Crosby Stills and Nash come to Wichita—play political songs as they did 30 years ago

I attended a Crosby Stills and Nash concert with my wife last night, at Hartman Arena in Wichita, Kansas. The audience was mostly older people—but then again, I’m a lot older than I was when I watched them at on the Woodstock Movie.

They played a lot of the old songs they are famous for, such as "Wooden Ships;" "Teach Your Children;" which they said they dedicated to the “hard working and under appreciated teachers of this country;” and “Chicago.” They played some new songs they wrote such as “Almost Gone,” by Graham Nash and James Raymond. Raymond was playing in the concert. The song is about Bradley Manning the whistleblower who was arrested in May 2010 for having passed classified material to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

From the sound of their songs Crosby Stills and Nash still like to comment on social issues. They included a new song called “Immigration Man.”

I remember the filmed performance at Woodstock. They played songs about fairness and peace. Their song, “Chicago,” was a song about the rage of the youth against the war and injustice of 1968.

Now a new century turns and the US is at war all over the Middle-east. The worst scum are getting elected to punish people for being poor, sick, disabled or those working at minimum wage jobs. Far from a better world, the twentieth century has left the US with the worst government since the 1880s and the arrogant and contemptible “social Darwin”[1]era.

I wonder how many people in the audience heard the message of this band? -សតិវ អតុ

Almost Gone (The Ballad Of Bradley Manning ) -by Graham Nash and James Raymond

Lyrics

Locked up in a white room, underneath a glaring light
Every 5 minutes, they’re asking me if I’m alright
Locked up in a white room naked as the day I was born
24 bright light, 24 all alone

What I did was show some truth to the working man
What I did was blow the whistle and the games began

Tell the truth and it will set you free
That’s what they taught me as a child
But I can’t be silent after all I’ve seen and done
24 bright light I’m almost gone, almost gone

Locked up in a white room, dying to communicate
Trying to hang in there underneath a crushing wait
Locked up in a white room I’m always facing time
24 bright light, 24 down the line

What I did was show some truth to the working man
What I did was blow the whistle and the games began

But I did my duty to my country first
That’s what they taught me as a man
But I can’t be silent after all I’ve seen and done
24 bright light I’m almost gone, almost gone
(Treat me like a human, Treat me like a man )

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[1]“Social Darwinism is generally understood to use the concepts of struggle for existence and survival of the fittest to justify social policies which make no distinction between those able to support themselves and those unable to support themselves. Many such views stress competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism; but the ideology has also motivated ideas of eugenics, scientific racism, imperialism,^[4] fascism, Nazism and struggle between national or racial groups.^[“

-Wikipedia.