IMAGINE

72ND STREET AND CENTRAL PARK, NY

- RON CASSIE

When John Lennon’s antiwar politics earned him a place on the Nixon White House “enemies list,” Pikesville teenager Stuart Zolotorow rallied to his cause. Lennon and Yoko Ono had been living in New York for a year by the time Richard Nixon ran for re-election in 1972. Opposition to the Vietnam War was peaking and the former Beatle and his wife were singing “Give Peace a Chance” at antiwar demonstrations and telling their fans that the best way to end the war was to cast a ballot against the sitting president. Concerned Lennon might sway newly minted 18- to 20-year-old voters, the Nixon Administration responded by wiretapping him and ordering his deportation over a trumped up cannabis charge back in England.