These Colors Don't Run

I am going to rap a little red, white and blue at you today. Break out yer flags and yer apple pies and yer Battle Hymns of the Republic and all that.


Freedom of Speech - Norman Rockwell

Just back from a staff retreat here, where it was my job to explain the history of the Institute for Sustainable Communities, where I work, to a team of my colleagues here. I was getting into how the place that ISC is based – little, rural Vermont – played a significant role in ISC’s founding as an organization dedicated to promoting active citizenship, strong communities, and environmental stewardship around the world. I used a Norman Rockwell painting that will probably be familiar to many of you, entitled “Freedom of Speech.”

Rockwell painted this in 1943, as a series of four works displayed around the country in department stores and other public places, to demonstrate what was at stake for America and for the planet during the Second World War. Other paintings included “Freedom from Want” – most of you will know that one as well, which shows a typical large family Thanksgiving dinner with a table so laden with food it looks fit to bust – “Freedom of Religion,” and “Freedom from Fear.” These concepts were drawn from Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address, in which he warned of the danger posed by the Axis powers and called for increasing American military production to support our allies with shipments of weapons and materiel – 11 months before Pearl Harbor.
 
“Freedom of Speech” was probably the most successful of the four paintings. Rockwell drew from his experiences with New England town meetings, such as those we still attend in Vermont today. For those of you unfamiliar with the practice, a town meeting is just that – everyone in the town is invited to gather in a central location for a big, open debate on the important (and unimportant) decisions the community has to make. In our little town of Worcester, this includes everything from whether to give $200 to the local Meals on Wheels program, to whether to buy a new fire truck, to approving a $1 million (plus) local school budget. Everyone has a chance to have their say, and decisions are taken collectively and democratically. It’s actually something of a state holiday in Vermont.


The painting is pretty well done. I don’t think I can improve on a description of it offered by Bruce Cole in the Wall Street Journal in 2009:

Using a classic pyramidal composition, Rockwell focuses attention on the standing speaker whose age, worn and stained jacket, rough hands with dirty fingernails, and plaid shirt set him apart from the neat coats, ties and white shirts of the older men in the audience. Although he is a working man, this figure, his face reminiscent of Lincoln's, is unafraid to voice his opinion—which we suspect is contrary to that of the others in the room. Standing tall, his mouth open, his shining eyes transfixed, he speaks his mind, untrammeled and unafraid. In Rockwell's vision he has become not only an active public participant in democracy, but a defender of it. He is the very embodiment of free speech, a living manifestation of that abstract right—an image that transforms principle, paint and, yes, creed, into an indelible image and a brilliant and beloved American icon still capable of inspiring millions world-wide.

That sounds pretty dramatic, but I think he’s right. Any American looking at this picture feels something. It represents what we want America to be, at its core – a place where any person has the space, courage and opportunity to voice his or her opinion, to be heard by neighbors and fellow citizens, and to influence decisions about the future of the communities and the country in which they all live. Even if we feel like the dream doesn’t always match the reality, it’s a powerful image. Even if we find it objectionable that the picture primarily depicts only white men, it still stirs feelings. My Chinese-American colleague got a little misty eyed during the presentation, just looking at this picture.

Vermont is one of the few places left in the U.S. that still uses the town meeting format. The state prides itself as a center of local control, active citizens, and thoughtful, sustainable development practices that balance economic growth with social and environmental quality of life. So it’s logical that this would be the birthplace of ISC.

What really struck me after the presentation, however, was how easy it is to take this simple ideal of freedom of speech, of individual voice, for granted.

We just had our Worcester town meeting last month, on March 6th. I found it to be tedious and frustrating as hell, to be honest with you. Turns out, as it so often does, that what seems idyllic and noble in the abstract, can be be messy and even boring in reality. Every year, our town spends what seems like a ridiculous amount of time debating how much money we should appropriate to support the local library, whether to buy a certain piece of land, whether to spend a few dollars here or there. The conversations seem the same every year, with the same points made on both sides, with no apparent progress from one year to the next. There are heartwarming moments of community and shared fellowship too – but by and large, I walked out of this year’s town meeting irritated and glad that I probably wouldn’t have to go to next year’s, since I’d be living in China.

Yesterday, it occurred to me that none of my colleagues here have the luxury of being annoyed with the process of grassroots community governance, because none of them have the right to engage in it.  It's easy to forget that China is still an authoritarian country that represses freedom and censors speech. It just doesn’t come up much. You can get around, work, shop, and live for the most part without coming into conflict with the state. You can even promote and work on sustainable development.  But then something will happen that brings the true nature of things to the forefront, and you realize that people speak their minds here at their peril.

This is a pretty sensitive year for China politically, and everyone is a bit on edge. Every ten years, China changes its leadership. This coming fall, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao will step down as President and Premier, respectively, and new people will take their place. The Standing Committee of the Politburo will also see changes. The transition won’t be done by popular vote, it will be done behind closed doors. These are nervous times because no one is exactly sure who the new leaders will be (although there are certainly frontrunners) or what their policies will be. So everything is in a bit of stasis and caution, as people wait to see how it all turns out.

It’s also a time when political fortunes can change in a heartbeat. A few days ago, a prominent Communist party official – someone who was in position potentially to become a Politburo member – was put under house arrest and is now under investigation for corruption and other wrongdoing. I won’t go too much into it here, but you can read about it in The New York Times if you’re interested. This has raised tensions even further, and triggered censorship and restrictions on communications. China’s main blog site, Weibo, was shut down completely for a few days. Cell phone text messages that contain the Chinese characters for the arrested official’s name simply go undelivered, caught in the huge filter known as China’s Great Internet Firewall. People are stepping softly and keeping their heads low – or if they’re not, drawing potentially negative attention to themselves.

At times like this, I feel a little sheepish about my disappointment with the Worcester town meeting. It may be boring sometimes, it may be irritating sometimes, but the simple fact is, I’m lucky I have a chance to be part of it. I’m lucky no one censors my opinions, or prevents me from being heard. I’m lucky I’m not putting myself or my family in danger if I stand up in public to disagree with the opinions of the town leaders – or my state and federal representatives, for that matter. And maybe, just maybe, it’s something of a duty to make sure I exercise my rights each year, regardless of whether I enjoy the experience of or not. Because not having those rights would be a lot more irritating than having them is. In fact, irritation might be the least of my worries in a world where those rights weren’t so readily available and accessible to me.

So I’ll be there next year at the Worcester town meeting if I can be, and every year after that. And I’ll sit through debates that bore me or bother me, as well as the ones that interest me, because if I don’t, I’ll just be wasting the freedom I am fortunate enough to enjoy. Which isn’t just a bad idea for me, but might actually be a little disrespectful to all the people I know and work with every day who don’t enjoy that freedom, and who would give a lot to have it.

So God Bless America. You read that right. Our country has a lot of reasons to be ashamed of itself, at home and abroad, for the ways in which we fail to live up to our ideals or just outright screw things up for ourselves and for everybody. But we have a lot to be thankful for.

And the opportunity to get better, and to play a role in that betterment.

Here’s hoping we make use of it.