Leo, realm of the cosmic heart, is NOT a good fit. Father’s day in Gemini, sign of the twins (Jeckyll-Hyde) perhaps. Mother’s Day in May, Taurus zone of Demeter, the great Earth Goddess (Mother Nature), also works, as does Labor day in September, zone of workaholic Virgo.
Still, it’s hard to eat, drink and be merry when we do share some in our nation’s blind karma, as it falls upon (like the film “Sounder”) the dead and made to be dying. Indigestion, anyone?
SIOUXROSE—very interesting perspective about the astrological (mis)fit of some holidays. Perhaps the Valentine’s Day one is actually more accurate if one looks at its origins—wasn’t it about some early Christian saint?(bishop) who wrote “pep talk” letters to imprisioned Christians facing persecution. Surely that was a more Aquarian, cooler, more detached manifestation of the idea of Love. Subsequent romantic overlays are perhaps the reason why the fit is not good. Question then—ideal date for the revised Valentine’s Day since I am a holiday anarchist anyway.
What about August for Valentine’s Day. Those big harvest moon’s seem to bring everything on earth into the light?
Starofthesea; The last turkey I ate on Thanksgiving was forty years ago. For the first few years my family thought I was going through a ’stage’ of vegetarianism, and I was the family anomaly, and I enjoyed the kidding and ribbing about not eating the turkey. After a few years, my relatives always made sure there was a seperate turkey stuffing for me, to eat on the side with the mashed potatos and other vegetables as well as plain marinara sauce when we ate macaroni.
Meat eaters are kind to me and respect my views on the ethics issue, and I respect their views on why they are flesh eaters. I am thankful when people with opposing views still get along and maintain the spirit of goodwill toward each other.
Elizabet…Rebelnow…Jmacneil; I tend to agree with you.
No matter what politicians and crooks in high places tell the people, humans the world over respond to love, kindness, and the showing of respect and usually reciprocate. I’ve been on three continents (my Army days) and made friends very easily. We are all one, in the Grand Design. ( and I sure as hell don’t mean ‘intelligent design’!)
Either I’m losing it or something, but can somebody explain when this term,’black friday’ started? I don’t recall hearing that phrase prior to this week.
Finding space in oneself to feel and express gratitude, alone, with friends, or with family, does not imply that you must partake in overindulgence, it doesn’t imply that you are participating in an “obscene celebration at the expense of the exploited”.
To the thanksgiving naysayers, shall we assume you fasted and spent the day helping the hungry and homeless with a deep sense of colonial repentance?
“To the thanksgiving naysayers, shall we assume you fasted and spent the day helping the hungry and homeless with a deep sense of colonial repentance?”
Colonialist? lol Get a grip, fool. Not all of us are as white as you think…sorry all, I feel no obligation to play nice when people make assumptions like this. For the record, I spent Thanksgiving grieving and waiting for it to be over, just like I do every year - and if you say that is because of guilt, I simply am going to have to smack you upside your cracker-ass head. If that stings, sorry - but imagine how I feel when, for the zillionth millionth time, someone assumes that everybody in the room is white. Assumptions like this are exactly what make it hard to be in the room…
Here’s how this vegetarian family had turkey for Thanksgiving dinner: we set a plate with some of the rice casserole and cornbread on the floor and led our pet turkeys (saved stragglers from the feed store) in to share. “Did you have turkey for Thanksgiving?” “Sure, they loved it!”
When you post three days after an article appears it is 1) usually not read and 2) just to see youtr words on the screen. So, hey, that’s what it is.
I ate at the rest-au-rant back in the day when Alice was still there. The church was, I beleive in South Egremont, and was a local drive by to see. Stockbridge was a small town, and yes, I did see Officer Obie. It had a fine hotel/restaurant/garden where one could see Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward having dinner, stroll along the three streets, and take pictures of the fountain and flowers in the middle of the intersection.
The whole of Western Mass. was awash in the old monied, who “summered” there, and then there were us, the hippies, the near hippies and the wannabe hippies. The stores were all small and family or locally owned. You knew the hardware store owner, the druggists in their shops. To got to a movie, you went south to Great Barrington, to the Mahaiwe Threatre. I saw Star Wars, Monterey Pops and other great films there, or you went north to the “big city” of Pittsfield, the home of GE, the major employer.
It was the days before the invasion of the “New Yorkers”, and the chain stores, Wal-Mart and outlets and malls. Before the old mansions were turned into “conference centers” and spa retreats. It was a day when the people in town knew each other, and were nice to stratngers (who were still strangers, never to be anything other than strangers) but you didn’t mind.
It was the days when we felt we could change the world, and that Arlo, Pete, Phil, Judy, Peter, Paul, Mary, Abbie, Harry Belefonte, and Gene McGovern, could and would make a difference. Didn’t happen. But we believed it would, and we worked and lived together in peace and harmony, always with the optimism that this country, our country would always remain the, even in the throes of an evil war in Southeast Asia, started by rich white men, for reaons hidden from the people, could remain and hold on to, at least at our level, the moral high ground on the world stage. Our mis-adventure had nothing to do with me…we said…I actively opposed the War [for us those words: The War, will always mean Vietnam, until we die]. So I could sing “Alice’s Restaurant” memorize the words, attend peace and desegregation rallies, and I would make the world a fine place. Many people wer finally getting their due: blacks, gays, women, we had relearned the phrase “challaneged” which took some of stigman away form the word “handicapped”, and we invented Earth Day, just to take one day to figure out that the Native Americans had the right ideas of living in this great nation, and with the land.
Too bad that at the same time I was doing that my contemporaries, like the Bushies, the Guilianis, the Clintons, Jobs, Gates, were hard at work on their thing. Question: so who won?
Yes, I used to put Alices’ Restaurant on the turntable every year for the last 35-40 years, until it wore out and I got the CD, and I still sit, before Thanksgiving dinner, in my chair, by myself and remember what it was like to feel good, feel positive, feel that you could change the world, and try to revive myself, through the hard work of surviving every day, watching our tower of Morality being dragged through the mud, watch our treasure being spent, watch our proud working people become unemployed and hopeless, and wait for the day that I can once again go up to the Village Restaurant, that was the name of the rest-au-rant, and sit in the garden and “get anyting I want”.
Meantime, at least I don’t forget the one thing that drove me and millions more like me, the thing the song brings back:
H O P E
Have a great day, hope!
Even from the cave, there is still the one candle of hop
Right On, BaltoCaveMan !
BALTO CAVE MAN,
ditto, and isn’t it simply amazing how much LIGHT a single candle flame brings upon the face of DARKNESS?
Namaste
BALTO: It’s not as symmetric as winning and losing, it’s about cycles…right now the dense weight of materialism and its masters of Mammon have gained tread, but Earth Mother is not in agreement with their consensus, and guess who prevails in due time? Thanks for sharing your story, and hope.
America is not going to change for the better from the shopping malls, factory farms, gated communities, recruitment centers, or the elite that control all of this. It’s going change because of people like you that know it can be different.
All I can say is thank the universe it’s over. Back to the work.
restive, I don’t assume anything about people making comments, though on rereading my statement I could see how it may have appeared that way. I was referring to one person, though I may have couched it in general terms. Most people posting are incognito so I don’t presume to know their gender, or color, nor do I care. I had to laugh at being called a “cracker ass”. Never been called that before.
I happened to be reflecting on thanksgiving being essentially a nonreligious, nonpolitical holiday. Maybe my understanding of it is different than for others. I spent it this year in the mountains, in a tent, around a fire, in the cold, with my partner, reflecting and meditating on the gifts that life has brought and being grateful. Seems that for others it brings up a lot more. I hear that. But if I can’t see some good in this dark time then I’m lost, and of little use to anyone else. Finding some space in one’s life to feel some sense of gratitude is important to me, gratitude toward my ancestors, toward my parents, toward those who have taught me, and toward those who help open my eyes to being more aware as you have done.
peace
rebelnow,
Thanks for your response. What I’m getting at here is simple: if your regeneration is my despair (and I’m far from the only person who despairs on “Thanks” “Giving”,) then there’s a problem. That being said, what you describe is a perfectly sane and wise thing to do - but not on gringoland’s own “Genocide Celebration Day.”
However - and this is important: the problem is with the institution itself, not just individuals. I used to think that alternative Thanksgivings had a place; you know, be grateful, enjoy the people you care about, and so on - a true alternative to the legacy of genocide that the holiday is based on. I’ve since come to believe that rituals are powerful enough that we need to be very careful/mindful of how we engage with them, and some rituals are twisted enough that it’s best to leave them behind - not to forget, but to realize that there’s *NOTHING* to be thankful for in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, as well as the ongoing struggles for land and freedom in the Americas. Hence Ward Churchill’s more than wise statement “It’s no mystery why Indians don’t observe Thanksgiving. The real question is why do you feast rather than fast on what should be a national day of mourning and atonement.”
I would pose to you that maybe the reason that you need to take off for the hills to be “non-political” is because that’s the only way to deal with the harsh realities of centuries of genocide staring you in the face. If that makes you lose hope, I encourage you to follow in the words of Mother Jones: “Don’t mourn, organize!” It beats pretending the situation is apolitical - it is anything but, just ask Leonard Peltier.
I bring great empowering and excellent N E W S:
Our belief in the systematic bought-and-paid-for inattention of the mass media may in fact be an illusion and gov’t hype to completely dis-empower us to “work the system”., as evidence points to what they’ve actually been doing - and it’s “simple” repetitive phones calls and threats to hurt circulation, not total subjugation!
OK, it might be simple, but that is hardly the same as easy, right?
Please follow this link here, for ‘Confessions of “an editor who ran Bush propaganda”‘, where in summary that editor states that:
Wow, isn’t insidiously clever to make us think we :
(1.) Have a liberal minding media, but then
(2.) Convince us that it’s really not going to speak the TRUTH, but
(3.) it still may be POSSIBLE to find truth again, if we finesse it as well as the shrub’s SHOCK troops do, as they’re clearly massively funded and organized for the ‘duration’.
(4.) The re-Thuglicans likely have a quite distributed tag-team fon tree for each media outlet ALL across the globe, and duplication of pressuring (to own editor) would only improve their (or OUR ODDs) for impact.
(5.) OK, don’t even bother with FauxNews, but maybe ‘the denuded emperor pix’ will leak out?
What GRASS ROOTS ACTION does it take from any of US?
_a._ Any person willing to call, and call again (watching the news wires, and being aware each day)
_b._ Heavy hitter progressive thinkers that will ACT (like STARS, Media celebrities, actors, chamber Commerce, talkers) with real influence, and or patience.
_c._ Lots of ‘cold calls’ in attempts to find each media
_d._ Attempt to convert retrenched re-Thuglicans as “double-agents” for TRUTH, as they know who to call
Like I said initially, this is SIMPLE, but it’s hardly EASY.
We ALL can Go for IT, as we deserve the best media that OUR money (remember WE are the actual circulation- right?) can influence and buy.
P.S. Thanks to inspiration posts throughout CD, and my apologies for cross-posting this to get this powerful message out, as bandwidth is likened to our CD’s very blood coursing through the ethereal veins of OUR WEB.
Namaste
__ __ __ __ We must be the change
__ __ __ __ we wish to see in the world __ Gandhi
restive, once again you make very valid points and I agree with you. Your point about the importance of ritual is right on as well as stating that the “holiday is anything but apolitical”.
Here’s an article you may be aware of (at least it’s content anyway) www.counterpunch.com/ely11222007.html
Cultural programing is an insidious thing. Just when we may think we are being PC, some old and hidden bias creeps into our thinking, unknowingly or unconsciously. Thanks for the wake up call. I hope you continue to hang out in the room.