No One Is Free Until We Are All Free
No one is free until we are all free.
Martin Luther King Junior is attributed with that quote, but in reality, the Jewish - American poet Emma Lazarus said words to this effect. I think about this phrase, as I type and listen to Tuareg guitarist Mduo Moctar’s incendiary, fiery new album “Funeral For Justice”. It’s spring here in the City Beautiful, and the photo above is the start of our annual spring planting season. My bride has always had an eye for nature, and it really shows when she dreams up a garden/yard design, which usually starts during the winter months. Good for us.
Needless to say, I’m at one of those moments where I wish I could bring more people from diverse backgrounds together, as I always attempt to do. My workday revolves around this. Some days, it can feel completely useless. Somedays, it’s damn awkward and uncomfortable. Then, there’s some hope that springs eternal, not pardoning the pun.
That other life that I sometimes refer to as a newspaper journalist comes back to either temper me, or set me free, when writing today. My weekly editorial column back then followed a certain doctrine, which swayed on the pendulum of semi - moderate to progressive, when addressing certain news of the week. Yeah, I would hear about my print offerings during the week from folks around the area, in typical ‘Iowa nice’ fashion. Mostly I would rationalize certain issues from a ‘let’s look at it this way’ agenda. I did have people come up to me and say that they never thought about looking at an issue a certain way. Others would disagree in a gruff, but presentable way. Hey, if you put it out there for public consumption, you gotta take the heat in the kitchen, so to speak.
The tone of this blog has been to try to include everyone in on human interest stories and stuff of inspiration, while avoiding the political. Sometimes, it’s hard to do. Still, I go after it. Occasionally, we cross a line. Oh well.
A few acquaintances were making social media posts recently about how the ‘Iowa that I grew up with isn’t really there anymore’. It’s easy to go there these days, especially since most of us are older and tend to reflect more on our pasts. My own view is that the Hawkeye State has always had the polarizing views that we tend to exploit these days. It depends on the temper of the time. We just have more far-reaching communication, that’s all, so we get ’news’, or whatever we call it, quickly. Growing up, you know what you know, and that’s about it. I lived in a small farm community in between Des Moines and Ankeny, Iowa, with a less than a handful of minorities in school, and a working-class base of blue-collar folks that made it happen daily at places like Firestone and John Deere. You could drive five to 10 miles souht into the big city, and hit the north side of Des Moines, just cusping the inner-city where North High School had a predominantly African American student base. Or go up the road a piece to Ankeny High and Ankeny city proper, mostly white, where the current explosion of population was nescient back in my day. Now, both areas, as well as other surrounding towns have exploded in population, which seems to be about right.
I only knew what I knew, and what I thought that I knew about racial, social strata, and economic politics. I grew from there. Some folks don’t, or don’t really care to. To each his own, until it affects the other. Thus, the current sentiment.
I could rattle off the same polarizing stuff from my day that happens today - student campus protests (again, over wars that never seem to end), racial divisions, lack of funding for our towns and cities, and absolutist political figures more hellbent than ever to gain a feed to their megalomania tendencies. Climate concerns were a situation back then, as well. Religious division and lack of respect for faiths that we don’t really know about, but think that we do? You got it - same back then. The more things change, the more that they remain the same.
So, I guess that I’m saying the Iowa that I grew up in Iowa has really been the same Iowa - it depends on the day and who is in charge of the bully pulpit.
Whoever is elected this coming fall won’t drive me to do anything except try to double-back on my efforts to keep extending an olive branch to show folks that really, we all have the same concerns. Love might be a good word for this. To look at the base of major religions (believe me, I’ve studied a few), love is the key word. Yet, we weaponize the whole process with our human views of right/wrong, and who exactly gets invited to the table. I can’t solve everything, and don’t try to, especially through my measly little blog. But some days it’s tough to pull the tugboat along, because I get really pissed off at why we can’t move forward on a certain plateau to make things unite. Yep, I know - get in line.
Like Sisyphus, we need to keep pushing the boulder up the hill, until we can move it off the hill.
We aren’t free until we all are free.