Indigenous Peoples Day – Not Columbus Day

Can we stop celebrating Christopher Columbus[i] now…please, strike that name from the calendar.

I’m not suggesting that we forget the extraordinary crossing he made with the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, whose names I remember from a refrain we sang in grade school, which began...

 

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue[ii]

 

How could we forget that fateful voyage which altered forever the future history of the world. I am not suggesting that we forget these triumphs of humanity, I am only asking that we dispense with the feting of monsters.

Columbus set out on his adventure in pursuit of fame; he sailed for wealth and titles and vanity...and to what should be his enduring shame.

He sailed across the Atlantic four times, there and back again, becoming wealthy and famous as was his desire, he even earned the titles he sought and held them for a time…though his vanity was never satisfied.

Columbus was an Italian from Genoa, born in obscurity; he first set sail when he was a child, acquiring the seamanship-skills and knowledge that brought him to a captaincy. In this aspect of his life he was a remarkable person and deserving of respect.

He became an adventurer in the service of Ferdinand and Isabella, the monarchs of Spain; they gave him command of a small flotilla, which set-out for India on September 6^th. His crew sighted land in what we now call the Bahamas on October 12^th; he called the island where he landed San Salvador…exactly which island this was, is now lost to human memory.

Columbus expected to be in Asia, but to his surprise, and to the surprise of everyone in the Spanish and European courts, there were other continents and other oceans between Europe and Asia they knew nothing about, which they would still have to traverse in order to get to India, which had been their aim.

The moneyed interests who backed Columbus, the queen and king of Spain, still wanted this; they still wanted a westward route to India, but they were more than happy to discover the truth for themselves, to learn the real shape of the world, and to discover that the peoples living there could be enslaved and exploited with ease.

Columbus’ exploits exposed these continents and all of their peoples to the incessant appetites and cruelties of Europeans; his journey exposed them to their hunger for gold, land and war. He brought death, disease and catastrophic suffering to those he encountered, peoples who the Spanish worked to death…literally worked to death[iii]…they depopulated the islands by working the inhabitants until they died, without even bothering to clothe or feed them…when they had spent those human-lives, they brought enslaved people from Africa to continue at the work.

Columbus never sailed past the Islands of the Caribbean. He never set foot in what came to be known as the America’s, and his life after his first voyage was not without controversy, even among the European courts he haunted.

Columbus became wealthy and earned titles, he satisfied his grand ambition. He was also arrested, jailed and relieved of his governance...because for all of his accomplishments he remained who he was, an ignoble sailor from Genoa; he may have been Admiral of the Ocean Seas (for a time), but it was a rank without authority, and his heirs did not inherit the titles he had earned. Columbus never entered the true nobility, he died at the age of fifty-four…eaten up by gonorrhea…as the story is told.

His journey was one of historical significance…yes, we should take note of it, but the truth should be told and not celebrated. Columbus was a petty man, reckless and pitiless; he came to the islands as the harbinger of death.

 

[iv]

 

Sid Gateaux, BigSugar Buddha, Peoples History, Zen Syndicate, Essay, Reflection, Holiday, Indigenous People’s Day

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[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus

[ii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMiReDGqs3Q

[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_las_Casas

[iv] 1492 The Conquest of Paradise, Ridley Scott, Paramount Pictures, 1992

Observation - October 11th, 2026, Sunday

hanging out with three cool-cats

in the East Village with Romeo, Chico and Stan

Alphabet City, rambunctious after eating

stalking each other about the flat

 

sitting at the counter

with a window on the garden

black squirrel in the bird bath

city rats on patrol

Observation - September 11th, 2026, Friday

it is hot and windy

the bright sun striking like a feathered hammer

a man with his daughter walk along the beach

            bare feet dragging though the water

 

Labor Day

Today is Labor Day, our great national holiday, a day set aside for the American worker, a day to celebrate the ordinary citizen, the men and women whose blood, sweat and tears sustain this country.

Today is meant to be a day of rest, a day of repose, a day of respite; today is the day to honor laborers, it is a day to honor work, a day for convivium and victuals.

This year the labor market is stagnant, our work-force participation remains stuck; workers are seeing shrinking against inflation, which is high and the banks are taking their cut in the form of higher interest rates, tight energy supplies are allowing the producers to gouge…they are taking in record profits and the worker is paying price.

When it comes to real-wages the American worker has seen this cycle before: two steps forward and one step back, or one step forward and two steps back.  

I spent most of my life working in the hospitality sector. Now I am employed by a food distribution company. I am in purchasing, my vendors are gourmet producers and importers, a lifetime of working in restaurants has given me the knowledge to manage these portfolios.

I have been working for this company for over four years, it is the longest job I have ever held, and my first foray into the corporate sector…there are benefits, they have HR.

I have found it strange to find myself in this role, in this place so late in life which causes me to reflect on the scramble I am engaged in to pad a retirement account with savings, while having such little time remaining in my working life!

The American worker needs more guarantees than an annual holiday in their name. We need a fundamental reorganization of the social-safety net; we need national healthcare, a single-payer-system, health benefits should be guaranteed by the state, not negotiated through labor contracts that ultimately deflate the worker’s actual wage.

These costs should be removed from the balance sheet of the employers, so that the costs of labor are clear and predictable and not entangled with the machinations of pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies, insurance providers and phony non-profits like hospitals.

We need education reforms: we need to return the tools of critical thinking and logic to the classroom; we need to teach language arts and arithmetic, music, culture and civics should be in the public-school curriculum; we need industrial arts and mechanics.

We need to support the American citizen in order to enable them to reach their greatest potential, we need this so that we may all get there together, because the more the worker succeeds, the more America prospers.

We need housing reform, and we need it now; we need affordable housing for every family, and the security of knowing that our fellow citizens: our sisters and brothers, our daughters and sons, our mothers and fathers are not living in the street.

The American worker needs these things, and the investor class needs to give it up; if American industries are unwilling to reinvest in their workforce, facilities and equipment, then we should take their profits from them in the form of higher taxation...this is the way it is, and this is the way it has always been.

Do it yourself, or we’ll do it for you…Happy Labor Day!

 

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien – Author, Poet, Hero

I learned how to read novels by reading J. R. R. Tolkien.

My mother had a beautiful edition of The Hobbit on one of our many bookshelves; it was the hardbound edition, that came in a green, it was embossed with gold leaf, it had gilt pages; there were lovely illustrations inside, with maps drawn by the author himself.

I pulled it that book from the shelf and read it when I was in the second grade; when I was finished, I began reading it again and also The Lord of the Rings, followed by the Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales (a volume of stories that had been edited and published by his son Christopher after his death). I read these books eight, nine, ten times over, I continued to read them into my early thirties.

Reading and re-reading Tolkien put the idea in my head that I wanted to be a writer. Reading his works over and over again gave me a deep appreciation for the care and craft he put into the construction of his fantasy world.

I can recall a sensation I had on my third time through the Silmarillion; I believe I was in the seventh grade at that time. My reading list had expanded considerably by that time, coming to include more genres than fantasy and science fiction. I read other literary classics, poetry, history and mythology as well as scripture. In addition to these I had begun to read reference materials related to Middle Earth, the culmination of those studies culminated resulted in my having a heightened sense of understanding for the stories being narrated; my vocabulary had expanded,  I had become a better reader, making it so that I was able to comprehend more of the material I was engaging; the picture was fillingin. I was able to grasp more of the world that Tolkien had created; it was coming to life for me in new and different…more fulsome way.

I read a biography of the great man himself, which was probably the first piece of non-fiction I ever read (other than histories that had been so mythologized that they felt like fiction).

In that same period of time I found reference books compiled by other authors about Tolkien and Middle Earth: The Tolkien Companion, the New Tolkien Companion, along with various encyclopedias, bestiaries and anthologies depicting the arms and armor of the men and dwarves, of orcs and elves that inhabited his amazing world.

I added his smaller—lesser known works to the corpus of material I was consuming, while still in the seventh grade I read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight which resonated with my another of my reading interests: Arthurian Lore, and through Tolkien’s Beowulf I was introduced in a literary way to the Viking sagas and the epics of those heroic figures.

Through Tolkien I came to have an early appreciation for the power of myth, as well as their malleability, and the potential we have as creative beings to fashion our own myths and communicate them to the broader world.

Through his writing Tolkien dramatized the basic conflicts he saw at work in our civilization, conflicts between the bucolic and pastoral life (which is where his heart was), with the forces of industry that seemed to be destroying the planet (even in his day he saw this happening), he illustrated the disasters of modern warfare and the suffering they visit on the world, which he experienced first-hand while serving as a signal man in World War I.

In my opinion the collected stories of Middle Earth do what all great literature does, they represent a serious social critique of the twentieth century and a prophetic view of the perils enmeshed in the twenty-first; they are more relevant to the human race ever…we would be wise to be mindful of his wisdom.

 

 

Observation - August 11th, 2026, Tuesday

fans blow cool air from the kitchen

where the air-conditioner hums in the window

 

a pan of beef stew simmers on the stove

its aroma fills the room

 

I contemplate the altar I have made

ode to Maitri, who is Mithra

star child…the future buddha

 

 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn – Author, Nobel Laureate, Hero

Without equivocation, Alexander Solzhenitsyn is the greatest Russian author of all time, even greater than the great Dostoyevsky, surpassing by orders of magnitude the likes of Tolstoy; he is perhaps the greatest author of all time…this is no trifling estimation.

I first encountered his classic novella, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich when I was in my late teens, just a little book that could be read in an afternoon, but it was heavy and it was deep.

I read it slowly, forming every word in my mouth, pushing them out with my breath…quietly, nearly silently; reading aloud to facilitate my understanding of the text.

In my early twenties I was heavily engaged with reading in the Russian cannon; it took some time for me to get to Solzhenitsyn’s other writing, like the Gulag Archipelago for which he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but when I came to it, I found it life changing.

Solzhenitsyn said the Archipelago was more of an exercise in journalism than literature; though he should not have been, he was surprised by how well it was received. He personalized the gulag experience which he was able to do because he himself had been a victim of it…and survived.

He put a human face on the collected suffering imposed by the Soviet state on its citizens by exposing to the world the systematic injustice of the gulag system, into which more than twenty million Russians disappeared, the threat of which still hung over everyone…even today.

Solzhenitsyn was born in Russia, in 1918 just after the Bolshevik Revolution. He served in the Russian Army during World War II. In 1944 he was decorated for valor in combat and Awarded the Order of the Red Star, but in 1945 he was arrested for saying derogatory things about the government in private correspondence, in statements that he did not publish, that were merely sentiments that were shared between himself and a friend…he spent eight years in the gulags after his conviction.

Surviving World War II and the Russian gulags are themselves heroic feats, feats for which any person is deserving of recognition. His status as a Nobel Laureate marks him as a person of significance as well; but, what makes Solzhenitsyn a hero to me is his insight into human nature and his profound ability to communicate that insight through the poetry of prose.

In my early thirties I read more of his books: October 1914 and The First Circle. I was awed by the way in which he could present the myriad-forces that vector-in on the complex matrix of concerns: societal, intellectual, spiritual and emotional, which comprise the motivations and shapes the intentions of individual persons…of all people, everywhere.

Solzhenitsyn was able to portray the movement of those currents, their shifting valence in the matrix, in a way that made the lives of his characters…even the most ordinary, crackle with a dynamism that transforms them into living-spirits, he is able to make the even the most heinous and cruel, like Stalin, appear to the reader as worthy subjects of our compassion; accomplishing such feats of noblesse because he was adept at humanizing the characters who took life from his pen, by this he allowed his readers to expand their own view of the world…to include his own; and in doing we are made into better persons.

I am a better person for having read him.

 

 

Sid Gateaux, Big Sugar, Peoples History, Zen Syndicate, Essay, Reflection, Hero, Alexander Solzhenitsyn

 

Michelangelo de Caravaggio – Artist, Painter, Hero

I was a teenager when I discovered Caravaggio.

Before that, when I was twelve years old and in the seventh grade. I spent a great deal of time skipping school and immersing myself in art, wandering the halls of the MIA[1], the grand museum in my hometown of Minneapolis, but there were no Caravaggio’s there…not in the permanent collection.

In that period, I discovered the renaissance and late-renaissance masters, but without him. It took another five years to find the great Michaelangelo de Caravaggio, at the Uptown Theatre on Hennepin and Lagoon…my neighborhood “art-house” cinema.

The introduction came by way of a film by Derek Jarman, starring Nigel Terry, Tilda Swinton and Sean Bean; the motion picture captured a great deal of his story, including the character of his life and his irreverent nature…which endeared me to him, it was only then that I became aware of his revolutionary work and extraordinary influence as a artist.

The 1986 film titled: Caravaggio was lovely and somewhat surreal, and it familiarized me with Caravaggio’s significance to the history of painting, his primary achievement being the mastery of foreshortening, a technique which allowed his images to leap from the canvass with the illusion of three dimensionality, as well as his development of the chiaroscuro technique, the raw power and beauty of bringing light from darkness which was his signature style.

In 1990 I stood in front of a Caravaggio canvas for the first time. I was in the Navy, on weekend liberty while I was attended Hospital Corps School at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center just north of Chicago, in Waukegan, IL; I stood in front of a giant canvas, depicting Mars whipping Cupid…I was stunned and amazed at the dramatic realism in his work.

From that point forward if somebody were to ask me who my favorite painter is, I would say Caravaggio, without hesitation; the more I learned about this masterful artist the more this remained true.

Five years after that I was taking a course in art history as an undergraduate at the University of Saint Thomas, in St. Paul, Minnesota; it was then that I discovered what an anti-establishment hero Caravaggio was, and because of that spirit within him, even more than his skill as an artist, I consider him a person of heroic stature.

As an Italian painter his principle patron was the Church, and the most common subjects he was commissioned to paint were scenes of religious devotion, but…he was imprisoned for his depiction of The Death of the Virgin, because he used the bloating corpse of a prostitute, which  he had taken from the river, as his model. He painted Mary as she lay, in a state of corruption and decay, which was an act of heresy in his day, because the church taught that Mary was inviolate and incorruptible…even in death.

When he was commissioned to paint the Conversion of Saint Paul, he devoted seventy-five percent of the canvass to the ass of the horse Paul fell from when he was blinded by God while on the road to Damascus…another great joke Caravaggio played on his patron, a heroic gesture, for which he is now well loved.

Michelangelo de Caravaggio was a devotee of the iconoclastic, he was fantastic.

 

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[1] Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Observation - July 11th, 2026, Saturday

plastic wheels on tempered glass

plastic joints creaking in cheap plastic chair

 

white noise permeates the atmosphere

the air conditioner in the kitchen blowing cold

 

the blinds are drawn

to soften the daylight

 

it is hot in July and my senses are dulled

lulled into the sleepy-hold of

a midsummer daydream

 

 

Independence Day

I have always loved the 4th of July, our mid-summer holiday with its nostalgic look back at the victories won by the Continental Soldiers, our American revolutionaries who threw off the yoke of tyranny and the oppression of kings.

I loved it uncritically as a child...

I loved it in its simplest way, without thinking about or questioning the traditional lore, a part of me still does.

As I grew older however, I discovered a more complete history of the revolutionary war, I came to understand the real-politics of the founders, as well as the philosophies that guided them (in one way or another), including the numerous ways in which they were morally and ethically compromised (though “compromised” may be too light a word); they were compromised by war mongering and profiteering, they were compromised by slave-holding and the exclusion of women from governance; they were compromised by religious intolerance and they were compromised by greed which drove them against the First Peoples who had been their allies in the War for Independence.

As I learned more about the historical-particularities that framed the context of the revolutionary era, it became self-evident that our nation was founded on a carefully balanced set of ideals that the founders themselves did not have the courage to live up to…they put their best selves into those documents, knowing that they were in themselves inadequate.

After a lifetime of study, I believe it is fair to say that America was founded on a compact of lies, and though I do not love the our history with its countless tragedies, I do still love the American ideal as it was articulated in its simplest form.

The preamble to the constitution states that all people are created equal, endowed by the creator (of us all) with inalienable rights, the foremost of which are: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is the self-evidentiary nature of these truths that serves as the axiomatic principle upon which the American experiment rests.

We believe that our rights do not derive from government, but that they are an inherent feature of human existence; we hold that our rights do not belong to us because we are Americans, but that they belong to us because we are, and we understand the American purpose to be the defense of those rights, both within our borders and around the world…at least, that is how it is supposed to be, and we are failing to live up to those responsibilities, both here at home and around the world.

The sad truth is this:

We have only ever paid lip service to these ideals, the articulation of which amounts to little more than wishful thinking and hope for a better tomorrow.

Today is the nation’s birthday…light the candles on the cupcakes…close your eyes and blow, watch the detritus of the fireworks dimming in the afterglow.

Within our own borders the government is trampling all over said rights: the rights of self-determination that belong to everyone, to all citizens (women and men), including the immigrant and the resident-alien, our black and brown skinned sisters and brothers, the working poor, the homeless and every human being struggling to have their basic needs met…this is not just a failure to live up to the American ideal, it is the antithesis of the dream become real.

In America we have stripped women of their right to control their own bodies, of the right to consult privately with their doctors in regard to family planning, to use the best science and medical technology available to both prevent pregnancy when it is unwanted and to advance pregnancy when it is desired…and America women are dying because of this.   

In America our courts have declared, against all good reason and judicial precedent, that a president is above the law and immune from criminal culpability, if when they violate the law it occurs in connection with their official duties as president…never mind the fact that a president’s official duties can never be construed to include law-breaking; as the chief law enforcement officer the president’s duty is to uphold the law, to support and defend the constitution, not to undermine it.

America has always failed to live up to our stated ideals…it is never wrong to point this out, maybe it is wrong to expect that we can do better…maybe this is America.

The entire rationale for the American experiment rests on the rights we see as belonging to personhood, to each person and every person as a matter of ontology…we are endowed with them, not more or less but fully, not on the basis of what groups we associate with (or do not).

The expression of these truth…as codified in the United States Constitution, together with the Bill of Rights, did not at the same time abolish the institutions of slavery, give women the right to own land, to vote or ensure that they had access to many other modes of self-determination that we had come to take for granted by the end of the twentieth century; neither did it make illegal our aggression expansionism that took the form of the many wars we waged against the sovereign nations of the First People…north, south, east or west; our stated belief in these self-evident truths, in our inalienable rights, did not prevent the United States of America from entering into campaigns of genocide and extermination against them.

The founders applied these principles to themselves and to their “peers” (land-holding white males of European descent), they used those principles to justify their separation from the dominion of the British Empire, they used these principles to protect their property after the War of Independence had been won, but they refused to extend these principles to everyone within the aegis of American power, and we continue to live with the repercussions of those basic failures today.

When I reflect on the 4^th of July…Independence Day, I see a day to celebrate our freedom, and our victory in the Revolutionary War; I still believe there is much to celebrate in that.

As a veteran, I know that war and combat create many opportunities for selflessness and displays of courage that most human beings cannot help but admire and applaud, even though the antecedents of war and the causes of conflict are always unjust, morally vacant and abhorrent.

I know in my heart that war, always and without exception, represents a failure of human beings to live up to the purpose we were created for. In my heart, I want to celebrate the revolutionaries, their courage and the flag which unifies us as a nation, but I find it increasingly difficult to do so..

The story of America, beginning on July 4^th, is one that has many bright moments; nevertheless, we remain a foolish, cold-hearted and ignorant people, unwilling to recognize the millions of slaves who built our first cities, who farmed the plantations that fed the country and served as the foundation of international trade for our fledgling nation.

We must recognize them, and all of the laborers who established our first industries, as well as the millions of people belonging to sovereign nations that we crushed in our westward expansion, people who we starved and slaughtered without mercy, displacing them, outlawing their religion and customs, erasing their languages as we attempted to eradicate their heritage.

I find it difficult to celebrate the 4^th of July because of this history, and I would like to know who among us, knowing the history, finds it easy?

A person would have to be a monster to be unmoved by the tragedies that ensued after the signing of our Declaration of Independence.

Today one of America’s two major political parties is advocating policies that have stripped women of bodily autonomy and criminalized any action that might be taken to assist them with relocation to another state where they might be able to exercise their freedom. They are openly discussing ways that they might ignore the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the principle of birthright citizenship, even though the Supreme Court has ruled such actions as unconstitutional. They are not talking about amending the constitution further, they are talking about ignoring the law, rounding up migrants and those who they deem to be dissidents, putting them in camps to be disposed of.

Federal police are murdering American citizens who stand up for their immigrant neighbors.

The president is having American citizens arrested on trumped charges to hide his failures at the reflecting pool, the Department of Justice id going along with it.

This same party would raise the voting age, disenfranchise the young, make it more difficult for the elderly and the disabled and the poor to cast their vote, they will tell any lie, no matter how absurd to achieve their ends…today all American’s are in grave peril.

The 4th of July should be a time of soul searching, deep reflection and community, forget about the flag waving and jingoism.

Ask yourself what it means to be an American; consider the immigrant and the refugee, the stolen people, the enslaved people, the conquered people, the vanquished people…and then consider the revolutionary in her and his time and place…

We are their descendants. All of us come from all of them: the immigrant, the refugee, the stolen, the enslaved, the conquered, the vanquished; we are their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. We are one people with a common history, and one set of ideals…I hope we are, I wish we were.

We are a great nation, if and only if we remember the whole story of our people, of all of our people, of our triumphs and our tragedies, the complete mélange of ambition and failure…save the fireworks for the moment when we can embrace these truths without fear…though not without shame. 

 

 

Observation - June 11th, 2026, Thursday

all of my windows are open

 

the air inside my apartment

still holds yesterdays heat

 

it is cool outside

 

the tall-grass across the street

framed like a swatch of green

 

rabbits in the clover

lingering for the morning feast

 

The Greatest of All Time – My Hero

Muhammad Ali left us ten years ago

the greatest of all is gone

 

he held the world in his hands

he spoke to us—all

the greatest of us lives on

 

I got the news in the deep of night

awakening in the dark to the radio

weeping

 

Muhammad Ali had died

 

of all the heroes I ever fell for

he was the only one who was truly alive

he was the only hero I ever prayed for

I believed in Ali

that he could make a difference

in our lives,

in the world

in our time

 

he spoke of justice,

the foundation of freedom

Ali spoke the truth,

as a condition for love

he spoke to the world

with the same style he fought in

Ali was a poet

who fought for everyone

 

he spun rhythms that dazzled

he knew that words could hurt

Ali was pretty as a butterfly

fearsome as a bee

he danced…floating past us

singing of his sting

Ali was the great champion

            bumaye…Ali

 

he bravely faced the powers

that govern our cruel world

Muhammad Ali was a prophet

in our time

 

he gave us permission to brag

to be good, take bold action…do right

he risked the things that he desired most

he gave up his titles, his money and fame

he went to prison as a boxer named Casius Clay

he returned to the world with a new name

 

he handcuffed lightning and sent thunder to jail

My hero Ali was right

Memorial Day – A Reflection

Memorial Day is a day set aside for reflection, a day meant for us to honor our fallen dead.

The meaning of this day has changed a great deal since it was founded. At its inception, Memorial Day was set aside to honor the African-American soldiers who fought and died in the Civil War, both soldiers who were born-free, as well as those who had been enslaved; men and women, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters who gave everything they had to keep the United States of America whole, and to make it free.

Memorial Day was established to honor those who died for an America which they only dreamed could exist; they died for these United States, our brave soldiers died for a vision of America they could only prayed for, and America that was not yet real. They got something different than they hoped for, they got this reality, an America that is still in a state of becoming, one that is more or less just, depending on where you are born, what color your skin is, what class you belong to…or who is in charge of enforcing the law.

Those men and women died for us, for good or ill, they died for us; they died for promises that went un-realized, they died for a dream deferred, as our poet Langston Hughes wrote of the in his poem Harlem[i]:

What happens to a dream deferred?

 

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet?

 

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

 

Or does it explode?

 

We have yet to repay those good people, we have yet to fulfill their hopes for the America they dreamt of; America, daughter of liberty, America the true and good, America the arbiter of justice, an America that could be if we only pursued the dream of her and exercise the will to make it so.

Now…we honor our dead on this day; our soldiers and sailors and airmen, our police and firefighters; we honor them.

We are too frequently called upon to honor children, children who stand in the way of gunfire to protect their classmates, who paid for their compassion and bravery with their lives…we honor them and their sacrifice, all of them who died upholding our most cherished values, we honor them in recognition of the fact that we are one people descended from many nationalities and ethnicities, and that we each come into the world with the absolute right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; all other rights are subordinate to these. 

This year we are called upon to honor all citizens who have spent their lives in public service; we honor our teachers and the good works of our ordinary citizens, of our friends and neighbors, we honor the sacrifice of everyone, known and unknown and those yet to come.

On this day of all days, do not make the mistake of thinking that it is our service women and men who keep us free; it has been at least sixty years since America faced an “existential” threat from a foreign power…we are not kept free through armed conflict.

We do not face such an existential threat from beyond our shores and borders right now; not from Iran, not from North Korea, not from Russia, not from China or anywhere. The real threat we face is from ourselves, we face an existential threat brought about by ignorance, short-sightedness and greed…we stand in our own way; we, and we alone can protect us from ourselves. Our apathy and selfishness, our prejudice and hatred, our gluttony and cowardice, these are the most dangerous forces aligned against us, these are the forces that threaten our freedom. They are more deadly than any worldly power, these are the forces which have gone unchecked by our elected representatives, even encouraged by our president and his criminal regime.

It is shameful and terrifying. 

To honor our fallen dead, you must do your part to keep us free. You must participate in our democracy: vote, stay informed, organize, build alliances and collaborate.

Our collective failure as citizens of the Unites States has allowed a criminal, autocratic, demagogue to hold power in the White House, allowed the Supreme Court to state that corporations are to be treated as people, and money regarded as free speech, while those same justices have told ordinary American’s that their right to free speech does not include the right to be heard, and that our right to vote does not include the guarantee that our votes will be counted.

This rank cynicism is more dangerous to our lives and freedom than any rag-tag group of militants half way around the world, more dangerous than immigrants looking for a better life on our side of the border we share, more dangerous than people who are only seeking the same thing as my own forebears did when they came here a little over a hundred years ago….a better life, a chance to lift themselves out of poverty.

Honor our fallen dead. Not with cards and flowers and barbeques (but do those things because they are good), honor them by standing up to racism and bigotry, to religious zealotry and corporate greed, to scientific ignorance and xenophobia, to corruption in our public officials in our highest offices.

Honor them by participating in public discourse. Do not lose heart, and do not give up. Stand up and be counted!

We can rebuild America and reform our institutions, and we must for the sake of all Americans and all future generations humans who may be subject to our power...we must take responsibility for our lives and freedom or we will have nothing to protect.

Honor the fallen, in this way…participate!

Jay P. Botten, Veteran, U.S.N., Hospital Corps, 1990 – 1994

 

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[i] Langston Hughes, "Harlem" from The Collected Works of Langston Hughes. Copyright © 2002 by Langston Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates, Inc.