Police, ranchers, computer programmers, letter carriers. Dance instructors, pipefitters, direct marketers, labor contractors. Truckers, soldiers, lifeguards, cooks. Teachers, lawyers, journalists, priests. All of these workers can stand up against tyranny. All have voices to share: Against lies. Against war. Against hate. Against terror.
Be heard. Be seen. Be felt.
Every American university has a fight song. Every college, every technical school, every high school has a rousing anthem to unite and enspirit the students and faculty and alumni against a common “enemy”, usually the cross-state rival or last year’s conference champ. Well, now American schools have a REAL enemy, one that wants to conquer them, not physically, but intellectually. Morally.
NOW is when schools need to get tough. Now is when all educational institutions need to UNITE and support one another, against a genuine common enemy: the tyranny that is advancing day by day and is not playing by any rules or listening to any referees. The tyranny that wants to break your spirit and make you back down and forfeit this game and every other game on your schedule this season and every season to come.
Now is when Lions need to Roar. Now is when Wolverines need to Hail Victory. Now is when Cornhuskers need to All Stick Together for the Dear Old U. THIS is the big game. If you don’t show up and play your hearts out, you might as well hang up your cleats and helmets because pretty soon the only events happening in your proud stadium will be public executions.
Roar, Lion, Roar — Columbia Fight Song
I cut the little loose thread on the sleeve of my hoodie. It’s a cool morning and I put the sweatshirt on as soon as I got up. I really shouldn’t have bothered, it probably wouldn’t have unravelled and even if it had I’ve got other sweatshirts.
But what, I thought, if I have to make a run for it when they come for me and the sweatshirt I have on is all the bed or blanket I will have for months, or maybe years, of desperate flight. Because maybe they won’t come after people who speak up against them like they insinuate, but maybe they will. Maybe they will be as vindictive and ugly as all the stuff they said in their campaign. And we can’t afford loose threads when we’re racing to outrun fascism.
Maybe this talk is absurd, maybe I’m loonier than they are. How paranoid is it sane to be?
It’s one thing to burn the flag with a cigarette lighter. That’s a sad thing to see, but it illuminates the fact that someone feels very desperate about the choices our country seems to be making.
But to burn the flag with hateful rhetoric, personal attacks on anyone with opposing views, and Presidential threats which would shred the Bill of Rights: that’s a real act of destruction. That’s the kind of burning that actually hurts people, scars them, chars our society.
If there’s any kind of flag-burning that needs to be punished, it’s that kind.
Chuck Redman 