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Talkin' 'bout FreedomJanuary 16, 2006 Some meditations on freedom, in honor and memory of MLK Jr. The bigger the subject, the glibber and more forced the transitions feel; hence, no transitions. Fighting for the vote, or for freedom: that's the important thing; the struggle, the feeling of our collective power: that's the important thing. The vote itself is a weak instrument, and once people win freedom we seem so eager to turn it over to forces beyond our control: God, human nature, genes . . . If 95 percent of what we do is determined by our genes, by human nature, or by God, then it's the other 5 percent that makes us interesting, that makes us human, that makes us worth fighting for. The veterans, the professional veterans, the veterans who belong to the American Legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars -- for going on 40 years I've been puzzled and often infuriated by their willingness to squelch free speech in the name of the freedom they say they fought for. But what if, what if -- what if they cherish their experiences for the same reasons that the veterans of the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement(s) and the women's liberation movement cherish ours? What if free speech and the other freedoms seem as pallid and misused to them as the vote does to me? I'm not a feminist so that a handful of women can break the glass ceiling and take their places in corporate boardrooms, screwing up the world. The God that inspired Martin Luther King Jr. is not the God that inspires Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell or Dubya Bush or Osama bin Laden. They all go by the same names, but they aren't the same Gods. Seems to me I hear Bernice Johnson Reagon explaining this at a Sweet Honey in the Rock concert, All Souls Unitarian Church (gods bless those Unitarians!), Washington, D.C., in the early 1980s. She noted (as I remember it) that Harriet Tubman's God told her exactly what she needed to hear: Free your people. When MLK was assassinated, I was a junior in high school and I barely knew who he was. A little over a year later, I moved to Washington, D.C., where the legacy of the outraged and anguished riots that followed King's death was still very visible. I learned; by all the gods, I did learn. Don't give up on anyone. Even a clueless white suburban kid can wake up, given enough opportunities to make the right choices. I heard on the news today that the percentage of black USians who observe MLK Jr. Day is greater than the percentage of whites. Well, duh. White USians are more likely than black USians to believe that racial equality has been achieved. Duh, duh, double duh. Most white USians were never refused the right to vote, never refused service in a restaurant, never had their educational and job options circumscribed by the color of their skin. Big surprise: they tend to take this freedom thing for granted. I have a dream today: that some day we'll all realize that freedom is never won, never a done deal; that freedom is in the struggle, and that it's the struggle that makes us human, sets us free, and brings the human race into being.
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