lennoneng2

Speech of Ricardo Alarcon at Dedication of John Lennon Statue

(Continued)

The personal contribution of John Lennon stood out singularly and endured beyond the dissolution of the group. His songs form the most complete inventory of the collective struggle of the young people for peace, revolution, popular power, the emancipation of the working class and of women, the rights of indigenous peoples and racial equality as well as the liberation of Angela Davis and John Sinclair and other political prisoners, the denunciation of the massacre at Attica and the situation in North American prisons, in an interminable list. Beyond the music, in interviews and public statements, he openly expressed his identification with the socialist ideal.

Lennon was the object of intense and obstinate persecution by the Yankee authorities. The FBI, the CIA and the Immigration Service, instigated directly by Richard Nixon, the trickiest tenant the White House has ever had, spied on him and harassed him and strived to expel him from the United States. In spite of what their laws say and the countless measures carried out during a quarter of a century, these agencies still

maintain in secret the documents proving the tenacious harassment they unleashed against him. The little that they have revealed shows that in just one year, between 1971 and 1972, the secret informants of their spies accumulated 300 pages and a file that weighs 26 pounds. With no other weapons than his talent and the solidarity of lots of North Americans, he was forced to confront for several years the powerful Empire led by the most sordid and arrogant political machine. This chapter will remain in history as an example of moral force and the force of ideas, and from it Lennon emerged as a paradigm of the entirely free and creative intellectual, precisely engaged with his time.

Dear John.

It was more that a few who said, twenty years ago, that that 8th of December was the end of an era. Many feared it among the millions who offered you ten minutes of silence and the multitude that on the 14th congregated in Central Park in New York to express a pain that time does not placate.

It was Yoko who then advised: "the message should not end." And little Sean, knew how to express the greater truth: He imagined you bigger, after death, "because now you are everywhere."

You were always among us. Now, in addition, we offer you this bench where you can rest and this park to receive your compañeros and friends.

Your message could not disappear because love had, and still has, many battles to fight. Because you had the privilege to hear it in millions of voices that became yours and continued raising it up like a hymn.

Wasn't it a yellow submarine that surfaced that afternoon in 1966 in the port of New York and marched at the front of thousands of young people who condemned the war? How many hundreds of thousands demanded that peace be given a chance, and were in solidarity with the people of Vietnam, there in Washington, in front of the monument, that unforgettable November 15th in 1969? On that day, didn't your art reach its highest realization? How many times did it not multiply from Berkeley to New England and from one continent to another, that generation that believed that love could prevail over war? John, I am sure that you remember the martyrs of Kent State University who wanted to follow you, to also be working class heroes. It is known that it was your verses that were their only shield in front of the bullets of Nixon.

There were more, many more, that met to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Imagine, in 1991, when others said that the story had already ended. Some believe that you appeared in a window of the Dakota. All of us, you too, were happy. We saw, astonished, the faces of old comrades, confounded to be among countless young people who had not even been born when you, over there in Liverpool, intoned ballads of love with proletarian words and we here defied the monster.

Our boat will continue sailing. Nothing will stop it. It is driven by "a wind that never dies." They will call us dreamers but our ranks will grow. We will defend the vanquished dream and struggle to make real all dreams. Neither storms nor pirates will hold us back. We will sail on until we reach the new world that we will know how to build.

We will meet again, tonight, at the concert. We will go on together, always.

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