I'm listening to excerpts from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States on Democracy Now! this afternoon. The words of true American patriots, liberals all, are read by actors like James Earl Jones, Danny Glover, and Marissa Tomei, and introduced by Howard Zinn himself. You can listen to it here.

It occurs to me that conservatives would call a program like this anti-American because it shows the full spectrum of our history, the good and the bad. But they're wrong. It's the most patriotic program I've heard, perhaps ever in my life. Each of these patriots, such as Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mother Jones, and Jane Addams, worked their whole lives to improve the lives of all Americans, not just a privileged few. Some of our patriots lost their lives, violently, by the hands of other Americans.

The dream of America's promise of full equality and opportunity, and democracy and liberty, only exists today because of liberal patriots. Without them, it would have disappeared years ago, never having grown from the page to real life. If we are closer to this dream than we were two hundred years ago it's because of liberals. Like the poster above declares, equal rights, however tenuous they are (and not full yet -- we've got so much more to do for equal rights of gays, lesbians, and transgendered people) are a result of liberal action. The 40-hour work week, our privacy and rights to legal representation, results of liberal actions. The list goes on and on and on....

Democracy Now's program reminds me of what 4th of July is all about -- "freedom" and "liberty" aren't actually guaranteed. Our democracy isn't guaranteed. We have to continue to perfect it, work on it, and demand it. It can slip away and disappear into the pages of history. The hard work of our liberal ancestors will be diminished, perhaps even negated, if we don't keep going.

(revised post: I came back after a day with my friend Amy and I decided to revise this a bit. I find myself unable to moderate my emotions these days -- one minute depressed, the next overwhelmingly hopeful. I know it has to do with my insecurity over S. We've been out of touch for too long. He's my best friend and when I'm not able to talk to him I feel unsure of myself. The space he's left is too great. To make matters worse, I'm frustrated with the state of things and I feel powerless. I know this won't last forever. For now, though, it's where I am, so the posts may seem erratic sometimes.)

This is the perfect time to be in Chicago. July is always seasonable, with little rain and a lot of sunshine, so the city comes alive with free festivals downtown -- music, dancing, food. Taste of Chicago, which must be the largest free outdoor fest in the country, runs through today. They've had an impressive line-up of acts: Los Lonely Boys, Santana, John Haitt, Clint Black, LeAnn Rimes, Dr. John. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people in Grant Park for the Taste, most hanging out with friends and family on their little piece of the grass field, delineated by a blanket or a couple of lawn chairs. The cops keep to themselves, letting people drink their wine and beer from coolers, though there are signs exclaiming "no outside alcohol." They even allow entrepeneurs to walk through the crowds selling cans of beer for $2 out of their backpacks.

The Taste culminates in a massive fireworks desplay on the night of the 3rd (that way suburbanites can see their hometown fireworks on the 4th) with the Grant Park Orchestra belting out Sousa marches in time with the explosions. Up to a million people show up for it. Traffic is stopped by the masses for 30 minutes or more. Even along north Lake Shore Drive the right lane stops during the show, with drivers stepping out to look back at the cascading lights as the fireworks reach above some of the tallest buildings in the world.

I have gone downtown for the fireworks since I was a kid. In high school, my friends and I would hop on the El and come down, hang out on the strip of grass between LSD and the lakefront, sheltered by Kentucky Coffee trees and surrounded by other teenagers. As adults, we'd go to the plaza of the Prudential building. Elevated above the park, it gives one of the best views and gives you a quicker exit north. The end of the show is a slow drag back to reality. After the massive euphoric build-up comes the excrutiating trip home: a million people shuffling away from the park in all directions; the parking garages stuffed to a standstill for hours; the El platforms so crowded the lines start at street-level. We'd never get home before midnight.

Last night I didn't go downtown. I didn't even look at the fireworks out of my rearview mirror on my drive north. I didn't want to have anything to do with it. I heard the national anthem on Friday at Grant Park and it made me cringe. All of those people standing straight, facing a televised waving flag, their hands over their hearts. I know it's about patriotism, not nationalism, but I couldn't help myself. I felt disgusted and betrayed.

On Friday, my mom and I went to Grant Park to see Dr. John. Half of the audience had on mardi gras beads. I missed New Orleans more at that concert than I have since I moved back home. Of course it wasn't just the place I missed, but the life I had with my husband there, when our dog was still alive and we were working toward a future we both were excited about instead of being stuck in this limbo we find ourselves in now. We were trying to conceive; I was working on poetry and teaching, happy that my more hectic career in Chicago had softened a bit; S was in his final year of graduate school at Tulane. Things were far from perfect. I suffered from intense anxiety and panic over our inability to get pregnant. But I had the space to work on it, and good friends to remind me of life's pleasures. The joie de vivre there is infectious.

But that was then. Today I find myself struggling to find that joy in life. I haven't talked to S in over three weeks. It's been days since I got an email. It has been five months since we saw each other last, and it will be several more before we get to see each other again, and then only for a couple of weeks before he is shipped back to "jail" as he calls it.

I'm reminded these days that the political is personal. It didn't take this experience to teach me that; my work in Chicago with the Neighborhood Writing Alliance taught it to me years ago, when I saw so many writers' lives torn apart by our government's policies. There was Pat, whose husband was sent to federal prison for purchasing a gun from a gun dealer the FBI was investigating. When the dealer died in custody, they went after the customers, most of whom had no idea the guns they were buying were illegal. For over a year, she had to raise four young kids, alone, on a day laborer salary, which meant some months the electricity was turned off, others the gas. Or Adrienne, who was stuck in public housing, unable to afford anything else yet forced to leave when the "transformation of public housing" took effect. She was torn by it all, stripped of any self-determination in a political battle she had no say in. There was Larry, a brilliant poet who was sent to prison for, basically, living in a bad neighborhood, where everyone is suspected of something by the police and therefore everyone is guilty. Or the young girl I met at a welfare-to-work program who, after her mother was critically shot and hospitalized for over a year, found herself homeless at the age of fourteen, caring for her two younger siblings, because the system didn't think to look into whether her mother had children who needed to be cared for. She told a heartbreaking story of how she was rescued by her mother's former husband who happened to see her scavenging the dumpsters of a Burger King on the west side. That little bit of luck; it saved her life.

So yes, the political is personal, at least for some. Others don't see it that way, unless of course politics are imposed on their lives and they find themselves affected personally by decisions they had no part in debating. Then even the most staunch conservative, the most ardent Bush supporter, becomes a critic, stammering to find the words to articulate their anger. I know how they feel.

Given what we are doing in the world, and to our own people, I'm finding it impossible to find anything to celebrate this year. I don't think I know what "independence" means, what "freedom" means. I don't understand what "democracy" means. I see this outrageous disconnect between our ideals and our actions. I can't get my head around the rhetoric and the reality. I want to celebrate, I want to revel in the dream of our country, the one that used to inspire people around the world to come here from places where politics were imposed on their personal lives. This was the place to come to free yourself from tyranny, at least in the abstract. Now I feel like there is no way I can escape the politics of today. They have imposed themselves so deeply into my personal life that I can't separate the politics from the nation's promise. They are intertwined now, laced together, and for now, at least, they give me nothing to celebrate.

I know we have to reclaim this holiday as patriots, separated from the nationalists who are dead set on ruining our country. So celebrate for me. I'm sorry I can't join you.

Daniel Ellsberg, who worked for Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, responds to Bush's speech by pointing out the similarities in language and reasoning to a speech he wrote for McNamara in 1965 to defend our continued war in Vietnam. Here's an excerpt:


How sad, things haven't changed. The warped use of rhetoric to defend the indefensible. And what has been the cost? 1745 American soldiers killed, perhaps 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead (at least 8,000 since January).