View from a porch
What should be our response?
On New Year’s Day, over full plates of peas, greens, and cornbread served on a cabin porch overlooking an Arkansas cypress lake near Little Rock, a group of old friends took stock of the year behind and the presumably tumultuous year to come.
Although we weren’t all from Hillcrest (or even Democrats, for that matter), we were vocal in our dismay at the idea of Donald Trump’s upcoming inauguration. Failure never digests well.
However, shaking off the lugubrious mood, the consensus of the group, sweetened no doubt by cherry cobbler, brownies and rum cake, was to face facts: What is done, is done … que sera sera … no use crying over spilt milk. The conversation then turned to this question: What is the appropriate civic response to the looming threat of Trump’s reactionary America, both national and local?
One fellow whipped out his phone to screen a YouTube video of a Greenland ice sheet that had calved off an area larger than Manhattan. “Climate change, that’s the most long-term threat,” he said, “because its effects cannot be undone. We have to work to protect the environment.”
For two or three people, who nodded their heads in agreement, that belief will translate into countless emails written, hours and hours of Pollution Control and Ecology Commission hearings, and pages of fine print reviewed, fighting against rollbacks in water and air quality, or just pig pollution in the Buffalo National River.
Another person voiced her continued focus on the insidious attacks on civil rights across the board, from immigration to gender equality to access to legal representation as places where efforts will need to be redoubled in response. For her, that will mean representing individuals and groups often unable to fight on their own, even when it means allowing herself to become the target of their enemies.
I especially commended the common sense of my good friend who chooses to go local. For her, a political statement is best made filling backpacks of food for schoolchildren, or cooking at a homeless shelter and strong-arming the rest of us to volunteer. She will tell you that, in her mind, other efforts produce little more than hot air.
As for me, I vowed to add my freshlyfound 2017 voice to speaking truth
Guest writer
to government and religious officials who would further destroy the once bright line between church and state.
I speak specifically, of course, of the proposed monument listing the Ten Commandments to be placed on the grounds of the state Capitol. Compared to global warming, water pollution, civil-rights violations, care of the needy, the hubbub over freedom of and from religion may appear frivolous.
“Just a little ol’ bill”—our legislators’ frequent go-to phrase. That is what this proposal’s proponents would have us believe. But they are being disingenuous in two ways.
If their reading of the placement of such a monument is that it would not promote a particular religion, then as Christians, they are denying the reality of the God they claim to worship.
On the other hand, if they acknowledge the Commandments as a religious document, which they clearly are, then the proponents are of course defying the Establishment Clause within the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the government from preferring any one religion over another.
Asa Christian, I recognize the influence of the Old Testament on my faith. However, as a citizen, I recognize the rights others have as well as my own. I am not the Lone Ranger but a partner in the institution of government our founders crafted so carefully.
It is this idea of being partners, fellow citizens, which once produced civil discourse and compromise, that has perilously gone missing. I think the future of our nation hinges on whether we can bring it back. Whether your issue is civil rights or gun control or the environment or Medicare reform, as citizens of the United States, you are my partner, and I am yours.
We can’t all sit around a common table, watching blue herons and drinking sweet tea on New Year’s Day, but especially under the reality of a president whose success rests on divisiveness and rancor, we can, we must talk and listen together.