Citizen Kaufman

Four Freedoms march, photo by Lee Cheek

I am an American, although I've always secretly suspected that I'm not a real American in the Sarah Palin sense. As an aside, I find that I'm missing Palin's goofy Duck Dynasty style. Sarah, after all, was looking at Russia across the Bering Strait, not playing x-rated games or joining caviar-eating oligarchs in the baroque anterooms of Moscow's finest hotels. Still, long before mama grizzly broke onto the scene in the 2008 election cycle, I struggled to convince myself of the authenticity of my national origins despite the fact that both of my parents were born here. Last I looked, New York City is part of our country. I've always felt like an outsider. No Santa Claus in my childhood, no Easter bunny, no tendency towards flag-waving in the family. At the same time, I have, mea culpa, taken my citizenship for granted. In this regard, I am very different from my Congolese friend who was granted asylum here several years ago or my Chinese friend who jumped through many hoops to get his green card. Now, in the light of the present catastrophe, I am re-evaluating my identity and laying claim to being an American, to being a citizen. Please join me.

Last week, I paid a visit to the district office of my congressman, Richard E. Neal. I was relieved that he wasn't there. Not because I was intimidated by the prospect of speaking with him. I had heard him address the rally after the Four Freedoms march in Pittsfield a few days before and he seemed harmless enough. I was glad he wasn't there because there was such a banquet of political poison in Washington that I wanted him down there serving up the antidote. I spoke with his staff assistant who quaintly produced a pen and a pad that looked like a giveaway from an auto parts store. She took my name and contact information and asked me to tell her why I had come in. I said I wanted to be assured that not only would Rep. Neal support the Presidential Conflicts of Interest Act, but that he would get dirty doing it, that he would actively go after the perpetrators of grand larceny now about to assume power in our country. I realize that the system is mired in corruption and that that won't change as a consequence of my little field trip, but it felt empowering and demystifying. So this is where Richie Neal hangs out when he's in town!

The march itself featured some 2000 people walking in solidarity down North Street from St. Joseph's to the First Congregational Church on a bitterly cold day. It commemorated the 1941 State of the Union address in which FDR outlined the Four Freedoms - freedom of speech and religion, freedom from want and fear - ideas illustrated in the famous paintings by Norman Rockwell of Stockbridge. Gathering to celebrate the foundational ideas of our deeply flawed democracy generated a kind of giddiness, even as we recognized the urgency of our situation together, the collective peril we are experiencing. For this particular newly awakened citizen, the march and the standing room only rally afterwards lifted me up, expanded my vision beyond the limits of my own concerns to include the wellbeing of the larger community. Real people shivering in the January cold. Not an abstraction. The march and the rally brought the issues off the page and demonstrated what is at stake in this fragile historical moment, the right to assemble in support of free speech, to defend religious liberty, to provide for the basic needs and protections that are our entitlement. We, whatever our individual stories may be, however committed to our democracy we may have felt previously, must now be part of the resistance. This is not a time to sit out the dance. This is a time to bring down the house, to twist and shout together, each of us for all of us.


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