Marty Carlson is a regular contributor, attorney and senior policy aide to Council Member Elizabeth Shaffer. He lives in Kenwood.
February’s issue of the Hill & Lake Press was inspiring to me.
The federal invasion of Minneapolis has no parallel in American history, and the degree to which our city has pulled together to resist this onslaught will be remembered long after we are gone.
We’re winning, at least for the moment, but the fight is painful. It has already cost lives and it has cost others their liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Reading the many excellent articles, which I hope readers found valuable, made me want to answer a question no one has ever asked: Why do I write?
The short answer is Boston and the American Revolution.
As many of you know, I’ve been writing for the paper for a number of years, contributing articles on topics ranging from Park Board policy to City Council actions to my last opinion piece, in which I argued, compellingly I think, that I was sad my dog had died.
But why write at all? Truthfully, the answer is Boston and the American Revolution.
What? That sounds nuts and, dare I say, kind of pretentious. Perhaps. But it’s nonetheless true.
In 2020, the year before I started writing, we ran headlong into the pandemic, and that coincided with my son’s college search.
On-campus visits were cut short and the world shrank to the field of view of a Zoom camera. Eventually there was a vaccine, and cautiously we’re able to poke our heads out of our houses like moles blinking in the sunlight.
It was during that time that we toured colleges in Massachusetts, starting and ending in Boston.
The college tours were fine and did not make me yearn for those thrilling days of yesteryear.
But when they were over, I had a chance to explore streets and neighborhoods that were largely devoid of people, but not devoid of history.
Boston is teeming with history, much of it revolutionary.
You can walk the Freedom Trail, covering the site of the Boston Massacre, Paul Revere’s house, Copp’s Burying Ground and ending at Bunker Hill.
My wife often complains that no vacation is complete without a visit to a church, a cemetery and an old boat.
That’s, sadly, true.
But in Boston the church is Old North, where patriots hung lanterns, “one if by land and two if by sea.”
The cemeteries hold the bones of Paul Revere, Phillis Wheatley and signers of the Declaration of Independence. And the old boat is the USS Constitution, the oldest warship still afloat.
But it’s the words that matter. Boston was known as the Cradle of Liberty, not just for physical bravery, “brave it was,” but for revolutionary ideals eloquently expressed.
John and Abigail Adams, his fiery cousin Samuel Adams, the remarkable Phillis Wheatley, Mercy Otis Warren and others all contributed to a free and rich exchange of ideas that helped galvanize an incipient nation into action.
Perhaps my favorite artifact is the bookshop of the twenty-something Henry Knox, whose intellect drew the attention of Gen. George Washington and whose ingenuity and stamina saw dozens of artillery pieces hauled hundreds of miles in winter over the Berkshire Mountains from Fort Ticonderoga through Springfield to Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston Harbor.
There, on the high ground in 1776, they forced the British into retreat, marching down Boston’s Long Wharf, never to return. But it started with books. Henry Knox was a bookseller before the cannons and before the U.S. gold depository was named after him.
Today, the building that housed Knox’s bookshop is immaculately preserved as a historic site. It’s also a Chipotle.
I have wondered for years what to make of that discrepancy, and as I finally reduce my thoughts to writing, I still don’t know. But I do know that Henry Knox rose to the occasion and distinguished himself in a way that’s remembered 250 years later.
Ideas drove the Revolution, bloody and awful though it was, and it’s those ideas, acted upon, that sustain us today.
After visiting Boston’s historic sites, I often spent evenings reading about those remarkable people and the power of their expression. And it nudged me into a more public life.
It’s not that I hadn’t engaged in public-interest work. I had, and I am proud of my record. It just never crossed my mind to write personally to an elected official or to express my opinion as an ordinary citizen.
I simply didn’t think anyone would care. It’s an attitude that’s very Gen X — we’re the latch-key kids of the 80’s — and which leaves me deeply impressed by the chutzpah of the Gen Z’ers who have organized (truly impressively), run for office, and who have turned youth into an attribute.
But that wasn’t my experience.
Still, when the Park Board proposed closing the parkway in front of my church, I thought — in all seriousness — of the revolutionaries in Boston, and I sharpened my pencil and wrote a letter. I didn’t really expect it to matter, but that letter found its way out into the larger neighborhood, somehow to this paper, and then onto the front page.
People liked it, and they asked me to keep writing.
So I’ve kept at it ever since. We’re nothing without an informed and engaged citizenry, and if I can play a small, extremely parochial part in that, it feels like a good use of my time.
Since the ICE invasion, I have been absolutely blown away by the coordination, generosity and bravery of Minneapolis residents.
You cannot throw a stick around here without hitting someone who’s been shadowing ICE vehicles, blowing a whistle, delivering groceries, helping with schooling or providing some other meaningful support. The teachers are stunning, the twenty-somethings are fierce and the lawyers in my life are albeit in a good way.
This is the spirit of America.
Though the ghosts of patriots past nudged me to engage, it’s the broad swath courage of our fellow citizens that gives me hope.
The Trump administration had a plan. They thought that if they pushed us, we would burn down our own city again. They would invoke the Insurrection Act and use us as a laboratory for the future.
Instead, we fought back with cameras, whistles, frog costumes and, fabulously, dildos. Bullies can’t withstand sustained resistance, and mockery makes them wilt.
“Bullies can’t withstand sustained resistance, and mockery makes them wilt.”
It’s far too soon to say this matches the British getting frog-marched down Long Wharf in 1776, but it’s not to say that it does not.
Freedom requires critical thought, eloquent expression, physical courage, sacrifice and nearly unending stamina.
I hope Minneapolis hasn’t cornered the market on those attributes, but we’ve them in abundance, and I’ve never been more proud to be part of this multitude we call home.
