Yesterday, on July 4, I went to a small protest at Ashby and College Ave. in Berkeley. It's hard to get excited about the nation's birthday at a time when the president, his cabinet, his other appointees, about half of Congress, and 2/3 of the Supreme Court are doing their best to destroy democracy in the United States. To boot, this country was founded on slavery as much as it was on the freedoms and principles described and defined in the foundational documents of the country.
When I got to the protest, a friend was reciting the Declaration of Independence. I followed with a recitation of the Gettysburg Address. The words of Abraham Lincoln are always worth reading and keeping in our hearts and minds. They are as relevant today as the day he wrote them.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Also worth reading: today, Jamelle Bouie had a conversation, in the NY Times, with Zaakir Tameez, a young lawyer who recently published a biography of Charles Sumner. Sumner is best remembered for having been beaten on the floor of the Senate by another member of Congress, but he was a prescient and brilliant opponent of slavery. You can read the conversation at this gift link.
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