Laguna Coastline News - “Freedom Isn’t Just Another Word”

October 12, 2001

by Catharine Cooper

 

Freedom has ferocious teeth.  Freedom will fight for itself.  Freedom will not be suppressed.

 

Freedom is that voice that allows me to write these words; that cause which lets you and I disagree.  Freedom has been the centralizing concept for these United States since1620, when 102 men and women crossed the Atlantic, and before touching land signed, “The Mayflower Compact.”  In that covenant, they proclaimed their right to freely join and govern themselves.  They fled persecution and repression and created a new government based on the rights of individuals.  Because of its success, freedom continues to expand as an operational model across the globe - 381 years later.

 

These past weeks, the very concept of freedom was again challenged, as it has been since its inception, by dictators and tyrants.  Our liberties stand as an affront to those who would enslave.  We have suffered many wars in our brief history, and we have not always stood united in cause, but we have always known the face and place of our enemy.     

 

This is new territory.  This enemy, without a clear geographical location, is the most insidious of all.  It comes from within us. It appears as an outgrowth of the very rights that we cherish:  freedom of person, of passage and of identity.  America’s face – this wonderful palette of color, shape and diverse ancestry, provides a fertile birthing ground.

 

A walk through Laguna’s Heisler Park speaks it all.  A veritable “United Nations,” gathered here in our peaceful seaside village.  Stroll the waterfront path on a Sunday.  You’ll see every nation represented.  Before the September 11^th attacks, my heart embraced each individual.  Now, fear has its play.  Who is the enemy among us?  The man swooping up his child from the small waves?  Hardly.  How about those two men dark haired men?   Why are they alone?  Are they friend of foe?  I HATE THIS FEELING!  I HATE FEAR IN MY OWN BACKYARD.

 

Bin Laden, from his hidden caved fortresses, speaks of a fear that will cross America, north to south and east to west.  I wish I could refute his statement with proclamations of bravado, yet my confusion about my enemy threatens my very sense of self and place.  I hate this undercurrent, which would prejudice me against a man because of his appearance. 

 

My grandfather came to this country from Germany prior to World War I.  White Anglo-Saxon in appearance, he blended perfectly within his community.  Yet, when the war broke out, his need to be American – to not be feared as an enemy – propelled him to speak impeccable English.  As a child, I was greatly saddened to never hear his native tongue.   .

 

My mother-in-law was not so fortunate.  Although born and raised in Los Angeles, therefore, a citizen by birth, she was singled out by race after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  Her belongings and family home stripped from her possession, and she became a prisoner of war in her own country.  She rarely speaks of the experience, exhibiting a hardened reconciliation with a past that cannot be changed.

 

How can we prevent racial fear, created by a terrorist event, from turning us against one another?

 

Flags wave everywhere, celebrating our Americanism, reminding us to gather together and reflect on its significance.  I gathered with thousands at a recent baseball game, in an effort to put some space between the past events and the present.  The field was awash in our country’s colors.  A huge flag was unfurled while young voices sang “America the Beautiful.”  On the large screen, a montage of images from New York and Washington, D.C. played out.  There was not a dry eye in the stadium.  We cried and sang us one.  We pledged our allegiance to our flag.  We united.

 

John Kennedy’s 1960 inaugural address has oft been quoted, but it is the sentence that follows that most famous line that seems now more relevant.  “My fellow citizens of the world:  ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.” 

 

It is my belief, that in the last three weeks, we have come together, we, the children of this small planet, in ways that we had not fully dreamed were possible.  As our American hands have joined at blood givings, vigils, baseball games and schools, we now see our hands joined across waters and political borders.  We now, more than ever, have the opportunity to experience our global oneness, and join together in a fight for the freedom for all persons.