As people begin to take the streets of New York City in protest, the sounds of drums and protest chants and song can be heard all over Manhattan. Protest music is a common event in Peaceful Protests. However, the Occupy Wall Street protests are taking some inspiration from some classic protest musicians.
“Music is the biggest weapon we have in the protests,” Baruch student and Wall Street Protester Eliza Vamos said. “If the 1960’s taught us anything, it’s that music isn’t just music. It is a megaphone for the people’s opinion and there is nothing that anyone can do to stop it.”
Artists like Bob Dylan and John Lennon used their music like megaphones to broadcast their messages of anti-war during a time in American history when people were beginning to question the intentions of the government in Vietnam. These songs and countless others inspired a generation to take to the streets and get their opinions recognized and they are holding the same influence for the Occupy protests.
“It took us a little bit as a generation to realize it, but we are basically protesting the same thing that people were protesting in the Vietnam War era. It’s a trust issue,” NYU Student Jeff Scott said. “I think we are planning on using that to our advantage. It’s like hey, you protested the same things when you were our age that you are opposing now.”
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Multimedia: Occupy protesters Matt and Caterina talk about the power of music, and how John Lennon has influenced their music.
The protest music through the 1960’s and 70’s were important because they were highly portrayed in mainstream mediums such as radio and television. That trend is only beginning to unfold for Occupy Wall Street as artists such as Russell Simmons, Rufus Wainwright, and even Lennon’s son Sean have come out to show their support for the protests.
“The protest music of the 1960’s really helps me figure out how I feel about the Occupied protests. It really is a lost art,” said Baruch student and Occupy supporter Rudy Garcia. “The parallels between the questioning of power of the government in the 1970’s and the modern protests is just mind blowing to me.”
The Occupy protests started out as a group of people upset with the increasing gap between the wealthy and the middle class. As the movement became more popular, other smaller interest groups began clinging on to the protests making the movement a conglomerate of interests that all have one theme in common, they are unhappy with the direction of the country. With protesting going into its third month, the Occupy Wall Street protests are becoming one of the largest and longest protests in New York City history.
“John Lennon was all about peace. He was totally against violence of any kind and he wrote about that in his songs,” City College student and John Lennon fan Paul Narducci said. “That music is the voice of a generation that has been through it, and survived it.”
Video: Claude Schmidt, 54, is a John Lennon fan who came to Strawberry Fields in Central Park on the week of the 31st anniversary of Lennon’s death to honor his memory.
Recent protests at Baruch College over tuition hikes at the City University of New York system have created even more turmoil between institutions and the active youth. These protests started up the controversial topic of questioning how highly the federal and state governments value higher education. The protests were ended abruptly by security personnel who restrained the protesters and even arrested a few during a clash at Baruch on Monday, November 21, 2011.
“These beatings are exactly what the song ‘Working Class Hero’ is about,” Vamos says about the John Lennon single. Lennon wrote the song about the supposed way that society manipulates people to live certain lives.. “People need to remember how to love one another and recognize other peoples opinions.”
As more events unfold, the young people are finding more and more ways to relate it to the protests of Vietnam and other protests during the 1960’s and 1970’s.
“Although I don’t particularly support the protests, I support the belief that people should be able to protest,” Narducci said.
Topics such as education reform and eliminating the gap between working and upper classes has been a debate going on for generations and it seems as though the newest generation in the debate wants to use classic beliefs of people from the past such as John Lennon and Martin Luther King Jr.
“It’s weird. You have to respect Lennon so much as a musician, but his work as a humanitarian is beyond inspiring,” Garcia said. “He was a Beatle, then he became a hero.”