Pop Songs And T-Shirts

We had the world figured out. In fact, it'd be no exaggeration to say that we saved the world. Through pop songs and t-shirts, we, the "Me" Generation, Generation X, the Cold War Kids brought freedom to the world. We caused the Berlin Wall to come crashing down. We ended Apartheid in South Africa. Because of us, the Soviet Union became nothing more than a distant memory only ever to be thought of again in the odd game of classic Trivial Pursuit. Or so we thought.

Having been born in 1971, I vividly remember the undercurrent of anxiety that seemed to permeate almost everything. It was just always there, in the air. It was in the adult conversations around me and the television screen in front of me.

It was as if the rights and freedoms I and my young pals enjoyed were perpetually and precariously sitting atop a knife's edge. One false move by the wrong person and our lives would transform instantly from the lives of carefree plenty to authoritarianism and breadlines. There were only two ways to live, freely or not and in my simplistic and child-like way, I knew which side I wanted to end up on.

I remember the terror-filled tears I cried as a little girl, scared to death I was soon going to be taken away by government officials for no other sin than having exceptional athletic ability. I was 5 and had been watching the 1976 Montreal Olympics with my mother and she told me that in some countries, the ones that weren't free like ours, government workers would come to your home and take your children away if they were particularly good at a specific sport. These officials would then make the children live and train far, far away from home.

I don't know if that was true, but it sure scared the crap out of me.

I also remember being worried that the entire universe as we knew it would blow up, in a very literal sense, at any moment. Nuclear war was, for our generation, a very real threat. We had drills at school. A loud bell would sound and we'd duck under our desks. We were told it was critical to be prepared because we were living on one of the country's largest and most important military bases. It would most certainly be one of the first targets of any enemy strike.

In 1983, a terrifying movie came out. It was a "must-see" for adults and children alike, The Day After. It portrayed a fictional war between NATO forces and the Warsaw Pack countries and the devastating effects of the ensuing nuclear war on the residents of Lawrence, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri. THIS could be the fate of the world. It wasn't just a simple case of freedom vs tyranny. There was a third option, annihilation, or as those in the political arena called it, Mutually Assured Destruction.

As I grew older, my understanding of the world began to change. I became much less fearful and much more hopeful. More than that, I, and many of my peers became exuberantly enthusiastic as the mid-80s gave way to the latter years of the decade and the early 90s. In the space of 10 years, we saw freedom spread throughout the world.

The first hint of the world beginning to open up was WHAM's 1985 tour in China. Who'd have thought that George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley would be the first to do the previously unthinkable, bring the music of the freedom-loving west to the people of the east?

This groundbreaking event was a clear sign that freedom was beginning to spread. And it was spreading in just the way a Gen Xer would expect it to, through the universal language of music - our music.

Our music became one of the most powerful political tools of our generation. Wherever we saw injustice, inhumanity, or the limitation of human liberty, we were there, denouncing it, decrying it and demanding change. All to the beat of a catchy pop tune.

Aboriginal land confiscated in Australia? Just give it back was our motto because a people can't be free if their land is taken from them. But don't worry, we had a song for that, Midnight Oil's Beds Are Burning:

As a multiracial child living in a Black home, Apartheid in South Africa was particularly reprehensible to me. This political and economic segregation scheme classified individuals on the basis of race and denied some of the most basic freedoms to non-whites.

Even I, as pale as my skin was, as blue as my eyes were, would have been classed as "coloured," and denied such basic liberties as living and working where I wanted or owning land. It boggled the mind and it was wrong. We had a lot of songs for that, including Stevie Wonder's It's Wrong:

Famine relief was huge in the 80s because it's tough to be truly free if your very survival is at stake. We had a song for that too. Well, we had several, including my favourite and arguably the best of them all, Tears Are Not Enough:

Freedom means more, meant more, than just the granting of rights or removal of restrictions. It meant the freedom from anything and the provision of anything to help the world's people live their lives and reach their dreams in safety and without undue interference.

And when we weren't singing about specific threats to freedom, we could jam to general protest songs that could be applied to a variety of situations like Tears For Fears' Everybody Wants to Rule The World:

Of course, as fashion-conscious children of the 80s, we couldn't fight for freedom with music alone. We HAD to accessorize. And what better way to do that than with t-shirts with slogans as catchy as the tunes we were changing the world with? If there was a song for it, better believe there was a t-shirt too. Who didn't sport Free Mandela or Save The World proudly across their chest? Or maybe you were more into Choose Life or No Nukes. Either way, if you were around in the 80s, the best way to remain fashionable while changing the world for the better was to sport a protest tee. Add a pair of red tab Levis and some deck shoes and you're good to go!

And guess what? They worked! Silly pop songs and super cool t-shirts worked! We did it. We changed the world. We brought freedom to places that didn't have it before. We ended Apartheid. We smashed the Berlin wall to bits! Freedom for the Win!

If only it were that simple. I remember being so annoyed with my mother scoffing every time she heard me singing yet another socially conscious tune.

"You didn't invent protest songs, you know," she'd tell me.

Or she'd shake her head and say, "wait and see, little girl, the thing about history is that it repeats itself. Just wait and see. Just see what the world looks like 30 years from now."

She was a real Debbie Downer. Or in her case, maybe a Morose Mommy or a Woesome Winnie.

Of course, I was certain she was wrong. Sure, she'd lived through the Depression, the Second World War, the transformative 60s and the Sexual Revolution, but what did she know? As it turns out, a lot. And, as it turns out, she was right. Not only was she right, but she was almost exactly on schedule!

In the last few years, the world has begun to look a whole lot less like the world I thought my generation had a large hand in creating and a whole lot more like the one I thought we'd left behind. Fascism and tyranny seem to be making a comeback leaving freedom for many in a precarious state.

I suppose that's the lesson I've learned as a Cold War Kid. Freedom is great. I'm grateful to have it. I'm grateful to have the ability to carve out the life I want, to say and do as I wish and to achieve my dreams, whatever they are. But that freedom is precious and as easy as it can be won, it can be lost. Maybe pop tunes and t-shirts weren't enough. I wish I knew what was. And I'm all outta songs.