From xxxxxx <[email protected]>
Subject What the Media Forgot About David Crosby
Date January 29, 2023 1:00 AM
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[Crosby was an unreconstructed 1960s radical who kept his
political commitments til he died. ]
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WHAT THE MEDIA FORGOT ABOUT DAVID CROSBY  
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Micah Sifry
January 24, 2023
Medium
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_ Crosby was an unreconstructed 1960s radical who kept his political
commitments til he died. _

,

 

I am a very late member of the Baby Boom generation, born in 1962. My
first musical tastes involved a membership in the Partridge Family fan
club that I shared with my younger sister. But I can date precisely
when I woke up to the real music of my youth and of the larger
counterculture: it was sitting on a grassy field in 1973 at sleepaway
camp, hearing for the first time the thrilling harmonies of _Suite:
Judy Blue Eyes_ [[link removed]] played
over the PA system and wondering, who the hell was that? From that
moment forward, I became a fan of Crosby, Stills & Nash (and soon
Young), and it was through them that I came to discover the whole
pantheon of 1960s rock and folk music.

So I was saddened, as were many, by the news of David Crosby’s
passing last Saturday at the age of 81. Reading and listening to many
of the tributes and obituaries that appeared after his death, though,
I’ve been struck by how little most have said about his politics.
Yes, he deserves our attention for his seminal role in two great
bands, the Byrds and then CSN; and forgive me, for his seminal
(semenal?) role in helping singer Melissa Etheridge artificially
conceive two children. His battles with drug addiction and the law
also belong in any balanced appreciation of his life. But if you read
the New York Times
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the Washington Post
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the Wall Street Journal
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any number of other obituaries, you’d know more about his
consumption of drugs along with his defense of _menages a
trois_ than you would about his fierce radical politics.

Over the years, he poured his musical stature into unpopular causes
like opposing the Iraq War in 2006
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CSNY played 33 venues (a project that was instigated mainly by Neil
Young); he sang benefit concerts for causes like opposing nuclear
power and weapons [[link removed]], for
the 50th anniversary
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the Kent State shootings, to fight an anti-union campaign finance
initiative in California in 2012
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as well as performing at Occupy Wall Street in 2011
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with his old bandmates took their music off of Spotify to protest its
spreading of COVID misinformation. None of that got mentioned in any
of the obits I saw.

I suppose this is old news; corporate mainstream media long ago sanded
the politics off the edges of the Woodstock Generation to make it
easier to sell jeans and anniversary concert tickets. But Crosby, like
his former bandmate Young, never abandoned his political values. When
I saw him perform a solo show at New York City’s Town Hall in 2015,
between songs he ranted (perhaps a bit too long) about how the Warren
Commission had covered up the truth of who killed John F. Kennedy and
he lambasted America’s ever-increasing military budget. His 2019 NPR
“Tiny Desk Concert” with The Lighthouse Band includes
[[link removed]] a beautiful new
song, _Half the Light_, about letting women run the world, along with
a great rendition of Joni Mitchell’s anthem _Woodstock_. On
Twitter, where Crosby developed a whole new following, he
expressed strong support
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climate activist Greta Thunberg, he decried
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he slammed
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Republicans, he bashed rightwing billionaires — and that was all
just a sampling from his posts in the last few weeks.

For me, Crosby’s singing stands for remembering and honoring those
young people who dared to change the world and shake America open by
not conforming, at a minimum, or, at a maximum, by giving their lives
for causes like civil rights and ending the Vietnam War. These were
not small fights and it’s a shame to see them ignored, belittled or
condensed into tidy little packets of pablum. Young people are always
the innovators and the cannon fodders of movements for social change,
then and now. I can still hear Crosby crying, “Why? How many more?
[[link removed]]” in the counterpoint to the
“Four dead in Ohio” chorus of Young’s protest anthem _Ohio_,
and know that the question is still as relevant today as it was when
that song was written in 1970, days after the Kent state shootings.

_Micah Sifry
[[link removed]--------------------------------] is
co-founder Civic Hall. Publisher of The Connector newsletter (find it
on Substack). Board member Consumer Reports._

* Music
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* peace movement
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* woodstock
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* Kent State
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* Anti-Vietnam War movement
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