I was 15 and attending a Catholic prep school in South Jersey. Most school districts closed, so students could attend. But the Pallottines would not stop educating our young minds because of some "radical happening". The day before the event, they called a school assembly. The principal announced that classes would be held on April 22 with attendance taken throughout the day to ensure against truancy.
To his dismay, I had just studied the 19th century Transcendentalists. Taking a cue from Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, I stood up and declared I would not attend school that day and accept any consequences that ensue. To my surprise several of my schoolmates joined me.
Philly's hippie guru, Ira Einhorn (later infamous for the 1977 murder of his girlfriend, jumping bail, living underground across Europe then fighting extradition until 2001) opened the festivities. Allen Ginsburg played the harmonium and chanted. Several rock bands performed. We drank from a communal jug of water and ate avocado and alfalfa sprout sandwiches offered by a lovely girl wearing a tie-dyed skirt and peasant blouse. I reveled in a counter culture idyll.
39 years have elapsed. Time has eroded my idealism; its detritus creating a slag heap of cynicism. However, the embers of defiance still burn leaving a glimmer of hope that activism can bring change and a better world. - as ever BB
"We will require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive." - Albert Einstein
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