It’s a weird world we live in when activists are using an event that was full of illegal drug use to try to make the case that prohibitionary laws work, but welcome to 2019. Moms Demand Action is teaming up with activist Steve Gold to give New Yorkers the chance to sign a piece of the original Woodstock stage as a way to push for gun control in Washington, D.C., on the 50th anniversary of the legendary concert festival.

After having collected hundreds of signatures at Woodstock’s 50th Anniversary events, Hudson Valley lawmakers will sign the panel Thursday afternoon in White Plains. Then, the stage panel will be displayed in state Senator David Carlucci’s Rockland County district office in New City for the public to sign through mid-October, before Gold delivers the panel to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. And there is a change.org petition calling on McConnell to awaken the spirit of Woodstock.

The irony is astounding to me. Woodstock is synonymous with chaos, from the lack of food and the massive traffic jams leading to the festival site to the rampant illegal drug use and the haphazard scheduling of artists who made it to the stage. The whole ethos of Woodstock doesn’t exactly scream “put people in prison for non-violent gun possession”, but I guess the Left has changed over the past 50 years. It’s not your grandparents’ “let your freak flag fly” movement anymore. Now it’s more “When you were 16 you flew a freak flag, so now you must be cancelled.”

It’s an undeniable fact that our nation’s drug laws were flouted by many of those attending Woodstock, which does make it a strange choice to use as a backdrop to promote prohibitionary laws that criminalize non-violent behavior. If Mitch McConnell were to really “awaken the spirit of Woodstock”, he’d be pushing the legalization of cannabis, not the illegalization of AR-15’s. Admittedly, Woodstock was before my time, but I was in high school during the 20th anniversary of Woodstock and I had a teacher who spent several classes regaling us with tales of what that weekend meant for her. As I recall, the feeling at Woodstock was one of freedom, not control.

It’s also worth noting that Steve Gold may be using this particular piece of the Woodstock stage to promote gun control, but he’s also promoting his own company Peace of Stage as well, just in case you’d like to own a piece of the actual stage instead of (or maybe in addition to) signing a piece of plywood in support of gun control. For the low, low price of $99 you can have a peace symbol pendant with a quarter-sized peace of plywood that was once on Max Yasgur’s farm! It was Gold’s company, not Gold himself who started the Change.org petition, and hey, why not take advantage of the free advertising? Woodstock may not have made any money as a festival, but it wasn’t supposed to be a non-profit. Why shouldn’t Gold use his business to promote gun control? Isn’t that what “good” businesses are supposed to do these days?

I guess I just find it strange and sad to see the freedom-loving hippies of the 60’s become, as they age, more like their authority-loving ideological forefathers of the 1930s who adored the big government of FDR (and in some cases, the all-encompassing government of Joseph Stalin). It seems like they’ve forgotten the three days of peace and love of Woodstock and are far more focused on bequeathing the next generation a lifetime of conflict and government control.