Dear Abby

 

I haven’t written a blog post for over a month.  My last entry was a comparison of coronavirus deaths to those killed in Vietnam.  It was written just after the number of Americans lost to the virus in six months were double those Americans killed during our country’s twenty-year armed conflict in Southeast Asia.  And now America is racing to triple that war’s deaths.  I expect that to occur sometime in October. 

Usually when you can’t or don’t write it is because you have nothing to say.  In my case, there is way too much. I have a long list of things - a piece on the Polio epidemic of 1951, current political protests versus those of the 60’s and 70’s, not to mention presidential politics or the struggle to figure out how to educate young minds without putting lives at risk. 

Then there are issues that fear about our own mortality has pushed off the table.  Drug overdose and suicide deaths, our shameful treatment of immigrants, the looming loss of constitutional rights and personal liberties.  I wish Dear Abby was still alive.  I’d write her a letter. 

Dear Abby,

I need help.  I’m afraid my country, the land I love, is turning into a fascist dictatorship.  What can I do?

(signed) Disillusioned Hippie

Abby was pretty straight forward.  I think her reply would be something like this.

Dear Disillusioned,

You may be a downcast old hippie, but if you are referring to the United States, which I think you are, your country is not lost.  Among the many nations of the world you are still among those who enjoy free and fair elections.  Here’s what you do.  Work tirelessly to convince friends, family, and your community to vote in the upcoming election.  Then go into the voting booth and cast your vote for those that respect the separation of powers your democracy is built on.

You remember that scheme.  You had to know it to pass your civics test.  It was dreamed up in the 1770’s.  It is all there in your constitution.  Three branches of government;  executive, legislative, and judicial, share equal power.  Your vote in November should be for not only a president who has not and will not usurp power, but also for senators, representatives, and judges who will do their jobs to create policy for the president to follow. 

In the USA nobody knows how you vote.  You and everyone who is registered to vote can do the right thing when marking your ballot, then say whatever you want to those who argue about politics after its over.  It is still a free country, as long as you exercise your right to vote, believe that it counts, and elect those who share your concerns and values.

Did you forget this?  You know, old hippies across the country are beginning to slip.  Have you taken a memory test lately?  Try to Remember these five words; Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV.

Don’t despair.  Get busy instead.

(Signed) Abby

 

I’ve decided today that until I sort things out and get busy on the keyboard, I will share this Dave in the Shack space with a guest writer.

She is the young person from my church, Open Table, who was the catalyst for our vigil for social justice after the murder of George Floyd.  Her name is Corinne Francis and she is a fourteen-year old high school student.

I wish she could vote.  I think politically active young people like Corinne, hungry for social change, will have a real impact on this country.  I hope they realize it takes a lifetime of vigilance to keep this country moving towards its goal of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.

It’s a long haul.  Just when you think your country is moving down the right path you have to get all up in someone’s face and assert your rights all over again.  I hope she knows that.  I think she does.  And I hope when she is old like me they give activists of her generation a better label than “old hippies.”

Here’s how my fourteen-year old friend feels about the America she lives in now.

“I was never taught the story of John Lewis in school. I wasn’t formally taught about the Freedom Rides until eighth grade, yet by the age of eight I knew about how George Washington supposedly cut down a cherry tree. I knew that Roosevelt inspired what we know today as the teddy bear. I knew about how William Howard Taft got stuck in his own bathtub. All of which were stories old, rich, powerful, straight, cisgender white men. I was taught about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. Both are incredible people with incredible stories. Both changed the world for the better and put their lives and safety on the line for it. However, they both were big names. Big, grown-up people doing big things.

But I never knew about the Boy from Troy. I never knew about the child who would preach to his chickens, whose first peaceful protest was refusing to eat one of his avian congregants when it was picked out for dinner. I was never taught that John Lewis started doing sit-ins as a student at the age of seventeen. I didn’t know about SNCC, Greyhound buses aflame at the hands of white supremacists, Bloody Sunday, or the protests for black voting rights.

I learned about John Lewis from a trilogy of comic books, called March.

I learned the truth. It wasn’t dumbed down, it wasn’t glorified, it wasn’t sugarcoated. It was bloody, it was violent. I was disgusted. I cried. There were some points where it just got to be too much for me. I had to put it down and come back to it later. Three years later, they’re among the best books I’ve ever read. John Lewis taught me to get in the way. He taught me, as a young farmer’s boy, as a seventeen- year old student sitting at a lunch counter, as the twenty-three year old speaker at the March on Washington, that you are never too young to stand up. Even after his death, he’s speaking to young people. We can redeem the soul of this nation. Even if we’re teenagers. Even if we live in a tiny town. Even if we feel a little helpless at times.

Maybe it’s time each of us got in a little good trouble.”

                -       Corinne Francis