The Crack in Our Liberty

It was just Ben Franklin and I at most of the historical sites in Philadelphia. 

The world blew up over the covid-19 outbreak while I happened to be in Pennsylvania on business. Everything escalated overnight. The US declared a national state of emergency. People started panicking and wearing masks and gloves. All of the frozen foods and non-perishable goods vanished from the shelves at Trader Joe’s. It was a strange, strange time to be traveling abroad. 

With plans to fly home to Canada the next day, I spent an eerily quiet day sightseeing in Philly (while practicing my social distancing, of course).

After picking up a latte from Old City Coffee at the downtown Reading Terminal, my first stop of the day was a cherished American landmark that brings up a barrage of mixed and conflicting feelings for me: the Liberty Bell. 

Commissioned by legislators in 1752, the bell was created to “proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof”. Later, it was adopted as a symbol of human rights and freedom by abolitionists seeking to put an end to slavery. The women’s suffrage movement also heralded it as a symbol for equal rights.

I visited the Liberty Bell 267 years after its commissioning. And as I gazed at this quintessential American icon, I felt as exasperated as I was awed.

Circling this 2,000-pound relic, I was filled with tension—half celebrating the daring few who boldly fought for a justice that was far ahead of their time, and half mourning that we’re still struggling with the same issues of inequity today.

The Crack in Our Liberty

Slavery may have been legally abolished over a century and a half ago. But people today are still exploited in their vulnerability by modern day slaveholders we now call "traffickers”. People are still forced to work and act in ways against their will. People are still objectified, abused, and used for the profit of others—even in the US, even in Canada. 

Women may have been given the right to vote. But women today are still underrepresented in politics and positions of power, and are therefore excluded from key policy and decision making. Women are still underpaid compared to our male counterparts, still undervalued for our intelligent and meaningful contributions to the world, still expected to be everything to everyone—while not taking up too much space in the process.

In some ways, it’s incomprehensible to me that in 2020, we still don’t have the simplest things figured out. We still haven’t mastered the basics of treating all people with dignity and equity. We still construct a hierarchy for the value of human life based on trivial factors like skin pigmentation or whether or not we have a Y chromosome.

But perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. After all, how could we truly experience “liberty for all” when our earliest structures of liberty were designed and built to benefit only those in power?

To me, there is no irony in the fact the Liberty Bell cracked on its first ring. Because there are deep cracks in our Westernized notion of freedom and justice. 

Our earliest concept of human rights were created by and for white men. Eventually, after years upon years of arduous activism, women were regarded—at least, on paper—as “equal under the law”. This, however, did not include women of colour. 

My parents were born into a world where the discrimination against people of colour was legally and socially acceptable. My dad was eight years old—catching frogs and fishing for trout and playing dodgeball in his neighbourhood in Minnesota—when racial segregation in schools and public places was legally banned. People of colour were only granted the same legal rights as their white counterparts in my dad’s lifetime. In my dad’s lifetime. 

It took a new millennium to legalize same sex marriage: in 2005 for Canada, in 2015 for the US. 

It took the global #MeToo movement in 2006 to break the silence about sexual harassment and abuse. 

And perhaps it took the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 for us all to see the cracks in our foundation.
To drive us into our homes to reflect on our shared humanity and the sacredness of community.
To be shown that we are no more and no less important than anyone else by a virus that treats us all equally.
To see the inconsequentiality of our hierarchy of race, gender, religion, sexuality, and socioeconomic status.
To expose the unsustainable ways we’ve been living.
And to tell us that we can do better.

The Journey of Justice

The fact that nobody alive today will ever get to hear the Liberty Bell ring reinforces a message I’ve been wrestling with for years: that justice is an ongoing, generational struggle. 

I may never get to see the ripe fruits grow from the labour of our current activist movements. But I can still plant the seeds. I can spend my life cultivating the soil and watering the seeds and pulling up weeds. And it will be worthwhile, regardless if I get to see the harvest for myself, because I will have done my small part. 

I’m learning to find peace with that.

What gives me hope is this: if humans created the unjust systems in the world we live in, then humans also have the power change them.

Right now, I’m deeply encouraged by the words of Steve Jobs, who said:

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently...

They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

May we all—not just the dreamers among us—do the small, simple things that will change the world and bring liberty for all. And may we use this time of self-isolation and social distancing to find ways that we can contribute to a better, more sustainable world.