Day 29: Chicago to Mars

Must we die martyrs of the pursuit of happiness or are we free?

As was the occurrence when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, making it legal for African Americans to fight for their freedom amid the Civil War, Black people were goaded into a summer of protests in 2020 and pinpointed for blame, by some, when a certain faction of fellow Americans broke into the United States Capitol Building wielding the Confederate flag and threatening Congress and the Vice President.

This ideological insurrection began again, one may argue, in June 2015, when Senator Clementa C. Pinckney was murdered in his church, in his home state of South Carolina. The shooter is said to have looked for the sitting elected official, specifically.

A certain faction, in fact, has long fought widely agreed upon American ideals, since the founding — not all fathers were related, in that regards. However, much of the nation has moved on already again, once the Senate voted to acquit former president Trump and hinted that the courts may decide his fate.

Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) responded in kind, naming 45 and his former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani in a lawsuit that alleges they violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 by calling for a “trial by combat” — whatever that means — and preventing Congress from performing their duties, that fateful day in January 2021.

It’s all somewhat reminiscent of this day in history, some 53 years ago, when The Chicago Seven were found innocent of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in protest of the Vietnam War.

This year on February 18th, with so much more in hindsight, NASA landed Perseverance on Mars in a mission looking for past life, the Equality Act for LGBTQIA+ rights was reintroduced to the Senate and nonvoting Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) announced a new total of 212 cosponsors for DC Statehood.