Freedom and democracy: We're not here to fight for an abstraction

author : Phan Nguyen topic : Iraq occupation

[A speech delivered by Phan Nguyen at the Sylvester Park Peace Rally on May 30th, 2004]

A few days ago the Olympian had an editorial about the city council's hearing on the nuclear sub. The editorial said, "There's plenty of room for dissent in this community. There is no room to rebuke the men and women fighting to preserve freedom and democracy."

And I'm wondering, who are they talking about when they talk about "men and women fighting to preserve freedom and democracy?" Are they talking about the ACLU? Are they talking about the NAACP? When you bomb a wedding and then justify it by saying that "bad people have celebrations, too," (in the words of Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt) is that preserving freedom and democracy?

Now I remember at the city council hearing, many of the responses that were supportive of the nuclear sub made frequent reference to freedom and democracy, but very few people cared to define it. And I realized that as much as people value the terms freedom and democracy, very few people know what it means.

In fact the most tangible examples of freedom and democracy that were uttered at City Hall went something like this:

"If it weren't for the military, we'd all be drinking vodka and speaking Russian."

"If it weren't for the military, we'd be eating rice and fish heads and speaking Japanese."

"If it weren't for the military, we wouldn't be speaking English anymore."

In other words, the concepts of freedom and democracy have been reduced to the right to not eat fish heads, or the right to not speak Japanese.

So now I am waging a war against abstractions. Freedom and democracy are not abstract ideas. It's not something you wave around or attach to the side of your SUV.

It's something you practice, and by that I don't mean you practice it at the firing rage. You don't practice freedom and democracy with war games at Fort Lewis.

Let's face the facts. The reason I'm able to stand here and speak my mind is not because we bombed Panama. It's not because we bombed Grenada.

I am able to stand here and speak freely because many people before me risked their own personal safety to speak up in the past. Was the United States a democracy when it imprisoned Eugene Debs for speaking out against World War I?

Was the United States a democracy when it destroyed Paul Robeson for speaking out about the conditions of the oppressed?

I owe my freedom of speech to the people who got their heads bashed in during the Peekskill Riots. We owe our freedoms to people like Joe Hill or Fred Hampton or Medgar Evers. We owe it to the Wobblies who were massacred in Everett and Centralia.

It's true that many women and men have died for this country. But we should remember that a good number of them were killed in this country.

Martin Luther King died for this country. Viola Liuzzo died for this country. Andrew Goodman, James Cheney and Michael Schwerner -- killed in Mississippi -- they died for this country.

It's sad to say that the women and men who have been sent overseas to enforce an occupation in Iraq -- they're dying for George Bush and the neocon dream.

We can't depend on the inherent goodness of this country. The Patriot Act and the INS prove that our constitutional rights can be revoked overnight.

Don't take our rights for granted. The laws of this country will only protect us when we raise a fuss.

Let's not glorify cluster bombs and nuclear submarines as the saviors of democracy. The ACLU does not deploy ground forces.

Who passed the Patriot Act? It wasn't Osama bin Laden, and he's not the one upholding it, either. Who's stripping our freedoms? It's not Mullah Omar, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or Muqtada al-Sadr. It's a bunch of good old boys with less exotic names like Bush and Ashcroft.

I've said this many times before, and I'll say it again because a lot of people still don't get it. Who did we bomb so that African Americans could have the right to vote (except in Florida)? What country do we have to invade to ensure that women here have reproductive rights?

I want you all to know that we're not here to fight for an abstraction. You can call it freedom or you can call it french fries -- I don't care. But our values are human lives and human rights. Real things. Things that we can experience. Things that we miss when they're taken away from us. Human lives and human rights.

So back to the Olympian editorial. If the editorial board of the Olympian knew what it was talking about, then when it talks about the "men and women fighting to preserve freedom and democracy," it should apply to us.

Thank you.