"Ohio" Revisited: Is Song by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young An Anthem For Our Times? | Rock 'n' Roll with Me
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"Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Revisited
by Ellen from Endwell
Given the popularity of my post on the song “For What It’s Worth (Stop, Hey What’s That Sound)” by Buffalo Springfield, which is now close to 4,000 views and rising (available here), I have to conclude that people are desperately searching for a way to make meaning out of what’s happening around the world and in their own countries.
In particular, I suspect that people are trying to figure out some way to respond to what they feel are steps in an egregiously wrong direction—perhaps even illegal, immoral, unethical, or tyrannical—by those in charge of running things, without risking themselves, their family, friends, and communities, or their way of life in doing so.
My post on the song “Ohio” is now starting to get the same attention—a song written and put out by Crosby Stills Nash & Young in the immediate aftermath of the Kent State Massacre in 1970, which was soon thereafter followed by the Jackson State Killings.
If you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ve been feeling a strong sense of deja vu for a while now. We have been here before. We have been through something eerily similar to this. That’s why I’m sharing the “Ohio” post below, so you can see why I’m saying that.
I do believe in my heart, mind, and soul that, as Martin Luther King declared in his remarkably inspiring sermons and talks using the title of a famous gospel song as his key message, “We Shall Overcome.”
As Dr. King explained, we shall overcome not simply because we wish to do so. We shall overcome because “somehow the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice” and because “truth crushed to earth will rise again.”1 If you need inspiration in these difficult times, here it is:
And here it is in the song whose title he cited, “We Shall Overcome,” sung by the glorious Joan Baez. (You can find the other two iconic versions, one by gospel legend Mahalia Jackson and the other by the famous folk singer-activist Pete Seeger, here and here.)
Herewith, without further ado, my previous post on the tragic events provoking the creation of the song “Ohio” by Crosby Stills Nash & Young.
This is a fantastic song in so many ways. Thank you, Neil Young and CSNY.
Full Substack article "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Revisited by Ellen from Endwell.
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Labels: #MayTheFOURBeWithYou, Crosby Stills Nash Young, csny, kent state, neil young, ohio
by thrasher@PermaLink: 1/31/2026 01:52:00 PM
11 comments
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11 Comments:
How many more?
4?! Great post Thrasher!
I was down with healthcare workers at Harborview Hospital in Seattle in a protest march against murder by ICE! There were many, many hundreds of us & we marched down major roads, met up with Swedish healthcare workers and marched down broadway to Seattle’s city college. It was enormous, lots of fantastic signs! The community and healing we get from protesting together is so rejuvenating & liberating!
This movement has reached past the tipping point now. Trump is done. I give him 3 months. Hundreds may die. I hope not. But we don’t do fascism in the US! We will stand and fight for freedom, justice, liberty, and stand up for the rights of all immigrants & others!
No one is illegal on stolen land!
Your Brother Alan in Seattle
I was given the following handout @ a recent protest rally: In a handwritten note that read THIS IS HOW THE NAZIS TOOK POWER
“The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”
“Stand up for what you believe in even if you are standing alone”
Sophie Scholl
Thanks for reminding me of Sophie Scholl and her friends and relatives of the White Rose. She is buried across the river a few miles from here. However, as with Good and Pretti, Sophie Scholl did not realize in full until the very end what she stood up against. For many years I have been guiding visitors and students around the Munich university, my alma mater, showing them around where these events in February 1943 happened. In honor and remembrance of these students in Germany many secondary schools are named after them. More important is the handwritten note mentioned above: it explains very clearly why the stance the White Rose took came too late. The times when heroes and martyrs are needed are bad times, always.
Dionys, I hope you can take me on that tour of the Munich University. I might be in Europe for 2026-27.
Thanks HW.
The handout you posted that's been circulating around -- it's intense and clearly comes from a place of deep conviction. The part about millions who just want to 'survive' and avoid disturbance hits hard, and Sophie Scholl's words are a stark reminder that principles matter, even at personal cost.
Over the years, we've posted modified versions of Rev. Martin Niemoller's words from 1945. (See 2020's https://neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2020/07/we-wont-forget-trust-us.html ) The words are a warning to inaction. And the postings seem to have gone over with a shrug as the jaws of censorship gnawed at TW's heels.
And here we are today. Being beseiged with requests for support. Not to say its too little, too late. Not being a Cassandra, but many warnings have gone unheeded. Or misunderstood. We don't find too much value in going back and saying told you so since it just inflames.
We're trying to hold the precious middle ground of sanity here, not because we're indifferent or afraid, but because these "scripted events"* are so complex with conflicting perspectives, and that anything we add only polarizes. That said, we do take the call to examine our own conscience seriously.
Thanks for passing along—it gives us (and hopefully our readers) something to reflect on as we navigate the bridge over troubled waters...
Abner, that can be arranged. For the comprehensive tour including the courtroom, the prison and the cemetary allow for an afternoon.
Oh, and while we are into German history anyway: Martin Niemöller never said what is handed around by the political left and right around the globe, in many cases misused to serve the respective agenda. Niemöller had been incarcerated beginning 1937 and it took longer than 1945 after his liberation when he came to conclusions in hindsight that somehow were transformed into the pointed aphorism or even poem that is known today. It was not until 1984 that Niemöller in an interview declared that he had used something of this thought in a sermon he had held in 1976. At the time in 1937 Niemöller and his protestant environment were not too unhappy that communists and trade unionists were eliminated as political opponents of the church establishment.
To see both oppositional protestant clerics during the Nazi era, Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhöffer, being used and instrumentalized in movies like "Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin." makes me wanna throw up.
Dionys, could you send me an email. I somehow cannot find your address.
Thanks for sharing Dionys.
A good reminder of how complicated these historical figures and their words really are. You're right that the 'First they came...' lines aren't a direct quote from the 1930s; Niemöller reflected on them postwar, and versions varied a lot depending on the audience and context.
The same goes for Bonhoeffer—his life and choices don't fit neatly into modern boxes, and it's frustrating when films or causes instrumentalize them to push an agenda.
Not the 1st time that has happened.
We quoted Niemöller in our last exchange because it captures the danger of bystander silence in any era, which felt relevant to HW's point. But we hear you on the risks of oversimplification or misuse. As we tread a careful path —not out of apathy, but because everything has gotten so volatile of late.
Appreciate you bringing this depth & perspective; it's helpful and valued @ TW. Hopefully helps others think more carefully before speaking and acting.
The United States culture has undergone significant regression. I believe we are trained from an early age to protect our lives and fortunes (even if quite small): there is not, perhaps, anything more significant than the individual. Such a position is expressed in the isolation of responsibility. "I was never a slave owner and so I owe nothing in the way of reparations." I hear this view articulated over and over again in public discussions over social justice issues and, by the way, social justice studies are under relentless attack. We cannot expect from individuals what is mostly missing from the culture. Even as ICE kills people, the market ticks up.
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