By Andrew R. Duckworth
Politics used to be a family dinner table conversation, unless you’re in Ireland. I hear it’s rude there. How would I know, my ancestors came over from Ireland when it was getting bad, way before the Troubles started. And when they got here, they were spit at, shouted down—too damn Catholic, too damn filthy, need not apply at any job-those were reserved for the Protestants, the white people, can you believe it? They weren’t WASPS, so they couldn’t work. So, they went where they could work. They went where they could speak and they spoke. They forged their life through flame and fury. They wore their faith like a badge of honor and to hell with those who had a problem with it. So maybe dinner conversation wasn’t the place for it. Maybe it should have been louder back then. Maybe it should have poured into the streets like water sweeping over clogged drains. And, in many places, it did. Maybe there was a place for ‘decency’ when people were treated as decent, but, when was that? Was it when Sacheen Littlefeather was booed offstage at the Academy Awards? Was it when white families in hushed voices would dismiss the words of a young black poet raising her voice saying “still I rise”? Was it when young brown men and women were separated from their families because their name-Sanchez, Diaz, Martinez-was a bit too suspect? Perhaps it’s time to have that conversation of decency because I saw it in the young men and women going to the polls, making their voices heard through action. I heard it in the voices who refused to be silenced. I hear it in the hope that now rests in the voices of kids who can now be kids and don’t have to be afraid every time they leave their home, hoping that maybe their family will still be there when they return. I feel it in the energy of millions of voices calling for Big Tech to be held accountable for the crimes they’re still committing towards nature, towards us, towards society. What does decency look like without the call for accountability?
