10 Dissidents Who Changed the World: #3

Beatle mop-top John Lennon threw himself into the anti-war movement with full abandon on June 1, 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, when he recorded Give Peace a Chance.

The song was written off-the-cuff at one of Lennon and Yoko Ono’s weeklong Bed-Ins for World Peace. Later, with dozens of journalists and celebrities packed into Room 1742 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Lennon sang the song into a rented 8-track recorder. Comedian Tommy Smothers accompanied Lennon on guitar, and the rest of the room chanted along on the chorus.

Three years later, the Nixon administration was fed up with Lennon’s growing anti-war influence on America’s draft-age cannon fodder. In 1972, the U.S. Government told the former Beatle he had thirty days to leave the country. To their surprise, Lennon fought back.

John Lennon’s Traumatic Childhood

John Lennon’s traumatic childhood began when he was born in a Liverpool hospital during a WWII German air raid in 1940. Then, when he was five years old, he had to choose between his mom and his dad…

In 1946, John’s roving father came home and took him on a vacation. When they didn’t return on time, John’s mother and her live-in boyfriend came to retrieve John. At a vacation cottage in Blackpool, John’s father asked his son to choose: sail away with his dad to seek fortune in New Zealand, or stay in Liverpool with his mom.

John chose his father, and watched his crying mother walk out the door. But after she’d gone, John changed his mind and ran down the street after her.

In the following years, John lived at his Aunt Mimi’s house. She and her husband doted on him, and his mom visited almost every day. It was his mom, Julia, who bought him his first guitar, and played him Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry records.

Then, when John was 17, he watched his mom get run over by a drunken off-duty police officer. It’s a miracle a boy with so much baggage grew up to function at all in society. And yet, as coal turns to diamond, incalculable stress and pressure often begets phenomenal results in people, too.

John Lennon in America

John Lennon kept playing his guitar, and soon hooked up with another teen who’d lost his mom. His name was Paul McCartney, and by 1964 The Beatles had grabbed a hold of the world, and they didn’t let go for the next six years.

By 1970, the band had dissolved. But Lennon, along with his new wife, avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, had found a new pursuit: opposing the Vietnam War.

In August 1971, the couple moved to New York City.

After becoming friends with anti-war leaders Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, they planned the first concert tour by a Beatle since the Beatles had quit touring in 1966.

One idea was for the tour to shadow President Nixon’s campaign speech tour around the country. Since passage of the 26th Amendment, the 1972 presidential election would be the first in which 18-year-olds had the right to vote.

Besides speaking out against the war, Lennon wanted to use the tour to persuade those 11 million new eligible voters to register and vote against the war — which meant voting against Nixon.

But first, Lennon was asked to perform at a concert to bring attention to imprisoned poet and activist John Sinclair…

John Lennon Helps Free John Sinclair

In 1971, John Sinclair was serving ten years in prison for selling two marijuana joints to an undercover cop. Hoping to draw attention to Sinclair’s outlandish prison sentence, John Lennon and Yoko Ono headlined the December 10 concert in front of 15,000 people. As a testament to Lennon’s growing political influence, the State of Michigan released John Sinclair two days later.

The Nixon administration was paying attention.

In early 1972, Senator Strom Thurmond informed Nixon of Lennon’s plans for an anti-war, voter registration concert tour. Thurmond reminded Nixon that there would be many new voters under the age of 21 — probably all Beatle fans and probably all anti-war. Thurmond suggested that Lennon — a non-U.S. citizen — be deported.

John Lennon Fights Deportation

In March 1973, the Immigration and Naturalization Service began deportation proceedings against Lennon. They claimed that Lennon was ineligible to be in the United States because in 1968 he had been convicted of misdemeanor cannabis possession in London. The tactic worked, and tied up Lennon enough to prevent his anti-war concert tour. And Nixon won the 1972 election in a landslide.

For the next couple of years, Lennon was under a constant 60-day order to leave the country, which his attorney managed to repeatedly get extended. But even while being harassed, wiretapped, and tailed by FBI agents, Lennon didn’t stop speaking out against the Vietnam War.

Finally, after Nixon resigned due to the Watergate scandal, Lennon was granted his green card in 1975.

Watching the Wheels

On John Lennon’s birthday in 1975, Yoko gave birth to John’s second son, Sean. Lennon took a five-year vacation to spend time with his son — something he’d neglected to do with first son, Julian. In 1980, he returned to the music scene with a new album. The record was climbing the charts when he was murdered.

Because he risked his reputation for what was right, spoke out against a senseless war, ingeniously promoted peace, and ultimately overcame a government that wasn’t playing fair, John Lennon is one of my favorite 10 Dissidents Who Changed the World.

* * *

Go to the next article in this series:
Stanislav Petrov - Dissident Comrade.

Go to the previous article in this series:
Ehren Watada - Dissident Lieutenant.

Go to the series index:
10 Dissidents Who Changed the World.

Read More: John Lennon, Yoko Ono, dissident, Vietnam War, Richard Nixon

Related Articles

I Met the Walrus

John Lennon Revolution

10 Dissidents Who Changed the World

Stanislav Petrov - Dissident Comrade

Ehren Watada - Dissident Lieutenant

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 12:37 am and is filed under Politics, Art & Culture, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.