We kind of avoided and turned down invitations for BBQs and picnics. When Leta proposed we do a BBQ with the house for the 4th of July, marÃa couldn’t help asking what exactely we’d be celebrating. [+ quote on independence from José Lopez] In the end most of our house-mates went to a BBQ of Cynthia’s friend who invited our entire house. MarÃa wanted an independence day on her own, one of these days where you have all your time to spend as you want. And i wanted to take up an invitation i got for a picnic in Berkeley organized by Tikkun.
An attempt to give the 4th of July another meaning. From the invitation: “All year we focus on what is wrong and what needs to be changed in American society. On July 4, however, we take time from our schedule of struggle to affirm all that is good in the U.S.: particularly the way that ordinary people have been able to build upon the radical elements ingredient in the original struggle for independence and the (at the time extremely limited) commitment to democracy to expand democratic processes and civil and human rights. We in the Tikkun Community and in The Network of Spiritual Progressives encourage you to create local celebrations that focus on telling the story of all the struggles to expand democracy and human rights, focusing not on the “goodness of America’s elites” (who continue their tradition of resisting and whenever they think possible, because of our inattention or relative weakness, rolling back victories for democracy that we had hoped had been one for all times), but rather on the goodness of the American people, their willingness to take risks and fight for justice, freedom, democracy and human rights. So many of our children (in fact, so many of us as adults) do not really know all the stories of heroism and hardship that America’s peoples have endured to expand democracy, human rights and civil liberties. So July 4th is the perfect time to learn and to then tell those stories.”
The idea was that local Tikkun Communities would spend time to compile a collection of such stories (a secular Haggadah, the book that tells the story of liberation), putting them together with rituals of celebration. The Tikkun Synagogue in Berkeley organized a picnic to share such stories and poems and rituals in order to have some kind of alternative celebration, while they insisted that: “Of course, telling these stories should not be separated from restating our opposition to the continued militarism, erosion of democracy, erosion of civil liberties and human rights, erosion of separation of church and state, homophobia, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and media disempowerment of ordinary citizens and the perpetuation of cynicism, despair and societal-wide depression. But for once, on July 4th spiritual progressives contextualize all this within the frame of the good that the U.S. also has achieved.”
I liked the idea a lot. In the end it was an issue of mobility (once more…) that held us back – getting ourselves to Berkeley with public transport on a holiday proved to be such a discouraging project which would have taken us more time than the picnic itself. And we definately weren’t in the mood for hitch-hiking anymore. Difficult to do independence here without a car.
So also our independence day was spent sweetly at home in our own time. At some point marÃa climbed on the hottub in the backyard to try to see in my garden room, as our housemates weren’t sure whether we had left of not. By the time we opened our room, only marÃa was in the house and we were all very happy to have escaped the traditions 4th of July. We even speculated about going to the Garden of Eden again but that also meant a getting hold of a car, and so in the end Giulia and i went to the beach.
A good crowd had come out to beach like on a beautiful sunday, and we enjoyed the sea and sun (and wrestling) like on a beautiful sunny day. But it was not just a holiday in a beach resort, as we were reminded… Or maybe the tragedy is that is was just that, a sunny day in fun-loving Santa Cruz as the war goes on…
