"They killed Martin Luther King," he explained.
Two months later, they also killed Bobby Kennedy. I remember when I first heard about it "McArthur's Park" was on the radio and the sorrow in that song seemed to capture what I and many Americans felt. It was given expression in the song, Abraham, Martin, and John, released not long after by Dion:
Anybody here seen my old
friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill
With Abraham, Martin, and John
As the Vietnam War blazed out of control, the Animals' Sky Pilot immortalized its legend:
In the morning they return with tears in their eyes
The
stench of death lifts up to the skies
A young soldier so ill, looks at the Sky Pilot
Remembers the words 'Thou shalt not kill'.
You're soldiers of God you must understand
The fate of your country is in your young hands
Sky . . . Pilot . . . . . . . . . . Sky . . . Pilot . . . . . . . . . . .
The next year, a kid from my neighborhood, "Moose" Musco, who had been a Sky Pilot was shot down and killed. It was only days before the end of his deployment. I went to the funeral and met with many of the guys I had grown up with. Afterwards we went to a bar for a night of heavy drinking.
And so it would be . . .
Forty-six years later, a candidate announced for the Presidency, who was running as a Democrat though an Independent. Now a Senator, he once had been a socialist mayor in Burlington, Vermont, near my home. I had heard a bit about him but never paid much attention. Like me, he had been a conscientious objector against war during Vietnam. Many of his views were mine, especially about wealth inequality.
He summarized them in a 1985 speech, and they have largely remained unchanged:
We live in a world where there are several hundred million people starving to death, right now; we live in a world where among the superpowers and other nations of the world, close to one trillion dollars is being spent on weapons, on more nuclear bombs, on sophisticated nerve gases that can wipe people out and paralyze them. And yet, with all the brilliance and all the fine technology, and all the great medical research that they do . . . civilization hasn't advanced one, bloody iota.
Before long, I realized that Bernie Sanders was someone that I could support with great conviction. In 2016, I campaigned vigorously for him where I lived, a small town on the fringes of Cincinnati, writing a couple Op-eds for the local weekly, holding rallies for him that featured live broadcasts from his campaign headquarters as well as local Democratic Party candidates. Even after he endorsed Hillary, I went to Philadelphia with other Bernie supporters and we stayed in a flat and marched all week with as many as 10,000 others for Progressive causes and in support of Bernie to protest the fraud committed during the primaries.
https://medium.com/@TPCUGRR/where-have-you-gone-bernie-sanders-7d4e173cdf06
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