Freedom has meant different things to different people throughout history.
And is perhaps easier to define in what it is not. Not being in jail, not being a slave, not being a Black woman in a white man’s world.
It means not living in poverty, not having to choose between seeing the doctor and paying the rent, not having to work two jobs just to put food on the table.
It means growing up with parents who took you to museums and dentists and to the beach. It means having a good education – the will to study and the connections to find good jobs.
And the type of education matters. Critical thinking and analysis were taught in the elite schools and private universities to those who were expected to head up corporations, take Wall Street by storm and lead in our state and federal governments.
Mass education was originally intended to prepare a workforce for factories and businesses, to operate complex machinery and keep the accounts.
Which was all very well when it came with a paycheck that guaranteed families the American dream – a single salary to cover the home in the suburbs, clothing and food, a doctor when needed, meals out, movies, education for the kids, a decent retirement, and those two weeks at the beach.
But that was if you were white and conventional, believed duck-and-cover drills were the worst the world had to offer, and didn’t question those in power.
That life changed, for better and worse, in the two decades from Jack Kennedy to Ronald Reagan with the collapse of the American dream and the rise of the neo-cons.
Two weeks at the beach? It’s not just the money – who has the time? The internet and television feed us the bread-and-circuses of the rich and famous so people can live vicariously. Or die inside from the despair of failing to seize it for themselves.
The little cuts of not being good enough covered up by waving guns, drinking too much, abusing drugs, and putting down others. Not a pretty life and certainly not free.
Can we seize this opportunity of reimagining our country in the wake of the pandemic to imagine a better quality of life for ourselves and our children?
To ask for and receive freedom for all – freedom from want, freedom from oppression, and, most of all, freedom from the expectations of others?
(Liz Amsden is an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She also writes on behalf of the Budget Advocates’ mission regarding the City’s budget and services. In her real life she works on budgets, for film and television, where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today’s world.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
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Let Freedom Ring - City Watch
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