Save the Country (Still)

Laura Nyro’s Prophetic Cry and Our Call to Wake Up

In 1969, Laura Nyro sat down at her piano and poured her soul into a song. The world was fractured. Cities burned. Leaders had been shot. The dreams of a generation teetered on the edge of disillusionment.

And yet—she sang.

Come on, people! Come on, children!
Come on down to the glory river…
Gonna wash you up and wash you down, gonna lay the devil down…
Gonna lay that devil down.

This wasn’t just a protest song. It was a prayer.
A chant.
A demand for soul reckoning.
A lament for what had been lost—and a refusal to let go of what still could be found.

“Save the Country” wasn’t top of the charts. It wasn’t candy-coated pop.
But it was truth, and it echoed in the blood of those who could feel the world bending under the weight of its own contradictions.

And here we are again.

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A Country on Edge, A World in Pain

Today, in the streets of America, echoes of the 1960s rise again.
The language has changed, the devices have multiplied, but the ache is hauntingly familiar:

• Civil rights rolled back or held in limbo

• Gunshots in classrooms and malls

• Trust eroded at every level

• War abroad, fear at home

• A generation of youth asking: What do we believe in now?

And so this line hits different:

We could build the dream with love and peace…
We could build the dream with love and peace…

She wasn't naive. Nyro wrote those lines while the ink was still drying on the obituary of a generation’s innocence.
But she didn’t retreat into despair.
She leaned into the piano.
She wailed.
She believed.

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The Prophetic Role of the Artist

Laura Nyro wasn’t just singing to save the country. She was singing to wake it up.

That’s the difference between protest and prophecy.
One reacts.
The other remembers.

Prophets don’t predict the future—they remind us of the truth we’ve tried to forget.

And in this case, the truth is simple but inconvenient:
We can’t save anything without waking up first.
Not the country.
Not the planet.
Not ourselves.

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60 Years Later—The Song Remains

Nearly six decades have passed since “Save the Country” was released.
And yet it feels like she wrote it for this very morning.

The devil hasn’t been laid down.
But neither has the dream.

That dream—that we could build something better, truer, freer—still stirs.
You hear it in the voices of young activists and tired elders.
You see it in protests and poems, Substack and songs.
You feel it when someone decides to listen instead of shout, to sit still instead of scroll.

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This September—A Different Kind of Movement

On September 24, 2025, people around the world will gather in stillness for something called IAMday—a global moment of spiritual remembrance, presence, and awakening.

No protests.
No podiums.
Just people. Together. Remembering.

It’s not a solution.
But it’s a start.

Because before we change the world, we have to feel it again.
And before we feel it, we have to stop long enough to hear what it’s trying to say.

Come on people, come on children…
We’ve got to save the country now.

Maybe she wasn’t just talking to 1969.
Maybe she was talking to us?

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Save the country.
Save the dream.
Save the soul.
Start by waking up.

Drop in and join the movement of remembering: IAMday.org
Mark your calendar: September 24, 2025
Let the silence speak.

1. “We could build the dream with love and peace.”
—Laura Nyro, Save the Country (1969)