This morning I woke up with the Beatles Song, Black Bird in my mind. The lyrics are :
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life You were only waiting for this moment to arise
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life You were only waiting for this moment to be free
Blackbird fly, blackbird fly
Into the light of a dark black night Blackbird fly, blackbird fly
Into the light of a dark black night Blackbird singing in the dead of night…
Paul McCartney said that he was inspired to write the song Black Bird while reading a newspaper account of U.S. race riots in mid-1968 and wrote this song as a metaphor of the struggle for the black civil rights. [1]
According to Scientific American, June 1968, the riots of the time were a ‘prepolitical’ form of collective action, rather than a series of senseless outbreaks of blind rage. ‘Rioting evolves as a form of collective pressure or protest where large numbers of people are crowded and alienated together, sharing a common fate that they no longer accept as necessary.’ [2]
In 2020 as the Coronavirus pandemic sweeps the globe, ironically there are two forms of political threats being played out, which involve economics and public health. In the U.S. hundreds of people have been supported by President Donald Trump as they protested in cities across America against Coronavirus lock downs as resentment grows against the crippling economic cost of confinement.
The second is probably more dangerous and is related to free speech and open discourse concerning human welfare and well being. The firing of Navy Capt. Brett Crozier for the crime of raising alarm bells over the spreading viral risk to the sailors under his command on the USS Theodore Roosevelt is among the most vivid examples of a metastasising trend of silencing and punishing speech, ostensibly to protect public health and order.
Emergencies have always been used as justifications to curb free speech in the name of keeping secrets, suppressing disloyalty, and aiding the war effort. While extreme measures may now seem warranted and urgent to help halt the contagion, a series of trends afoot pose serious risks for open expression, portending threats that are likely to endure long after the lockdown has lifted.
And many of these measures have less to do with public health than they do with protecting political and institutional reputations, and with trying to retake control of the devastating narrative of a pandemic that has fed on human failures of anticipation, preparation, and mobilisation. The fact that Crozier’s disclosures were an act of conscience was made plain as hundreds of sailors cheered and chanted while he left his ship for the last time, applauding him for putting his career on the line to speak out for their safety. [3]
As the Black Bird song says, “all your life you were waiting for this moment to arise, all your life you were waiting for this moment to be free”. It will be interesting to witness in coming days, weeks and months as rules of confinement are relaxed how the balance of economy and public health plays out and who is most impacted.
Life is in the balance right now and each one of us is responsible for making choices that would prosper a more equitable and healthy world. Whether it means to continue to self isolate and follow health experts advice or to be honest if you are using the CovidSafe App, it will take acts of consciousness to rise up and be free against increasingly authoritarian settings.
[1] https://www.songfacts.com/facts/the-beatles/blackbird
[2] https://www.sbs.com.au/news/let-us-work-us-protesters-demand-end-to-coronavirus-lockdowns
[3] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/13/governments-coronavirus-pandemic-civil-liberties/