Citizens, not Subjects: Thoughts for Independence Day, 2010

An interesting bit of new scholarship, showing that in his early draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson had systematically replaced the word “subject” with the word “citizen,” shows that even now there is still much to learn about one of the most important documents in the history of the world.

Of course, reading how Jefferson had gone back and deliberately substituted “citizen” for “subject,” naturally triggers some thoughts about our American experience, and about the difference between citizens and subjects, and how one single word can radically alter the dynamic between governor and governed.

Today, given that the United Kingdom is also one of the world’s great democracies, it may seem as if the difference between citizen and subject is essentially meaningless. Certainly, the “Liberties of the Subject” enjoyed by those owing allegiance to the British Crown are far more extensive than the often-disregarded “rights” theoretically enjoyed by the citizens of ostensibly democratic states. Better, in many cases, to be a subject of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II than, say, a citizen of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan.

Nevertheless, the word “subject” still carries with it a whole series of feudal overtones and baggage. In the back of one’s mind, the word “subject” can still raise images of someone kneeling before a sovereign reciting the ancient formula “I am your liege man of life and limb,” as Charles, Prince of Wales, did before his mother the Queen, at his investiture at Caernarfon Castle in 1969.

On the other hand, the word “citizen” carries with it echoes of the world’s earliest democracies, of Athens and of the Roman Republic. Time was, as scriptural accounts of St. Paul’s experience before the Roman governor of Judea remind us, that the words “I am a Roman citizen,” carried enormous weight. For us, citizenship, rather than subjection, implies membership in what the authors of the Mayflower Compact of 1620 called “a Civil Body Politic,” in which the existence of the Commonwealth is not a function of royal command, but the conscious and deliberate act of a group of equals.

Because citizenship itself implies equality among individuals, the very concept of classes of citizenship has traditionally been regarded as repugnant. In a Republic, composed of citizens, equality before the law and equality of opportunity are integral to true citizenship and participation within the Commonwealth. Unless every citizen of a particular Commonwealth possesses authentic, first-class citizenship, we cannot say that any individual within such a Commonwealth is truly a citizen, but merely a subject to whom the sovereign or government --- as used to be the case in South Africa --- affords greater or lesser degrees of privilege at its own convenience and to serve its own ends.

Under such circumstances, where privilege and the ability to participate in the civic life of the body politic are dependent upon officially defined status, or where certain members within that body politic are officially interdicted from living in certain areas, engaging in certain professions, marrying certain other individuals, or are otherwise limited in their liberty, the society in question contains within itself the seeds of its own dissolution.

As America enters the 235th year of her independence, she stands challenged, as she always has been, to ensure that when any American speaks the words “I am an American citizen,” the speaker can do so in the sure and certain knowledge that he or she will not be circumscribed or limited in the exercise of that citizenship on the basis of any invidious distinction of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability, or any other characteristic which is now, or has been, used to limit the liberty of the different. President John F. Kennedy once famously observed that “the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”

While Pres. Kennedy’s remarks were made in the context of a Cold War, and were directed toward our adversary in that conflict, they apply to us as well. None of us can claim first-class citizenship unless our neighbors are first-class citizens along with us. It was, perhaps ironically, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams who expressed most aptly what is truly the American challenge: we must all learn what it means to be human alongside others. On this Independence Day, we must all learn what it means to be American alongside our fellows who may not look like us, live like us, love like us, work like us, worship like us, vote like us, or root for the same squad at the All-Star Game. (And yes, that means even Yankees and Red Sox fans.)

For when the sound and the fury are over, and the issues that transfixed us this week have been lost in the flurry of the next news cycle, what is left over is our common heritage as Americans, a heritage too precious to be frittered away on wedge issue politics, or appeals to the worse angels of our nature. In the end, In God We Trust must always be accompanied by E Pluribus Unum -- from many, one. As we move toward that “more perfect Union” envisaged in the preamble to the Constitution, we must all go together, or our efforts to perfect the Union cannot succeed.

For we who were born here, the Stars and Stripes probably shadowed our birthplaces; for those who have come to America seeking a better life --- as most of our ancestors did -- those same Stars and Stripes gave inspiration for the voyage. And I expect that most of us hope, wherever we were born, that the Stars and Stripes may shadow of final resting places. For in the end, from many, we are, and must remain, one.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, where he serves as a member of the City Council. The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily the views of the Municipal Corporation or the Redevelopment Agency

APPRECIATIONS: Howard Zinn and J.D. Salinger

America and the world lost two extraordinary writers this week when Howard Zinn and J.D. Salinger slipped away from us at 87 and 91, respectively.

The signature works of both authors, Zinn’s A People's History of the United States and Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, are still in print, and each has its own significant impact on American society.

As I look up at the bookshelf in my study, I can see the copy of Catcher in the Rye I’ve owned since high school -the gold on red Bantam edition; my copy is from the 47th printing, January, 1978. It’s frowsy, dog-eared, 33 years old this month, and as I take it town and open it, I can catch a whiff of that old-paperback aroma that takes me back to high school English classes.

If you happen to be a man, Catcher in the Rye is one of those books that stays with you, not necessarily because you might have enjoyed it, but because Salinger’s writing so brilliantly captured the existential weirdness of adolescent boyhood, that cusp-time between childhood and adult life. How many of us, in our teen years, didn’t, like Holden Caulfield, oscillate from moment to moment between mature, truly adult, insightfulness and the frivolous caprices of childhood?

And if Catcher in the Rye spoke as forcefully and directly as it did to so many of our own personal teenaged crises and anxieties, it was in no small measure because J.D. Salinger maintained a lifelong, steady, stalwart, sphinxlike silence about his work.

By doing so, and by never allowing it to be adapted for stage or screen during his lifetime, Salinger allowed all of us to project our own expectations and ideas onto the novel; each of us saw Holden Caulfield’s narrative independently. Perhaps that’s why Catcher in the Rye was such tough going for so many of us who read it in our teen years; Holden’s story was our own; it hit too close to home.

If J.D. Salinger’s work hit home for many of us because Holden Caulfield’s story was so often so much our own, Howard Zinn’s work, particularly his People’s History of the United States, hit home by reminding us of the crucial role in our history that we the people have played in shaping it.

Where Salinger was silent, Zinn regarded it as his duty to speak, right up to the very end. He was one of those voices that, even if one might take issue with some of his views, was part of the collective conscience of the commonwealth, working to keep the system honest.

While I took, and still take, issue with some of Zinn’s conclusions and implications, I appreciated and continue to appreciate the important corrective his work represents to the so-called “Great Man” view of history; for every George Washington at Valley Forge, there were hundreds of theretofore unsung, ordinary soldiers without whom the Revolutionary War could not have been won.

Zinn’s great achievement was to recognize the importance of their influence on our history, to chronicle it, and in so doing, to change the way history is taught, learned, and understood in this country. In one of his last interviews, Zinn described himself as hoping to be remembered as "somebody who gave people a feeling of hope and power that they didn't have before." (Http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/01/29-2)

If our current historiography is more inclusive of the contribution of “ordinary Americans,” women, people of color, workers, and others whose stories were not often told, it is because Howard Zinn pointed the way, and in the years since, the work of historians on both sides of the political divide has reflected his influence and his insistence that the stories of the people be included in any retelling of our American narrative.

That emphasis on the popular dimension of our history has also helped inform my own commitment to public service. While I may not be in complete agreement with every one of Zinn’s views and ideas, I do agree that our history is one of people, not just “great men,” or “great women.”

History is made when “ordinary” people come forward as active participants in the life of the commonwealth, and in my service in Cathedral City, I have always kept before me the fundamental principle that my service is for the people, not for any special or private interest. For when all is said and done, and when the special interests have had their say and their day, and when they have gone off to do their next deal, we the people will still be here, and the commonwealth will still belong to all of us.

On that principle, Howard Zinn and I were in fundamental agreement; “People First” is, always has been, and always will be the basis of my service.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, where he serves as a member of the City Council. The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily the views of the Municipal Corporation or the Redevelopment Agency

A NOTE ON OUR PRESENTATION:

With this first post for 2010, we've gone to an easier-to-read presentation of black on white. We hope you'll find this an improvement.

ANOTHER BITE OUT OF THE ELEPHANT: Thoughts on the Mayoral Election in Houston.

And so it began yesterday.

First the tweets, then the e-mails, then the breathless coverage on the Internet and in the mainstream media.

An out lesbian had been elected Mayor of Houston.

That’s right; at the same time the local parliament in Uganda was debating making being gay a capital crime, Houston voters were electing Annise Parker -whom they had previously elected six consecutive times to public office- be their next chief executive.

Predictably, some in the opposition went bonkers.

Yet, Ms. Parker’s election reflects something almost extraordinary, particularly in so conservative a state as Texas.

The election itself was somewhat out of the ordinary, pitting an African American former City Attorney, Gene Locke, against an out lesbian. Not long ago, a mayoral election in almost any large Southern city (except perhaps Atlanta or Miami) would usually have involved a choice between white, well-heeled, straight, men. To that extent, Houston’s mayoral election -like the historic 2008 Presidential election- represents yet another example of the crumbling of barriers that had kept women and minorities from participating fully in the political life of the commonwealth.

Yet if we are rapidly moving toward a politics in which gender, race, and denominational religious affiliation are no longer seen as disqualifying, our progress is still incomplete. Too often, every step forward generates its own retrograde backlash, just as every threatened deviation from formerly accepted orthodoxies (or orthopraxy), calls forth what President Lyndon Johnson used to call “frontlash:” pre-emptive efforts to preserve a threatened status quo, particularly when it comes to maintaining the political dominance of heretofore privileged groups or preventing former “have-nots” from accessing the levers of political power.

Thus, while race, gender, and religion are increasingly seen as irrelevant to a candidate’s qualifications for office, there remains a stubborn insistence in some quarters that an LGBT person (or an atheist for that matter) should not hold public office. Such views certainly surfaced in Houston during the campaign as anti-GLBT activists and social conservatives sought to play the “queer card,” portraying Mayor-elect Parker’s sexual orientation as per se disqualifying.

Yet, as Ms. Parker herself noted, Houston voters had previously elected her to office six consecutive times, even knowing of her sexuality, which she never concealed.

Still, that opponents should have sought to play the “queer card” in the Houston mayoral campaign is still disappointing, but not surprising. Every effort by formerly marginalized or excluded groups to secure an authentic place at the table has been resisted, sometimes savagely, by those who already have their place there, and are disinclined to share make room for others who may not look, live, love, work, worship, or vote the same way. For political “have-nots,” achieving a place at the table is often a difficult, incremental process. To mix metaphors, it is like eating the elephant, one bite at a time.

Now to some, the election of an out lesbian as Mayor of Houston -or the designation of an out gay man to be the next speaker of the California Assembly (succeeding, by the way, the first African-American woman to hold that post)- is not, or should not be, news. To these people, sexuality, like race, gender, or religion, should not be an issue; none of these matters should be a factor in determining who is best qualified.

Yet, our society is still a long way from seeing things that way. Almost perversely, the election of America’s first African-American President has stirred up racial tensions and the election of an out lesbian in Houston will no doubt stir up similar tensions.

Here in the Desert, with its large and largely integrated gay and lesbian community, we have been fortunate in recent years to avoid some of the uglier manifestations of political homophobia; out LGBT people are regularly elected to serve on local city councils, and in large measure, our local politics and elections have been largely free of efforts to play the sexuality card. Ironically, many of the same people who oppose marriage equality and thus voted for Proposition 8 had no difficulty voting for an openly gay candidate in the very same election.

Nonetheless, social and political activists of every stripe often try to nationalize local issues and developments. Culture warriors, angered by what happened in Houston, may well transfer that anger to our Pleasant Desert, as they nationalized the Proposition 8 campaign last year. If that happens, the challenge won’t just be for incumbent LGBT officeholders and GLBT candidates to take lessons from Annise Parker’s successful campaign, but also for the residents of this Valley to send a resounding “NO” to outside culture warriors who may try to divide us against one another in the service of a divisive agenda most of us rejected when we came here to live, work, and play.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works (but rarely plays) in Cathedral City, where he serves in the City Council. The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily those of the City of Cathedral City or its Redevelopment Agency.

Commemorating our Veterans: Reflections on the Day

Ninety years ago, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first commemoration of Armistice Day, to mark the anniversary of the cessation of hostilities in what had been called the War to End All Wars.

Ninety years later, the hope that the Great War (World War I) would truly be the War to End All Wars has gone unfulfilled. The last of our Great War veterans has passed into eternity, but our wars continue.

And so we continue to remember our veterans, both living and dead, as a number of us gathered to do this Veterans Day morning at Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City. A number of elected officials, including Cathedral City Councilmembers Chuck Vasquez and I, Desert Hot Springs Mayor Yvonne Parks, and Palm Springs Councilmember Lee Weigel -who has two family members at rest at the cemetery- were present, along with members of the Cathedral City Police and Fire Departments, a detail from the Palm Springs High School Air Force Junior ROTC, and -most importantly- a number of veterans from all of our armed services.

The audience was not as large as in years past, and some expressed disappointment at the turnout, but what we lost in numbers, we gained in a kind of intimacy.

Instead of being a crowd, we were a group of discrete individuals. It was possible to identify the World War II veterans, the Korea veterans, the Vietnam veterans, the Gulf War veterans, and veterans of the current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Moreover, in so relatively intimate a group as gathered this morning, one gains an enhanced sense of the meaning and importance of Veterans Day, for in the assemblage, not an individual could be found who was not a veteran, or a family member, friend, or co-worker of a veteran.

And in the end, that is, for me, a large part of what Veterans Day is about. I am the child, grandchild, and other relative of veterans. I am the neighbor of veterans, I am the co-worker of veterans. And those veterans are of every sort and condition. They descend from every tongue and nation; they are of every conceivable faith and confession; they are of every political persuasion; they are of every gender and sexual orientation; every one of them has defended our nation.

And as always, the challenge for our civil society is to make sure that those who have served are duly remembered for their service, that they are not forgotten when their service is done. In remembering our veterans, we must go beyond mere words to face a face a challenge no less important today than when President Abraham Lincoln identified it in his Second Inaugural Address: “to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.”

In the intimate gathering this morning at Desert Memorial Park, Lincoln’s challenge to America gained a new measure of import as we continue to ask the men and women of our armed forces to be ready to go into harm’s way on our behalf.

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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, CA, where he serves as a member of the City Council. The views expressed herein are his own.

"I will Survive" meets "I've Noticed the Dead Were Hardly More than Boys:" Pride and Healing Field

Today I took part in two very different, but still community-affirming, events.

This morning, I had the honor to represent Cathedral City in the 23d annual Greater Palm Springs Pride Parade. Immediately after that, I participated in Cathedral City’s Healing Field commemoration.

Each event reflects a part of our American experience; we celebrated lives being lived with pride and lives lost in the service of the nation we call our own.

Pride represents a time for the Desert’s sizeable LGBTQ community to come together, reaffirming solidarity and staking a claim -as yet unfulfilled- to a seat at the front of the American bus.

Healing Field is a time for us to remember those who have fallen in the military operations in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

In a sense, both events are linked by a fundamental truth; it is suffering that brings people together.

Pride -whether in Palm Springs, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or New York- is about people standing up and saying “no more” to being treated as second class citizens.

The Healing Field is about coming together to find solidarity in the shared loss of friends, family, neighbors, and fellow Americans.

In the end, at Pride I think of Gloria Gaynor’s lyric “I will survive,” and I honor the perseverance of the LGBTQ community in its ongoing quest for an authentic place at the table in the American Commonwealth.

At the Healing Field, reading the names -ever more every year- of the fallen, I remember the words of Grantland Rice: “I’ve noticed that the dead were hardly more than boys [and now, girls, too],” and I offer the simple prayer: rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord, may light perpetual shine upon then, and may their souls and the souls of all the departed rest in peace. Amen.”

And at day's end, I remember the teaching of the sages: live isn't meant to be easy; it's meant to be life.

"Death plucks at my ear," wrote a Roman poet 2000 years ago, "and says: 'live, I am coming.'"

A VOID IN OUR VALLEY: BIDDING FAREWELL TO ROY WILSON

The hits just keep on coming.

Less than 24 hours after the passing of Sen. Ted Kennedy, our valley mourns the loss of another distinguished public servant.

Though Roy Wilson did not have the national prominence of Ted Kennedy, he was our neighbor. That Roy Wilson would be engaged in some manner of public service for the people of this Valley was always a constant. Thus, his sudden resignation last Friday came as a surprise.

His death earlier tonight came as a shock.

Events moved too quickly. We did not have the time to think about a time when Roy Wilson would not be serving us as our County Supervisor; we certainly did not have time to contemplate his demise. We lacked the opportunity to prepare for his leaving us, as we did have time to prepare for Ted Kennedy’s passing.

Now is not the time to try to parse the political ramifications of what has happened. There will be time for that.

Instead, we remember a Supervisor who never placed ideology in command, a pragmatist who understood that -as the late, great Tip O’Neill used to observe- all politics is local, and that at the local level, we have neither the resources nor the luxury of the sort of partisanship that is par for the course in Sacramento or in Washington City.

Though Roy was a registered Republican, he never made his registration a barrier to working with local officials who were registered Democrats or who declined to state a party affiliation. He understood that for us, the issues that mattered -whether in the realms of land use, environmental conservation, infrastructure, or the myriad of other “kitchen table” issues that challenge local communities- were issues that transcended partisan politics. What benefits one benefits all.

In a time when some have chosen to draw lines in the sand, and to shed more heat than light, Roy never did that. He was always willing to work to find common ground. He was always a teacher, and in many ways, his tenure of office was a master class in creating positive change for the people he served, and those of us who had the opportunity to work with him always came away with some new insight from him that helped illuminate and improve our own public service.

I had the privilege and the pleasure of working for nearly a decade with Roy Wilson -first as a local community activist, later as a Special District Trustee, and since 2002 as a City councilmember. From him I learned much; for what I learned from Roy Wilsom, I remain grateful. Neither I nor the rest of us in the Coachella Valley shall see his like again.

I extend my profoundest condolences to his widow Aurora Kerr Wilson and to all of his family, praying that a merciful and loving God will be with them and comfort them in this time of separation.

Requiescat in pace, Roy Wilson.

Requiem æternam dona eis Domine, Amen.

Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, where he serves on the City Council. The views expressed herein are his own.

August 26, 2009

The Dream Lives On: An Appreciation for Senator Edward Moore Kennedy

To be Irish is to know that in the end, the world will break your heart.

- Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, variously attributed, either on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy or on the assassination of his brother, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.

-2 Timothy, 4:7

The dream lives on.

-Sen. Edward Moore Kennedy, at the Democratic National Convention, August 25, 2008

America sustained a great loss late last night.

Senator Edward Moore Kennedy slipped away from us at 77, after a life full of years, of honor, of controversy, and of service to an America to which he was always passionately committed.

With Sen. Kennedy’s passing, an era ends. Ted Kennedy was the last of three brothers -the others being President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy- whose service to America shaped this nation in ways that will be felt for generations to come.

We all expected Teddy’s passing, yet his death -a year to the day after his astonishing “The Dream Lives On” speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver- is still hard to bear. For the millions of Americans, myself included, who are of Irish ancestry, his going from us reminds us of the poignant words of another Irish-American Senator, Pat Moynihan, who famously opined that “to be Irish is to know that in the end, the world will break your heart.”

Right now, many of our American hearts are broken, irrespective of our ancestry.

Because, for all his faults and flaws, and for all his failures and foibles, which were many, Teddy Kennedy nevertheless believed passionately in an America where every person had a place at the table, no matter how we look, live, or love; how we work, worship, or vote, where we live, or where our ancestors came from. His commitment to an America in which everyone was entitled to a place at the table was instrumental in work to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, among others.

Of Edward Moore Kennedy, we may truly speak the words St. Paul the Apostle first penned in his second Epistle to Timothy: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” For in the end, Teddy Kennedy did keep his faith -both a deep and abiding Christian faith as he learned it in his profoundly Irish Catholic family, and also an equally deep and abiding faith in the promise of America.

For Teddy Kennedy, like every Irish-American, understood that America represented a land of opportunity in which every child of oppression and every victim of dispossession could find what Abraham Lincoln called “a new birth of freedom.” For the Irish, whether the Wild Geese, or the bog Irish, or the Famine Irish who came to these shores fleeing the Potato Famine (as the Kennedys did) America was, and is, a place where great things have always been possible.

In his speech in Denver last August, Teddy Kennedy spoke of being called to a “better country and a newer world.” Irrespective of our party affiliation, we should all fell ourselves called to help build a better country and a newer world. For irrespective of our party affiliation, America is our common heritage, which we are called by the very words of our constitution to make better, to “form a more perfect union.”

For even now, in times of confrontation and controversy, even in times when so may of us mourn the passing of Edward Moore Kennedy, and with him, the passing of Camelot, the dream of an America in which all can pursue happiness, of an America that remains a shining city on a hill, of an America that is still the last best hope of earth, still lives on.

And the dream shall never die.

Requiescat in pace, Edward Moore Kennedy.

Requiem æternam dona eis Domine, Amen.




Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, where he serves on the City Council. The views expressed herein are his own.