2023
July
03
Monday

Monitor Daily Podcast

July 03, 2023
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The park ranger posed a surprising question.

Basically it was, do you think this is the most important building here on this site? My family had come to see Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. We were not in Independence Hall. We were in Congress Hall next door. Not a hand went up.

Then the ranger explained her point: Independence Hall may look fancier and be the home of famous ideas. But Congress Hall was where Americans began putting that new Constitution into practice.

Without implementation, ideas are just words on paper.

This red brick building looks innocuous next to its larger neighbor. But when the early U.S. Congress met here, it became the place where the first peaceful transfer of power happened from one president to another, in 1797. Many Americans wanted George Washington to stay on. Instead, he insisted after two terms that it was time for him to head home, setting a precedent.

The young government also set protocols here for things never mentioned in the Constitution. Our ranger guide took us from the House chamber upstairs to where the early Senate met. Some lawmakers had hoped to do their business behind closed doors. Instead, demands that the press be able to see and hear what happens were heeded.

Not everything got resolved quickly or justly. “The fate of the nation’s enslaved people,” as one historical website puts it, “remained a topic too difficult for Congress to address.”

That, too, fits our park ranger’s larger message – a message that’s resonating with me on the eve of Independence Day: We the people have an ongoing role today in putting into practice the ideals that sustain this nation.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Nacho Doce/Reuters
People run, followed by police officers during riots at Champs-Élysées in Paris, July 1. The riots were in response to the death of Nahel, a teenager killed by a police officer during a traffic stop.

Protests and rioting erupted across France after police killed a teen from an immigrant community last week. The unrest has been a tipping point for France’s minority groups, which have long felt pushed to the margins. 

A​ ​debate over how fast to transition to clean energy ​is gaining urgency, as ​a proposed ​EPA ​emissions rule stirs concerns about electric grid reliability.

A deeper look

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Matt Courtman, co-founder of Mission Ivorybill, scouts ivory-billed woodpecker habitat in the Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge, May 5, 2023, in Tallulah, Louisiana.

Experts say the ivory-billed woodpecker is probably extinct. Others think they’re wrong – and that the natural world still holds some surprises.

Commentary

With the United States celebrating its Independence Day, our commentator imagines how the holiday could be more forward-looking – with a focus on unity.

In Pictures

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File
Children dressed in Colonial garb, including one posing as Benjamin Franklin, ride on a Fourth of July parade float in Hingham, Massachusetts, in 2021.

Independence Day is a time for Americans to blow on the coals of their mutual love and loyalty and recognize something larger than themselves. These photos illustrate the many ways that patriotism shapes American culture.


The Monitor's View

Reuters
Flags fly at Union Station in Washington D.C. ahead of the Fourth of July holiday.

Across the United States on the Fourth of July, communities will gather to mark Independence Day with dazzling displays of pyrotechnic beauty. Yet the real light of American liberty and patriotism shines elsewhere – in salving the fireworks of political and social division with the same ideals that drove the 1776 revolution.

One place to find that glow is Akron, in northeast Ohio. Last year, a week before the July Fourth holiday, a Black resident named Jayland Walker was fatally shot by police during a traffic stop. The incident aggravated racial tensions, leading officials to cancel the city’s Independence Day celebrations for the sake of public safety.

A year later, this community of 200,000 residents offers a model of the slow, hard work of reconciliation – and, because of the tragedy’s proximity to the Fourth, a measure of the unique bonds and sacrifices of American patriotism. It is a city not changed but changing, drawn into unresolved conversations about unity by what Deputy Mayor Clarence Tucker calls “the imperative of dignity and respect.”

As has happened in other cities faced with similar incidents, Mr. Walker’s death has resulted in vigorous legal activity. In April, a state grand jury found no cause to indict the eight officers involved. Mr. Walker’s family brought a $45 million lawsuit against the city for damages.

Within Akron, however, residents are feeling their way beyond adversity. City and private leaders have held public meetings and prayer circles to engage business leaders and school officials, interfaith clergy and health practitioners, police officers and ordinary citizens.

The goal, says Robert DeJournett, a resident pastor helping to forge those dialogues, “is not to be dissuaded or persuaded one way or another, but really listening with a healing heart. That’s what folk need – not just to be tolerated, but really heard, to have their perspective be considered.”

That process reflects what Steven B. Smith, a professor of political science and philosophy at Yale University, calls the “evaluating and ennobling” currency of American patriotism – which, he wrote in a 2021 book, “at its best does not rely on indoctrination but on teaching and supporting the virtues of civility, respect for law, [and] respect for others.”

Deante Lavender, pastor of The Remedy Church in Akron who is working with Jewish and Islamic leaders in the city to promote community healing, describes that work this way: “We are coming together to gain a relationship to figure each other out, so that when it’s time to come together, we don’t have to figure each other out.”

American patriotism has deep roots and many branches, from its Indigenous people to recent immigrants. It ranges from George Washington crossing the Delaware to 9/11’s first responders working valiantly. One historic immigrant, John Winthrop, described the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 this way: “We must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.”

At a time when polls show Americans faltering in their trust of one another, the residents of Akron show that the work of liberty goes on.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

Everyone has a God-given ability and right to discern the divine wisdom that guides, helps, and heals.


Viewfinder

Grace Ramey/Daily News/AP
Hundreds attend the Bowling Green Kiwanis Club's 52nd annual Thunderfest on July 1 at the Corvette Museum's amphitheater in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Proceeds from the fundraiser, which included a fireworks show, live music performances, food trucks, inflatables, face painting, and more, go to more than 30 children's organizations in Bowling Green and Warren County.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thank you for joining us today. As you surely know by now, tomorrow is Independence Day in the United States, so your next Daily will arrive on Wednesday, July 5. We’re planning stories about a new green boom in the American South and a portrait of the changing lives of older people in rural China.

More issues

2023
July
03
Monday

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