By Marc Eliot Stein, World BEYOND War, February 23, 2024
Crystal Zevon travelled from Vermont to Washington DC to join protestors from Code Pink and elsewhere in confronting cowering politicians and diplomats in Washington DC about Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. This was a familiar journey for Crystal, a deeply committed longtime activist who kicked off her life of conscious engagement as a pre-teen townie in Aspen, Colorado in the 1960s when she tried to run away from home to hear Martin Luther King speak.
Her unique life story continued when she married the eccentric genius singer-songwriter Warren Zevon, whose own attitudes about violence and the travails of human coexistence contrasted her own. Our in-depth interview ranges back and forth between the political and the personal as we talk about Crystal’s past struggle to overcome alcoholism and raise a family while remaining connected to the changing landscape of progressive activism in our tumultuous times.
Some of my favorite moments in this interview are about the interpersonal struggles of a determined activist: the painful loss of friends, the endless need for forgiveness. We also talk about Crystal’s GoFundMe campaigns to help individual Gazans, about US Congress’s shocking decision to censure the brave Palestinian congressperson Rashida Tlaib and about the disappointing cowardice of Tennessee Congressperson Steve Cohen in supporting this censure. Other topics include Ukraine, Bernie Sanders, Extinction Rebellion, the idea of a post-USA world, and the need to converge the climate movement with the peace movement.
I was inspired to interview Crystal Zevon after watching videos of Code Pink’s DC protests on Instagram and then reading “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead”, her oral history of Warren Zevon’s career as a rock star. This is a fascinating book, bursting with the complexities and paradoxes of music, creativity, obsession, love and life.
Musical excerpts in this podcast: “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” and “Piano Fighter” by Warren Zevon, “Hasten Down The Wind” by Linda Rondstadt.
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