“I’d love to change the world, but I don’t know what to do,

“So I’ll leave it up to you.”

— Alvin Lee of Ten Years After

I had just graduated high school in June of 1969. After my youth was scarred by the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK, I needed something to help restore my faith, to inspire me to dream again, and to renew my belief that America was the greatest country in the world. Out of all the chaos and confusion, I turned my attention to a concert held in upstate New York.

Fifty years ago, in this month of August, a half a million rock music fans came together on a farm near Woodstock. During the songs of Richie Havens, Jefferson Starship, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jimi Hendrix and other top named artists of the decade, and despite rainy weather, limited food and little shelter, these young people proved to the world that they could coexist without acts of violence or the need for police intervention.

Of course there were drug overdoses and related illnesses on site that brought about a collective condemnation of the event from the American establishment. They called Woodstock a pitiful bunch of drug-crazed, long-haired hippies listening to mind-altering music played by, well, a pitiful bunch of drug-crazed, long-haired hippies.

Yet if the Woodstock generation had short hair, wore suits, ties and dresses, the world might have paid more attention to their message. To be truly anti-establishment, these flower children looked nothing like Ivy League graduates, or for that matter, a younger version of their conservative parents.

I didn’t go to Woodstock and I didn’t embrace the hippie lifestyle, but my heart and my mind went there. We all had had enough of the horrific violence of multiple assassinations of respected leaders, the urban racial riots fire hosed by the National Guard, and the absurd loss of American lives in the Vietnam War. We had lost trust in a government that was drowning us in rhetoric that if we paid more taxes, we would make it to the Promised Land and have a happy life of living the American dream.

The counterculture was smarter than what the establishment had thought. Sons and daughters had witnessed their parents working 30 years at jobs they hated just to pay their bills before dropping dead from heart attacks caused by overwhelming stress.

How sad, their children had thought, that paying off a 30-year mortgage was heralded as one of life’s greatest achievements.

One symbolic hero of Woodstock was Henry David Thoreau who, in the early 19th century, had written, “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.” Thoreau implied that people’s souls harbor unique and joyful songs just waiting to be sung, but their souls are locked into a state of “quiet desperation.” They become silenced by a social conformity controlled by a powerful authority that keeps them crawling uphill like ants serving their master.

The music festival became the pinnacle of persuasion to change that road map of American life.

The anti-conformists wanted peace. No soldier should be killed or captured in Vietnam because politicians liked to play a game of human chess, moving young American men and women as pieces on the jungle board.

Edwin Starr sang, “Oh, war, I despise ’cause it means destruction of innocent lives. War means tears to thousands of mothers eyes when their sons go to fight and lose their lives.”

“Love your brothers and sisters,” shouted the Woodstock generation. “Everyday People” was the title of a song by Sly and the Family Stone. “There is a yellow one that won’t accept the black one. That won’t accept the red one that won’t accept the white one … and, I am everyday people.”

The Hollies sang, “It’s a long, long road from which there is no return while we’re on the way to there why not share and the load doesn’t weigh me down at all. He ain’t heavy he’s my brother.”

The folk songs of the ’60s encouraged a spiritual relationship with the earth. Woody Guthrie sang, “When the sun comes shining, then I was strolling In the wheat fields waving and dust clouds rolling. The voice was chanting as the fog was lifting. This land was made for you and me.”

American entrepreneur Alan Gerry recently wrote, “The idea is to extract what was good about Woodstock, repackage it and present it to middle America.”

The Woodstock generation looked to change the American norm, but their long-hair and pothead stereotyping failed a worthy call for a social revolution.

Psychedelic music frightened the establishment that was still brandishing crew cuts, wearing housedresses and listening to Sinatra.

History, however, may emphasize the significance of the countercultural message, and not the hippie messenger who had sought to escape reality during a very turbulent time.

Lyrics from a popular John Lennon song keep the message of the Woodstock generation alive and relevant today.

Perhaps we should all take another listen.

“Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.”

Rich Strack can be reached at katehep11@gmail.com.