Later in life I spoke with a Mississippi friend from elementary school on the phone. I had a few unanswered questions.
“Why does it seem like you guys in the South are always fighting the Civil War?” I asked.
“Y’all won!” was my friend’s shocking answer.
Were they going to keep holding a grudge for more than a hundred years after the Civil War ended in 1861?
Evidently so.
“I keep a gun in my glove compartment. I could shoot one as to see one,” came her flagrant racist comment on the cell phone.
I almost dropped the phone. The conversation suddenly ended. I was seething with rage at the ignorance that the color, gender, age, or any other category of humanity could possibly be better than any other. No one is born prejudiced. Prejudice is taught. While I am a life-long learner, I did not learn that prejudice is a good thing, quite the contrary.
Social justice became another life contract I made. I was to have a very busy life standing up for the life, liberty, and justice for all that the United States of America was supposed to stand.
Much of humanity at the turn of the century claimed to stand for the flag, life, liberty, and freedom, while ignorantly supporting those with racist, xenophobic, and authoritarian ideologies. I thought humanity had done away with prejudice and xenophobia in Hitler’s regime, the Revolutionary and Civil Wars for the independence of the United States of America, and hostile takeovers throughout the world. Some countries never learned these life lessons and doom themselves to reap the seeds they have sown even in today’s world.
The New Colossus was written in capital letters and memorialized in 1903 with a bronze plaque placed on the inner walls of the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal. It is currently displayed for all to see in the Statue of Liberty Museum. Emma Lazarus wrote these words in 1883. It reads:
“Not like the Greek giant, with conquering limbs astride from land to land; here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightening, and her name mother of exiles. From her beaconed-hand glows world-wide welcome: her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities famed. ‘Keep ancient lands, your stories pomp!’ cries she with silent lips. ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’”
The New Colossus is the universal message and hope for freedom for immigrants coming to America and people seeking freedom around the world. The principle of The New Colossus still stands today in the democratic republic of the United States of America. Many Americans need to be reminded of this important fact in the USA, whose borders are not meant to be closed to anyone — not from Canada, not from South or Central America, nor any country in the world in need of the best that humanity can offer.
It is one thing to stand up for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is quite another thing to support prejudice and brutality in the ignorant wave of thinking that age, gender, ability, disability, and all other variations of human rights can only be authorized and validated by those milky-white people who have bought their way to the top. Or by closing borders based on fear and prejudice, while simultaneously and erroneously claiming to be religious.
This is not a political side to believe or not believe. This is the foundation of the United States of America, because as the name of this nation states, we are one United States of America, working together for the common good of all. The United States of America is not up for a land grab, a subversion of drug, gun, human trafficking, hostile takeover up for the highest bidder, nor subversion by oligarchs which might make worldwide commerce easier.
Each one of us stands with the Statue of Liberty, unlike those brazen giants of Greek fame, because we are made of human hearts that remember when our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents came to the United States of America, not having to wait fifteen years to become citizens. If they could not sign their name, they simply signed an “X,” and were deemed healthy by an eye-ball glance to enter the USA. This is the ideal all Americans stand for, or at least we should.
Either you are American and all it stands for, or you are not. You need to pick a side, otherwise you are back to George Orwell’s concept of doublethink, holding two opposite views and claiming they are both the same, when they are not.
Excerpt from My Red Bag Of Courage by Linda Hourihan. Published by Book Publisher USA, 2024. Reprinted with permission.
Linda Hourihan is an author and the retired former owner of The Massage Clinic in Connecticut. She shares her wealth of knowledge from holistic health counseling in her professionally mastered audio meditations and books, which are available at lindahourihanhhcp.com.
Find holistic Herbs & Herbalists in the Spirit of Change online Alternative Health Directory.
RELATED ARTICLES:
How The Wonder Of Nature Can Inspire Social Justice Activism
Social Justice: What Herbalists Can Do To Help
Recent Comments