July 4th. The other 364 days of the year Philadelphians walk around with a heavy chip on our collective shoulders – we lost the opportunity to be the political capital of our nation in the 18th century, and the commercial heart slipped towards New York in the following decades – knowing that our city’s greatest day lays in its past. Indeed, after ten of the city’s best years in post-WWII history, Philadelphia is only now retracing a total population level it first crested 1910.
I spent the holiday walking around Independence Mall, the area surrounding Independence Hall in Old City, the brick-clad neighborhoods of which hold many National Park and other historical sites of 18th century America. The National Constitution Center, a museum dedicated to that document and its co-evolution along with our country, sits two blocks north of Independence Hall on slightly higher ground. From its second floor, the plate glass windows give a lovely view down to Independence Hall itself – you can almost convince yourself, in the right light, that you can make out the replica of John Hancock’s desk on the raised dais where he presided over the Continental Congress – across two blocks of lawn and a low-slung building that houses the Liberty Bell.
As well as Independence Hall, the view was dominated by a large group of protestors set up in the midst of one of the lawns, themselves overlooking Market Street and the July 4th parade. From a distance the protest looked properly permitted and set up, with participants stationary but for the signs they pumped up and down in the air – “Abolish ICE!,” “No concentration camps in America!,” “Reunite immigrant kids!” and the like – while uniformed members of the Philadelphia Police Department stood not far away, chatting idly enough that passerby suspected no escalation was in the cards.
At one point, a small group of protestors – perhaps two dozen – did leave their pre-determined protest zone (freedom of assembly is the often forgotten third child in the First Amendment, after freedom of religion and speech) to interrupt the parade. With just enough people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder across the four-lane road, they sat with their signs while their spokeswoman made a speech inaudible from 20 feet away – a by-product of the abundant high school marching bands. They were clearly protesting the Trump administration’s child detention policy. A few signs likened the policy to the Holocaust, and it later came out that this sub-group, at least, were Jewish. They deliberately interrupted the parade for news coverage, likely and correctly suspecting the authorized protest would garner them no headlines and perhaps not even a footnote of holiday new coverage, and so escalated to stopping the parade.
I don’t know if it was coincidental or purposeful, but the protestors cut off the parade just as a group of police officers and firefighters from a distant suburb were about to march past. The officers were totally nonplussed and stood patiently despite the heat. The crowd was less pleased. Overwhelmingly white and strongly family-oriented, the general feeling seemed to hover somewhere between exhausted resignation and exasperation that this should be done on a day when they had gotten the kids out of the house. The Philadelphia Police Department, apparently prepared for this eventuality, had the protestors arrested and in a van quickly, so there wasn’t much time for the mood to progress beyond the initial reaction, although the number of cell phones that came out to record increased by an order of magnitude when the van-loading began.
The reenactors were, as always, quite good. In the shade of trees on the east side of Independence Mall, in front of the Constitution Center, several dozen had set up their “camp.” Men and women in period dress (correctly made from the linen of the period, one of them explained to me – the loose-fitting fabric wicks moisture away beautifully as it moves) walked interested visitors through the packs of revolutionary war soldiers, explained the working of period weapons, household implements, and the colonial economy, with an accuracy I have only seen surpassed in detailed books and never in a museum. As I aimed a Tower-pattern Brown Bess musket down the field (grinning, I admit, like a maniac as its owner explained how my left-handed nature would certainly have pissed off my neighbor in the firing line) I noticed that for every person questioning the reenactors there were likely twenty or thirty waiting in line for the free cupcakes that would be given away that afternoon. The cupcake line snaked around the protestors, which I thought showed either Machiavellian planning by the police or (more likely) a certain lack of foresight by the planners. Then again, a revolution does engender a certain amount of chaos.
As the protestors took benefit from their First Amendment rights and the parade continued (Miss Teen Philadelphia waved slowly as she rode in the back of a Corvette belonging to one of the members of the “Old Men with Corvettes” club) the reenactors shuffled into place in front of the Constitution Center. Around a dozen of them had muskets and formed somewhat messy but still clearly defined ranks. It was notable that two of them were women, and only one (one of the women) was not white. The Constitution Center had reminded me that, at the time of independence, one in five people in the thirteen colonies was a slave. Philadelphia has long since become a majority minority city, roughly 42% black, 12% Hispanic, and 5% Asian. From 1990 to 2010, more than 260,000 white residents left the city, although the growth over the past decade makes the 2020 Census data of even more interest. Standing on the second floor of the Constitution Center, with its exhibits discussing (or sometimes glossing over) the gradual expansion of rights, the absolute contended with the relative. I am proud of my country and what it has achieved, but I’m also aware of how begrudging, difficult, unfair, and even hypocritical country was and continues to be. The sea of white faces demonstrated (as they demonstrated) that there is more work to be done if Independence Day celebrations are to have the full diversity of the country come to the very spot where the seed of liberty first grew.
The second floor of the Constitution Center has a grand lobby outside the main exhibition, and shoved into a corner were voting machines. While July 4th would actually be a wonderful day to have people vote, this was merely an opportunity for the electorate to see the new voting machines the city’s election commissioners purchased recently, which will be used in our upcoming citywide elections in November. The three commissioners are under-resourced, but also – this being Philadelphia – frequently inept, corrupt, or preferably both, and the lack of transparency into the purchase process is a much lamented fact. The new machines are slick, with a touch screen the size of a medium sized television and a voting card that resembles a short but very wide white belt made of paper. I thought it was fine, but knowing that the machines would be used by elderly, uneducated voters (Philadelphia residents are among the least educated of any major city) I immediately saw the numerous complications such as text size and contrast that they would face. It was less bad than it might have been, which in this city we count as a win given our long history of our reach exceeding our grasp when it comes to desirable things.
Just below the voting machines, the reenactors stood in ranks as their leader read the Declaration of Independence with great verve and fire. It’s a longer document than it looks, and he was still mid-flow by the time we had finished testing the new voting machines and exited the building. I had an “I Voted” sticker on my t-shirt, which made me pay particular attention to the Declaration, as though there was some direct temporal line between the fake reading of the document and my fake voting on the machines above. As I pondered this, another reenactor came up to me, but in a uniform that seemed out of kilter; the woman’s green colors were not in sync with the reds, whites, and blues of the uniforms I saw scattered elsewhere. She confirmed my suspicion by fixing me with a stare, jerking her head at the reading going on over her right shoulder, and firmly stating, “It’s treason, that – the whole lot of them will be hanged” before going on her way. A Loyalist reenactor. I disliked her on principle, then realized that this was not dissimilar to the tribal instincts behind the actions that had sparked the protestors the next block over. My noble American instinct kicked in to remind me that We The People are all one tribe, although in a mental parenthesis I added that “us” meant a white man who owned property at time of writing. Mental amendments are necessary from time to time.
Overall, the 4th did was it was supposed to. It got me out to think about the country and what it means, refresh my memory as well as teach me a few new things about what it meant, means, and could mean to be an American, and to mull the problems we are facing today as we continue to stress test democracy. I hope next year I see signs of progress, however it is in retrospect (and it usually is in retrospect) we define prospect. And of course that the weather cooperates again!
smq.world 