Woodstock Vets Liken Obama's Election to Historic Festival

Posted on Jun 30th 2009 4:00PM by Adam Horne
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During the Summer of '69, a generation hungry for social change gathered on Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, New York, for the now legendary Woodstock festival. This past January, nearly two million people crowded the streets of Washington D.C. chanting "Yes We Can" as they watched the inauguration of a President who had campaigned on a platform of change.

For many Woodstock veterans, the parallels haven't gone unnoticed.

"Obama's inauguration, his speech -- more than Bonnaroo or something like that -- was a gathering of people that made me feel similar to Woodstock," original Santana drummer Michael Shrieve told Spinner at a recent press event. "People's hopes were up, they were coming together for big change and there was emotion involved in the change."

Two of Woodstock's creators, Michael Lang and Joel Rosenman, noted the similarities between the political and social climate. "It's a new sort of movement of hope in a very dark time," Lang explained. "The beginnings of the sustainable movement, the green movement, human rights issues -- this all came from the '60s and came back in a very strong way now."

Rosenman acknowledged the significance of youth culture in these two historical events. "I think about what we went through at the time, and how strong the division was between the establishment and the new generation ... I couldn't help but really [compare] what we see today to what we were dealing with in those days."

Even from the stage, the musicians who performed at Woodstock could sense the unrest beginning to take shape in the form of a social movement. According to Grateful Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten, "Surface tension between the various groups of people, a sense of community started to arise out of that that hadn't been there before." Statements like these could be used just as well to describe the phenomenon of Obama's Presidential run.

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