In a terrible irony, John Lennon was murdered the day after Pearl Harbor Day.
That was 41 years ago today. I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that it shook some of us in the way that the "surprise" attack roused Americans and the world.
In another terrible irony, the man responsible for "Imagine" and other songs calling for peace and unity was cut down by a lone gunman who claimed to be inspired by a fictional character who probably would have listened to Lennon's (and the Beatles') music and probably wouldn't have committed violence simply because he turned all of his anger inward.
(Of course, Lennon's murder points up to one of the ways in which the US gets things backwards. In other countries, everyone has access to health care--which includes mental health services-- but very few people who aren't police officers or military personnel have access to firearms.)
Anyway, apart from his music and being married to the woman blamed for the breakup of the Beatles (I think she was a catalyst, not a cause), he and she were known for their "bed-ins" for peace. At their second, in Amsterdam, they were given a white bike that was part of the Provo plan.
Think of Provo as a kind of Dutch proto-Occupy Wall Street: It began as a counter-culture movement during the mid-1960s. It had a cultural wing, which staged "happenings" and an activist wing that provoked (hence the name) the police through non-violent means.
There was also a political faction that actually won a seat on Amsterdam's city council and had a number of goals to make their city and country more liveable and what we would now call "green." Those goals included the closing of central Amsterdam to motorized traffic. That, of course, is probably Provo's most recognizable and lasting legacy: One could say that the "White Bicycle" plan set the Dutch capital on its path to becoming the cycling haven it is today.
That, I believe, is something of which John Lennon would have approved.
