Juneteenth 2009

Days of watching American politicians and pundits debate about how to handle the unrest in Iran and then I stumble across what I need, which is the feeling of connection to the people of Iran whose lives are at stake. The video of the rooftop communication, where people call out in the darkness to one another and to God, repeating "Allah-o Akbar", and where the narrator seems at times to be on the verge of tears as she fears for her country and shares her thoughts, is more than enough to make me care. I have been so wearied by the complicated names and the history and the blaming and the opportunism that I forgot about the people. And they are young people, mostly. I've heard several estimates about the unusually high number of those under thirty who populate Iran, and I wondered how that happened but didn't really think about how it would feel to be so young and in such straits. I found a Slate article about how that happened, and it's interesting, but now it's less important to me than the cries on the rooftops and the feeling of destiny that these young people have.

The video starts with a declaration of the date, June 19th 2009, and that reminded me of our own American Juneteenth, and for me the hook was in. I thought about last night's Hardball show, where Chris Matthews went off on a legislator (Rep Steve Cohen D-TN) who co-sponsored a fairly meaningless apology for slavery and other racial inhumanities and was so caught up in his own bluster (Matthews' bluster that is) that he ignored the date: June 19th, which isn't that obscure in its significance, especially considering the topic he was discussing and Matthews' own self-professed humanitarianism. It would have been nice if Rep James Clyburn D-SC had put in a reminder, but, of course, there was almost no time for him to comment at all, plus he had to get in his thought about health care. The past is prologue, not priority.

Anyway, Juneteenth 1865 is worth remembering and parallels what is going on in Teheran in 2009 because it's about FREEDOM. What's so very, very different is that in the 1860's news traveled so slowly that slaves in Texas weren't informed about their freedom until June 19, 1865, two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was delivered in January of 1863. Freedom isn't so easily denied in 2009. You can close the borders, expel the media, threaten freedom seekers with death and still they find ways to communicate with each other and the outside world. Allah-o Akbar! God IS Great. And He made the human spirit.