Earlier this week, I posted about the Candlelight Vigil for Peace and Racial Justice that was held on June 14th in Southborough. At the time, I promised to share Southborough Access Media’s video when it became available. It looks like that was uploaded to YouTube yesterday afternoon.
If you have trouble viewing the video above, click here.
After watching the video, I write not to criticize those who attended the vigil, but to implore you. Do not allow your legitimate voices to be exploited. Never fear speaking out, even when it’s most difficult.
That means contesting not only those who disagree with you, but challenging the people in your column when their ideologies and methods do not comport with your own.
Introspection, dialogue, reasoned criticism and activism are productive ways to improve yourself, persuade others and to seek change.
But the violence, censorship, and “cancellations” – replete with coerced confessions – that we’ve seen on the rise are emblematic of some of the worst totalitarian movements in history.
Although we may disagree amongst ourselves about the exact measures needed to improve society, the shared values embodied in the uniquely American heritage of individual liberty, free speech and free inquiry remain the means by which we are most likely to make progress. Profoundly, it’s these tenets that are at greatest risk right now.
All too often the craven response of those seeking to cling to power and privilege is by appeasing the mob. You see it in the now ritualized capitulations in academia, the media, corporations and the political establishments governing the very “progressive” states and large cities for generations where, ironically, most of the “systemic” racism and injustice is said to have occurred. Excusing if not abetting the chaos in the hope their own sinecures might be left intact, while the lives and communities of the constituencies they pretend to care about are ruined.
Make no mistake, the extremists now being given free rein have been waiting for a moment to seize the opportunity to foist their beliefs rooted in “critical theory” and Marxism by sowing fear and hate while wrapped in a cloak of social justice. There’s no intention of stopping at destroying merely the vestigial symbols of an ambivalent American history. The target is the foundation of freedom and ordered liberty itself. The strategy is that by the time you recognize the dismantling, it’ll be too late even for reluctant supporters to oppose.
Stay strong, be brave, keep an eye on what’s actually happening to your fellow citizens. It’s never too late to think for yourself and call out evil being done in your name.
After all, isn’t that what you’re asking everyone else to do?