Backdrop Series #1

What to [the land] is the Fourth of July?

On on July 5, 1852, in an address to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society the great Frederick Douglass asked: What to the Slave is the 4th of July?

I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future?

Oppressions are not separate. Douglass was speaking a decade before the end of the Civil War, before the end of slavery (outside of penal institutions), and yet, he continues to speak for all those who are disaffected by this annual outburst of patriotic fervor: all those who do not live under the sign of Power: Blacks, our Native American neighbors, women -- stripped of our right to bodily autonomy in the wake of Dobbs, our LGBTQ friends and neighbors, teachers and libraries, those seeking sanctuary at our borders, who believed the promise on the Statue of Liberty, only to find themselves jailed, trapped behind razor wire, and drowned in the Rio Grande.

He also speaks for the land. The land we've historically seen as "empty." The land we see as backdrop, as scenery, as something through which we pass but which has no rights of it's own. Land we see as "resource" not as sentient being, not as "mountains and rivers endlessly walking."

Yee haw

The 4th of July starts here in Livingston on the 2nd, with a parade, and the first of three (now 4) nights of rodeo. In the first decade or so that I lived here, it was kind of sweet. There were floats by local businesses and organizations, dueling drum-and-bagpipe marching bands, the Shriners in their silly cars, mule packing trains showing off fancy moves in the street, a few vintage horse-drawn wagons, fire trucks, and a lot of old cars. People threw candy, we all did some light day drinking, politicians shook hands. It was fun.

Then came an unholy combination of the Trump/MAGA folks, and the powers that be deciding what's going to save us is becoming the party annex to Bozeman. We're now "the thing to do" on all the tourism sites. Our friend called from Missoula, where she's watching soccer while recovering from Covid to tell us they're running TV ads for the parade and rodeo on endless repeat. It's not a cute small town parade anymore. It's crowded 4 rows deep with people from out of town, drunk people, lots of MAGA people, and rich people in matching fishing shirts. There's a lot of jockeying over which of retired movie/music stars are here, where they are, who is talking to them.

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