Salem in Unison Say’s of Discrimination: “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!”

It’s a community’s station and stance in how it supports all of its residents that in the end says a lot about how it will endure! Not only on the pages of history but also in the hearts of its people and the entire nation!

Just think for a moment if you will about some of the communities throughout our own nation and how history depicts them as being trend setters, ground breakers and even historically notable centers of example for an entire world. One of the things that always stand out is how each city, town and borough takes some stand clearly setting it apart from others who are more reticent and perhaps a bit slower in shifting themselves forward on the social scale of advancement.

Boston is one such a place!

In the earliest days of our nations founding Boston was a community where its people took a stand against what it then saw as an injustice to its sovereign rights to its independence and the well being of its people! This is one of the reasons that the greatest power at that time which was of course Britain and King George III began its military intervention right here!

This may just be one of the reasons that the current world crisis unfolding in the Eastern nation of Ukraine now enduring the military influx of troops from its neighbor Russia seems to set off a moral compass residing in the hearts of American leaders if not also all of the American people! We do have our own experience in such matters as many nations unfortunately do!

Transit your thoughts to the wonderful city of Philadelphia Pennsylvania where as those early years of our nation continued to unfold, those daring revolutionaries who would one day be embraced as being our founding fathers undertook the arduous task of drafting the maps that would inevitably become the very principles through which the United States continues to define itself to this day! In the then late 1700’s Philadelphia had the eyes of en entire world focused on its shining soulful lights because it was taking a stand for what they all saw as the right thing to do instead of what may have been the safer thing to do!

Take the example of the civil rights struggles of the 1960’s for instance, the advent of the AIDS crisis of the late 1980’s through the 1990’s and how these periods as others served to forever change the public’s attitude relating to everything from basic human rights to emerging open discussions relating to safer sex and the now emerging battle and recognition of how people view their own principles relating to what they see as the sanctity of marriage.  

Cross the world and advance that inner time machine that resides in your minds to that nation of Russia in the year 1917 when it endured its own revolution against a ruling power that many then saw as being un-endurable any longer. Their people were starving and they had been thrust into the throws of a world at war at a time when they could hardly begin to even understand the why’s associated with such a struggle let alone to condone their leader’s commitment toward this same struggle. The heightened tensions and the political torque straining Moscow in those years proved to be too much and as we all know, powers changed for a long time to come and would alter the fabric of the entire world as a result!

This same sort of social and national map-making in the tapestry of humankind can be transposed across many nations and many of the social policies that affect countless lives and the well being of everyone from children to every aged soul! From China to South America, from Western Asia to mainstream Europe, everywhere has its example of this spirit of a shifting of the social fabric of life in so many ways.

Now yet again, the world witnesses another community standing up in a united front in what they insist must be a collective posit response to decent and due just behavior relating to the matter of discrimination against others in its midst!

Salem’s Mayor Kimberly Driscoll rising in a show of united support including the Salem City Council, as well as other representations from its people, signed a “Non-Discrimination Ordinance” into Law! Marking the occasion she followed her signing by commenting that:

“Salem is a City that welcomes all people who visit, live, and work in our community – no matter who they are…There are no second class citizens in Salem!” - Mayor Kimberly Driscoll

In a current world that in many ways continues to appear to be spiraling out of control, where segmented representations of some religious devotees of extremist sentiments choose to express themselves through acts of violence and sometimes even worse, in a world if not also in our own nation where some choose to continue to try and segregate others in their midst by attempting to attach these “others” to laws designed to set them apart from the collective family of humankind, there are souls willing to stand up and shout out that “enough is enough!”

The Mayor and the good people of Salem are such spirited souls!

Not that Salem doesn’t have its own history in the roots of a period of discrimination against those it once saw as being a threat simply for what it at the time mistakenly and irrationally perceived as some people’s beliefs gone wild at the time! Of course this all refers to the infamous Salem Witch Trials, the ever presence for and of which the City of Salem Massachusetts will always be associated, is now being used as a teaching tool for the entire world to remember that extremism in belief can and does carry a terrible price!

I for one take my hat off and bow my head in gratitude to Mayor Kimberly Driscoll, to the City Council, to all of the groups and all the representations throughout who dared to speak and who stood up and added together their collective voices all shouting in unison that “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!”

This is the sort of spirit that I continue to see in the City of Salem Massachusetts!

Love, light and the brightest of blessings to all in Salem and elsewhere!

WD Allan