Today is the French National Holiday, aka Bastille Day, and I've heard fireworks going off all throughout the place this weekend. Last night on the Champs Elysées I saw a few fireworks which looked nice with the backdrop of the Arc de Triomphe. Tonight will be the real deal and I am most definitely going to be there.
For me, Bastille Day symbolizes people wanting change and unity and also freedom - freedom to express themselves and fight for what they want...Something we, who have freedom, should be grateful for as there are so many people all over who have no freedom, have no rights or who have what little rights they had taken away from them. Hell, there are many even in our own developed countries who get taken advantage of just because their rights are perceived to be less than others. I just read the New York Times article talking about Erik Camayd-Freixas' essay in which he shared what he witnessed as an interpreter for the persons arrested in the May 2008 raid of illegal workers in Postville, Iowa.
The fact that Dr. Camayd-Freixas felt compelled to write a 14-page essay to tell the story of the bad way in which the raid was handled tells a lot. That means that the events he witnessed had a deep effect on him. The details he describes in his essay are troubling as he points out the bad treatment of the workers and the unfair options presented to them. It's crazy that these poor workers will not be at least deported immediately back to their countries. No, they will have to do 5 months in jail. Then you have celebrities like Paris Hilton who drive recklesslesy and serve only 3 days of a 45 day jail sentence and, of course, do not have to worry about whether or not their families will have food to eat while they are in jail. Maybe it's just my third world perspective but to paraphrase George Orwell, ''All [ men] are created equal, but some [men] are more equal than others....''
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment