Town Hall Day in Vermont
It is an American Tradition.
I’ve seen the original Four Freedoms, at the Norman Rockwell museum with town meeting representing. There’s all those good Americans, listening with full attention to the one who is standing to speak. Back Straight. Head tall. The man speaking is obviously working class, by his clothing. Norman Rockwell created an icon that told the world that Americans have a system of democracy where we see each other and listen to each other.
In the painting, everyone is white.
I’m okay with that; the painting was from “World War Two Times”. Rockwell works well for me; he was enough ahead of his times, that he simply refused to put Black folks in his Saturday Evening Post magazine covers when the owner stipulated they could only be in POSITIONS OF SERVITUDE to white people.
He also painted “The problem we all live with” and “Southern Justice”; one of the most powerful images of the Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner murders** that exists.
I’m waxing philosophical as I attempt to really and truly commit to The Empathy Thing. Meaning, I live with white people who truly believe in their hearts that America is fulfilling the promise of that super optimistic Town Meeting image of Freedom of Speech. They aren’t just resistant to being corrected; they can get nasty about the corrections, edits, and updates on their version of AmeriKKKan history.
Since I have moved to the big city of Montpelier (state capitol with about 9,000 residents) and we have a city council not a town meeting, I was prepared to return to the community I lived in “pre-pandemic” for this first meeting since Our Great Apocalypse.
But I connected deeply with my feelings:
…and realized that I am currently OVER-EXTENDED in the world of comfortably hanging with my white neighbors. I chose to watch the proceedings as a livestream from the comfort of my own laptop, on our cable T.V. station.
Because freedom of speech— like freedom from want and fear and freedom of religion— has been an AmeriKKKan priviledge of a few.
Not a fair and sane expression of our values, as it was meant to be.
**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Chaney,_Goodman,_and_Schwerner