‘No Kings’ Boomers Sing Patriotic Hymns — Then Close With John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’

Marchers at Saturday’s “No Kings” rally in Washington, D.C., sang an antiquated playlist — “Grand Old Flag,” “This Land,” “This Little Light of Mine” — according to a song sheet handed out on the Mall.

The Virginia organizers behind the D.C. march — We of Action Virginia, an Indivisible group — told participants to start with “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” stop at the National Archives to sing “This Land Is Your Land,” then close out with John Lennon’s “Imagine,” the newest song on the playlist. (RELATED: ‘No Kings’ Protester Wishes Trump Was ‘Absolutely’ Dead)

“We stop at the front of the National Archives to take photos,” the printed handout reads. “Please return all Flags and Banners… to a person in a yellow WOFA vest.”

That closer jars against the rest of the set. The handout stacks patriotic and civic hymns — “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” “America the Beautiful,” “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” “God Bless America,” and civil-rights staples — then swerves to Lennon’s utopia.

By contrast, “Imagine” asks listeners to picture “no countries,” “no religion,” and “no possessions,” a worldview miles from the flag-waving canon the crowd sang on the National Archives steps.

Lennon himself once described the song’s politics bluntly: “‘Imagine,’ which says, ‘Imagine that there was no more religion, no more country, no more politics,’ is virtually ‘The Communist Manifesto,’ even though I’m not particularly a Communist and I do not belong to any movement,” according to the Library of Congress.