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ACCORDING TO LIZ -
Twelve score and seven years ago, our forefathers, all our forefathers
Brought forth upon this here continent a new nation
Conceived, like we all was, in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition
That all men, honey, I tell you all men, are created equal.
Yup, the above is a mish-mash of Abraham Lincoln’s original Gettysburg Address with its 1968 rewrite in the counterculture musical Hair. But both expressed hope in hard times.
These days may feel like the end of times to many people, but there is still a lot to celebrate on the country’s 247th anniversary of the day on which the American Declaration of Independence was adopted.
Yes, we face existential challenges. Yes, the nuthouse inmates are running loose and may bring down the fragile life we hold onto at any moment.
HOWEVER…
Everywhere we look there are people still striving to form that more perfect union.
In the explosion of technology over the past three score and ten, we’ve lost sight of all the other accomplishments:
- more and more Americans can expect to live, not three score and ten, but four score years and more
- the miracle of the modern world pulling together to fight Covid
- the growing strength of the environmental, social justice and peace movements
Gender diversity is out in the open, gays can marry and have all the rights of married people, cross-racial marriages are accepted, multi-racial kids no long turn heads, and having a child out of wedlock is now a choice, not a disgrace.
In the squeezing of life out of George Floyd, we saw people across all races and religions come together to censure police abuses.
Despite 9/11, despite the pandemic, despite the oligarchs and all our struggles, there is more freedom for more Americans.
Maybe not everyone, everywhere, all at once… but incrementally lives are improving.
Many still voice a desire to return to a homogenous harmony of small town America. But not only has the world of June and Ward Cleaver ceased to exist, it never did. How many of those living in their Mayfield or other red-lined communities back then had any inkling of what actually went down behind the scenes in the 1950s?
Back then, as children, we were protected from the real reason we learned how to hide under our desks. Not that they would be any protection against the atom bomb devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the rising nuclear power of the USSR.
In the end, saner minds prevailed, and the world negotiated its way out of a 20th century demise. Proving that we have the same option for our future.
Back then, McCarthy’s oppression of anything that smelled of a broader socialist movement felt that he was protecting the American dream. However, Hoover’s hooligans gradually gave way to LBJ’s Great Society and, eventually, more transparency in government.
Back then, people turned a blind eye to racism whether segregation in the south and east or red-lining in the north and west. College students and Freedom Riders, often putting their own lives on the line, pushed back on overt segregation.
There is a long way to go but we should not give up but double down on anything that bends the arc of justice towards equity.
Some complain about the commercialization of Juneteenth, but it opened many eyes to experiences that we were able to ignore in yesteryear.
In the internet world, people have become more sophisticated about what is real, have grown up and become a little more cynical. Despite, or perhaps because of fears about A.I., people are less likely to follow click bait down holes to alternate realities. But it still happens.
So we still have plenty of challenges left to overcome.
We can’t stop fighting, but the reason that so much targeted oppression is making headlines is that the old guard is running scared.
And even those headlines are misleading – in this world of infotainment, it’s what grabs eyeballs that sells. Even the discord and hyper-partisanship is exaggerated. If you look at life on a more granular level, you almost certainly have more in common with your neighbors and family than not.
Those using scare tactics to demonize “woke” culture and protests against capitalism, are now outed as corrupt, bribed by the economic elites.
Despite the multitude of challenges from immigration, the packing of the Supreme Court, the endless wars that drain our prosperity and generate increased terrorism, we live on.
The United States was conceived in liberty. Its founding tenets were equality and justice for all and the inalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
But the best in life has never come free.
As Martin Luther King, Jr. noted: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
“The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he will lift some bruised and beaten brother to a higher and more noble life.”
On the day we celebrate our country’s birth, every single one of us must rededicate ourselves to servicing the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. To continuing the battle to maintain the best that America has to offer and defend it from the worst.
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
