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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Some thoughts post-Independence Day |
Current rating: 0 |
by Michael Feltes
Email: mfeltes (nospam) ucimc.org (unverified!) |
05 Jul 2002
Modified: 07 Jul 2002 |
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Some of my thoughts on reflecting on my celebration of Independence Day. |
I celebrated the Fourth of July by participating in the float of the Anti-War, Anti-Racism Effort here in Champaign-Urbana. The entry consisted of three parts.
The first, which I participated in, consisted of a truck pulling a flatbed trailer. The front of the truck had large pieces of fabric on each side, on which were painted "The Beat of War". On that trailer, eight people
sat, each with a newspaper in hand, and a drummer. The drummer beat out a slow, steady rhythm, and we all opened and closed our newspapers simultaneously.
The second piece of the float was a Ford Mustang with a lovely young woman in an evening gown and a handsome young man. The woman wore a sash which read "Miss Information", and that was repeated in large letters on the back. Each door had a sign that said, "You are being lied to!"
The third portion was simple. We had a number of people from a local drum circle beating out their polyrhythms, and two people carried a banner that read "Different Drummer". People carried picket signs that said things like, "Dissent is Patriotic", "Don't take freedom for granted. We all
create it, not receive it from high", and "What about the Bill of Rights? Secret evidence, illegal detentions, enemy combatants, secret trials" The size of that group doubled during the course of the parade as people joined us; the best part was the two high school kids who had a big
Adbusters flag. If you haven't seen the flag, it's an American flag with corporate logos in place of the stars.
I feel such a wave of good energy coming off of doing that. We presented people with compelling visual metaphors, and they responded. We heard way more cheers than boos, but mostly I saw people react facially. Some
looked shocked, some looked disdainful, some looked puzzled, some smiled, recognizing the patterns that they knew were there, but hadn't heard articulated. We heard people say, "You are being lied to? What do they
mean by that?" I saw people thinking. That was the best part.
I'm a patriot, but not a knee-jerk patriot. I'm glad to be an American, mainly due to Tom Jefferson. That incredibly contradictory man enunciated the right to basic freedoms, and forced their inclusion in the Constitution. America was the first to incorporate basic rights that restrain the power of the state to crush dissent into its founding
documents. The quotation of Michael Collins in talking about the 1922 Treaty that created the modern Irish state seems appropriate to me in reference to the Bill of Rights: "It gave us freedom - not the ultimate
freedom which all nations hope for and struggle for, but freedom to achieve that end."
We're not anywhere near ultimate freedom; for me, that will come when we can establish economic democracy alongside political democracy. The Bill of Rights gives us the right to work, to organize toward that goal, but it's slowly being rolled back. Look at the case of Jose Padilla. He's an American citizen, but because President Bush has designated him a so-called enemy combatant, he's not being tried in the criminal courts. The judicial branch is bypassed on the say-so of the executive branch! That's truly intimidating. That's a scary precedent. That doesn't live up to the ideals of America.
I think that if there's one thing that I would want to point out, it's to distinguish between the government and the nation. Loyalty to the nation doesn't have to mean loyalty to the government. Dissent IS patriotic. |
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Some thoughts post-Independence Day
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Right On, Mike |
by Darrin
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
06 Jul 2002
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Kudos to you and other AWARE persons; the display was provocative, imaginitive, and effective. My only addendum is that ultimate freedom is a condition of the heart-mind. |
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Freedom to me.. |
by single white male
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
07 Jul 2002
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to me true freedom comes yes from within and the way you are able to deal with life and all its hurdles but I would like also to say that we are never FREE until everyone everything is FREE, this undoubtedly will take a long time and only through much much more communication will we ever acheive this. |
