REMEMBERING
If you could peek over the horizon toward the East to the
water’s edge as it rolls up on the sands of Normandy, France, you might be able
to imagine the horror of seeing your friends dying under the thunder of guns,
the static of rapid machinegun fire and the paralyzing screams of your friends as
you become numb to it all. As the water’s edge is tinted with red blood you
might be afraid to move and even open your eyes. It takes someone with the
courage to defy this all and do his job.
It was Seventy-five years ago today that it all happened.
United nation's of the: United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, stormed the
beaches of Normandy and sought to liberate the continent of Europe from the
oppression of Nazism, its’ yolk of terror, and its’ practices of genocide, all
for the concept that all men and women are created equal and free and should
having the God-given choices of living and raising their families in freedom.
Seventy-five years after that historic day we pause for a
few moments and think about it, commemorating the event with a vague idea of
what it was like to brave on that day as we move on. Every day it will become vaguer
Today we face the current crises, the oppression of a pandemic,
the need to correct our thinking, and realizing that we must lift the yolk of
oppression and that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL. We can’t be summer soldiers or
sunshine patriots we need to weather the storms of inequity prejudice and
unfounded hatred that stems from centuries of ignorance as one. We can’t have
two standards of equality, we need just one. Our choices must be for the good
of all, not just some.
I see the crises at the Mexican border and I think of my
grandparents as they suffered the slings and arrows of ignorance on their part
because they didn’t speak the language, and of those that sought to rise from
the gutter because they did and didn’t want Giuseppe and Francesca to be
Americans. I recall feeling less than human myself when my mother would
translate to my grandmother what an insurance salesman was saying, or Dad
explaining to his “Pop” what some “Medican” was saying as the salesman looks at
my grandfather like he was a child because he didn’t speak the language,
therefore he was less.
Watching the TV I witness every day the many, many
journalists, doctors, educators, and economists who are black. It makes me
happy to know that if, God forbid I ever need a doctor or mailman, that his
color will not matter, just his ability and dedication. Seeing my kind, the
many Italian/Americans, just like our African/American brothers are rising in
the world of prejudice and with their number are making that world smaller,
that wise and free men are beginning to see, and not be guided by years of
ignorance.
George Floyd is now an icon for me to know we are as
Americans, not whites or blacks, are changing an ugly world, the same ugly
world we were changing seventy-five years ago today.
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