Back in 1990 I attended a concert featuring the performance artist Laurie Anderson. At the end of the event, as she walked off stage, some words came up on a screen behind the stage. They said: “Tonight’s performance is dedicated to the memory or Abbie Hoffman who shouted ‘Theater!’ in a crowded fire.”

Abbie, who had just taken his own life, was a member of the Yippies back in the 1960s. The Yippies were masters of street theater who had once during the Viet Nam War in a brilliant piece of street theater convinced military leaders at the Pentagon that they were about to levitate that massive building.

Abbie understood that he was standing in the midst of a conflagration that was singeing the souls of every American.

I was in a real fire once when I was a teenager. As everyone who has survived a fire will tell you, they never again enter a building without noting where all the fire exits are just in case they need to flee.

I’m sure that Abbie knew where the fire exits were back in the sixties. But he decided to stay in the fire and shout “theater” as loud as he could.

Well, the world is once again on fire. We are wasting thousands of lives in an unnecessary war half way around the world. Our streets are populated with the homeless. Fewer and fewer people can afford medical care. And we are beginning to experience the disastrous results of man-made Global Warming.

The problems are fearsome, and I have to be honest and admit that many of us are looking for fire exits. But, a friend of mine insists that we need to stay where we are and fight the flames. We need to be shouting “Theater” as loud as we can. It may be time once again to levitate the Pentagon. And maybe the White House, too.