Freedom

During these unprecedented times, what does freedom mean to each of us individually and collectively? It’s a question worth contemplating this week as we celebrate July 4^th in ways that will be different from prior year celebrations.

I started thinking about this blog over a month ago. In that time, so much has changed. This may be a good time to reflect on recent events and freedom.

COVID-19. Starting in March 2020 and into early May, much of the country was confined because of the virus.  Businesses closed. Stay at home and wear masks in public orders were issued. Some of these directives were met with verbal protests about restrictions of freedom and civil rights. 

One letter I read proclaimed that freedom is freedom no matter what we are facing and criticized the directives to wear masks declaring that somehow her freedom was being withdrawn.  Her letter was more a rant than a compelling, persuasive argument. Did the writer consider that along with freedom comes responsibility? One person’s freedom ends when it impinges on another’s right. The commentator’s choice not to wear a mask encroaches on other people’s right to be safe from a public health risk—one like we’ve never seen before. 

Black Lives Matter. How silly all of this rhetoric about restrictions of freedom and civil rights over wearing masks sounded a few short weeks later when George Floyd was killed on May 25, and the country erupted in protest over systemic discrimination against African American citizens.  The protesters represented a wide diversity of American citizens: diversity in age, race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, occupation, and the list goes on.  

Juneteenth, celebrated on June 19, commemorates the proclamation on June 19, 1865, that slaves in Texas were free. President Lincoln had officially outlawed slavery in Texas and the other states in rebellion against the Union almost two and a half years earlier. A little-known holiday likely until this year, it enjoyed nation-wide attention and celebration. A quote in one article I read said that for African Americans, Juneteenth was their independence day—they weren’t free on July 4, 1776. Now there is a call to make Juneteenth a national holiday.

LGBTQ+. Five days before Juneteenth, on June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, stating that: “An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex.” Employment discrimination against someone because of their sexual orientation or transgender status is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Law’s prohibition against discrimination because of sex.   

Will protests, demonstrations, national holidays, and Supreme Court decisions eliminate bias and discrimination?  No.  Have these events raised our collective awareness? I would like to think that we are finally realizing that the freedoms some of us enjoy are not, and have not been, equally enjoyed by all. This is a good week to reflect on that. Consider what you can do and what you will do.