Too much ado about nothing

I can’t recall when I first opted to not place my hand over my heart, not speak the words aloud when the Pledge of Allegiance was spoken, when The Star-Spangled Banner played, all eyes toward the flag, all attentions on the task at hand.  Often situating myself to the rear in public settings, perhaps none noticed my quiet act of liberty in this land of the free.  It was not televised.

It may have been when my son came home in tears, ostracized by his peers for stating in a lunchroom conversation that he did not believe in any god, that I first considered the words more carefully.  More likely it was after years of working with young people condemned by social circumstance – victims, and perpetrators, of time and place – locked up in juvenile prisons where dice and rough talk were valued more, by most staff including many fellow teachers, than was learning.  This was the true tragedy of their lives, although the injustice starts much earlier, before conception, when generations past have already helped to defined future lives and injustices with careless disregard or malice.

Still, like I said, I do not recall the exact date or circumstance.  It has been six years since I keyed my way into the last maximum secure I worked at, moving through door after door, deeper toward the center to spend the day locked up among these children turned criminals.  They were all in for violent crimes.  They were no angels.  Some it was simple robbery or assault.  Others were involved in carjacking or weapons charges.  Still others had aimed guns, pulled triggers in the name of affiliations that continued to exist and inspire their younger brothers and sisters on the outside.

In looking back now, I believe it may have been the reference to god that drove my simple act of resistance.  “Under God” was added to our pledge in 1954, seven years before I was born, championed by then president Dwight D. Eisenhower.  Two years later “In God we trust” became the nation’s official motto.  All leaders act on their beliefs, and I believe Eisenhower meant well.  Still, there was something about this expected allegiance to a god in a country of immigrants and First People with many different religious and spiritual influences – a country that professes, yea was founded, on religious tolerance – that was disconcerting.

There is a clear relationship between my first silent protest, which happened well before “Black Lives Matter” became a movement, and the protests that began in the National Football League (NFL) after San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeled rather than stood during the anthem.  In reality I had forgotten that I was a “protesting son of a bitch” as Trump labeled the people who have chosen to draw attention to our nation’s serious disparities through this small symbolic act.  I do not attend sports events and, as I mentioned, the past had slipped away, what with not being in a public setting that demanded such citizen attention, I had forgotten.

Several years ago I moved from my (small) hometown to an equally remote region of New York State.  Finding myself with an abundance of time and an unrealized desire to find a way to “activate,” to serve a role within my community, I found myself in a small room, in a town with the tiniest courthouse I have ever seen, as the pledge was spoken.  It was then I also recalled an earlier incident, just a couple months before, when I was a prospective juror at that little courthouse.  I have been called as a juror twice in my life and am always willing to serve.  In this recent call up, as with the previous one, the issue was settled last minute, there in the chambers, and we jurors were sent home.  We must have been asked to stand then.  If we were, I am sure I did there as I did at this meeting, which was to stand quietly, respectfully, hands at my side, listening and reflecting but not speaking the words.

It suddenly dawned on me that I was standing quiet in defiance in much the same way as Kaepernick and his supporters.  This was nothing new.  We live in a world where publicity drives actions, drives change and drives people to the edges of sanity.  There have been earlier uses of media to bring about social change – images of abuses of nonviolent protestors during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s and the horrors of war in Vietnam spring to mind.  I grew up, as Tom Petty so eloquently put it, “in the age of television.” These were the images I saw, as a child.  Now such images of abuse, hatred, anger and humanity’s follies are ubiquitous.

I had forgotten my act over the years, and it was only in that moment, as the call to stand made its way from the formal table at the front of the room to me, standing behind, that I remembered and did as I had done for many, many years – stand quietly, respectfully with hands to my side – eyes open. There, in that small room I remembered my earlier actions.  I remembered standing, quietly, when I worked with homeless students in a suburban school, it’s leaders aligned with the bootstrap myth common in educational and political circles among those who have never experienced poverty.  I reflected on how recent protests against quiet protests were so much ado about nothing.  Does not the freedom to speak also include the freedom to not speak, or to express an unpopular view?

As a practitioner of Tae Kwon Do I once, quite inadvertently, kicked a fellow club member in the head during a demonstration.  As was the custom, I turned away and kneeled on the floor as others tended to her.  I kneeled out of respect for someone who was injured, in much the same way that many others are kneeling out of respect for those who suffer, for the injustices that result from our shortcomings, our failures, our inability to provide for all, to care for all.  In this moment of kneeling I had the opportunity to reflect on the harm done.  Drawing attention to a country’s, a government’s inability to treat all of its people as equals by quietly standing, or kneeling, rather than saying aloud words that do not ring true does not warrant the negative attention it has received.

Having spent so many years working with young men and women, creative individuals with potential locked up by indifference and inequities, how can I stand by and watch without acting.  It is impossible to ignore the lack of justice in our justice system when you work inside with these young people day after day, when you see their faces, hear their stories.  Speech is not defined by agreement.  Yet, we have come to a place where voices that are not ours are “quieted” by assemblies of angry mobs claiming to value peace and shouts of disrespect by those in power toward acts of respectful silence.  We have come to a place where rather than listen to many voices, rather than reflecting on the words and seeking the truth that could potentially lead us toward “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” we are willing to be hoodwinked and manipulated while fools twitter away our freedoms.

D.E. Bentley

Editor, Owl Light News