Fifty-One years ago this year, the album Free to Be... You and Me was released. It was a personal project that would go on to become a gold record, a television special, a book, a foundation, and the anthem of a generation. The opening song, with its jangly banjo and skipping rhythm, lays out a vision of a kids utopia:“There's a land that I see where the children are free. And I say it ain't far to this land from where we are.”
In 1972, these messages were revolutionary. When the Free to Be television special came out a few years later, Thomas had to fight the networks to show a scene of her and the Black singer and actor Harry Belafonte just pushing strollers together. Married women couldn't even get their own credit cards. But change was starting to happen.
I had begun my career as a Communal Worker, my job had me working with a population, back in the day we defined it as Tweens. A cool description at the time meant kids who were way too cool be called KIDS, not cool enough to be identified as Teens, sort of an INBETWEEN age group, thusly the moniker of TWEENS. In the 70s when an attempt to actually be a part of Darwin’s theory of Evolution was finding its roots.
2023, or is it still 2021, or 2020…I am never certain, as it seems to me time has either stood still or has imploded on itself. Fifty-One years later, and once again as before, We The People are fighting a battle to be free to Be... You and Me. Have you ever noticed in way too many futuristic novels or films, the anticipated future is not a bed of roses,” a “beacon of welcome” or a fucking “eutopia!” But more of a hazardous period from times gone by identified as The Dark Ages!
As if we had never fought a Civil War, the First or Second World War, experienced the White backlash of the 50s, the Nixonian period of the 60’s the Joe McCarthy years, the Regan Bull Shit years of his Bull Shit Trickle Down Con Game; we once again, not for the first time are aiming for the lowest of the low, the most immoral of the immoral, and the abyss of Hell. Trans kids/Women/People of Color (yeah, you GOP Republicans of color, just wait), Jews (yeah, even you Jews who somehow think your money will save you from Anti-Semitism) Immigrants/Drag Queens/ and LGBTQ community (yeah all you wealthy Gays, you really think economics is your get out of jail free card), we are once again living in a Nation, where we must BEG/SHOUT/and DEMAND, we expect to be Free to Be... You and Me.
