July 4, 2004 (excerpts)
Despite two wonderful weeks in Maine, this year I really wanted to be in my home town on the 4th of July. Last year we started walking at Christ Church, the church of Benjamin Franklin at 2nd and Market, and processed by candlelight and drum to the Constitution Center to protest the violations of our Constitution under this Administration, violations the Supreme Court only recently ruled on. This year we sat among the 800 pairs of boots that commemorate U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, arranged by name, age, and state of residence, and we listened to the names of both U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Women are sitting, bent in prayer, one young woman poised in meditation, while the sounds of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," sung by several hundred and amplified on a PA system waft, over from the Mall in front of Independence Hall. After seeing "Fahrenheit 9/11" I headed to the Women's Room; as soon as someone flushed the toilet, I started sobbing. When it subsided I remembered a friend on my block told me she couldn't stop. I did, but the sobbing started again when I was walking under the Benjamin Franklin Bridge when a train passed. Someone had left the door of St. Augustine's Church open, so that I could walk into an empty church, cry and pray. It was the church we entered in early June after an inter-faith march with Jews, Muslims and Christians. Hearing an Imam's Call to Prayer in that beautiful 18th century Catholic Church was stunning; Father Joe Mostardi welcomed us: "This is why we live in cities; so that we can do this." Friends warned me about what outraged them most in the film, then left them with a profound sense of betrayal: betrayal by the U.S. Senate which disenfranchised the Black Caucus in a stunning defeat that brought memories of Reconstruction Jim Crow, betrayal by the U.S. press which censored footage of the Inauguration limousine speeding through crowds of protestors, a sight unprecedented in the nation's history. I have read many books this year, a year in which the press published so little truth. But I am waiting for one titled And They All Kept Their Jobs. Usually I protect myself from grief with anger. Not this time. Before the film I had a small lunch next door. A black woman and I were the only ones there. I almost asked if she wanted to join me, when our eyes met. After the film, she was leaving the women's room as I was going in. Her face, like mine, was streaked with tears; I said "Yes" as I passed her. Strangely my memory of the assassination of Robert Kennedy is of the following morning sitting on a subway train in NYC staring at a heavy-set black woman holding the pole, with tears streaming down her, like my, face. 1968. 1974. 2004. Worse than Watergate. Then July 9 10:30 a.m. NPR live broadcast Jay Rockefeller, Senate Intelligence Committee + 9/11 Commission. Roll it! Jeanne Allen Jeanne is a member of CPF and St. Malachy's Parish |