By Deanne Stillman
Did you notice that the new DNC ad with the Beyonce song “Freedom” begins with wild horses running across the frame? And right into the American story? I don’t know if this is exactly what was on the creators’ minds as they made it, but that’s how a lot of things work – via instinct – and there really was no other way to begin. You see, this is the horse we rode in on, right where it all started. America was born in hoofsparks with Paul Revere’s ride, and we all know this in our hearts. But there’s a secret part to this tale. As I write in my book Mustang the horse had a name, and it was Brown Beauty. She had wild horse bloodlines; “her forebears included Spanish horses that had disembarked on the Carolina banks as the conquest began. When Revere’s ride was over, the mare was seized by a British soldier, who mounted her and galloped away. The horse collapsed and died later that night – spent – after launching the war for independence.”
The ride was commemorated in the famous poem by John Wadsworth Longfellow, entitled “Paul Revere’s Ride,” memorized and recited by many an elementary school student over the years, including me. Now, as Veteran’s Day approaches (a week after the election!), we are repeating that act – and in the way that fate has dictated. The updated call is: “The fascists are coming! The fascists are coming!” and a tidal wave from California is sweeping the country – west to east this time - and Oakland-born and raised Kamala Harris is leading the charge. If she wins, she’ll be the third President from California after Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan (himself Illinois-born), an emissary from the Golden State and its beaches and mountains and deserts – and yes, Hollywood, where the dream is reiterated every day and every which way and sent out to the world as a beacon. As California goes, someone once said, so goes the nation, and its promise of rebirth and starting over is now America’s.
Strange as it may sound, there are positive comparisons to be made between Nixon, Reagan, and Harris, and they all have to do with hailing from the Golden State. This always comes as a shock to Democrats, but it was Richard Nixon who signed our great acts of environmental and wildlife protection into law (and which Trump and other Republicans seek to unravel); when he signed the Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act in 1971, he quoted Thoreau in the process. “We need the tonic of wildness,” he said, as I reported here, truly an astonishing if little-known moment in American history. Also in 1971, Ronald Reagan ushered in the first law protecting mountain lions when he was governor of California, signing a moratorium on the sport hunting of cougars, honoring what’s wild, and making sure this magnificent animal did not head off the stage - in that manner, at least.
Kamala Harris will undoubtedly continue the policies of Joe Biden when it comes to protecting the land, sea, air, and creatures great and small. “Many other fundamental freedoms are at stake,” Harris said in her inauguration acceptance speech, adding to her comments about reproductive rights. Those include “the freedom to breathe clean air, and drink clean water, and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.” I think it’s safe to say that Harris will preserve President Biden’s urgent 30 x 30 plan, set forth in an executive order “to conserve at least 30 percent of U.S. lands and freshwater and 30 percent of U.S. ocean areas by 2030.”
Perhaps it’s being from California that has engendered an affinity for what sustains us and nurtures the American spirit (although it must be acknowledged that under Reagan, Interior Department Secretary James Watt began the assault on the environment that the GOP continues today). After all, we are nothing without our wide open space, and all that flourishes there. It was the unfettered territory of California and neighboring zones that urged pilgrims to “Go West, young whoever you are,” if I may update the call. “Start over. Begin anew.” Harris’s mother did just that, coming from India to San Francisco when she was nineteen; she staked her claim in the Golden State, and after she got married and had two daughters, she told them that they could follow their dreams and that nothing could stop them. That call to freedom continues to stir and prevail, regardless of the turmoil that has been roiling the country, as many newcomers become citizens every year, passing a rigorous civics test for which many who are born in the USA are ill-prepared.
Peggy Noonan recently accused Democrats of theft, writing in the Wall Street Journal that the party has ripped off the concept of freedom from the GOP as if freedom can be owned. Well, she’s partially correct. If politics is a game of Capture the Flag, Democrats have seized it – yes, it’s still there! Just like in the anthem! - and are running with it down the field, blocking everyone in the way, and soon to hit the end zone. But the truth is we have had the flag all along.
Personally, I’ve carried the Constitution in my purse for years. Like many of my fellows, I have an abiding faith in personal rights. You never know when you’re gonna get pulled over by cops on the freeway for some infraction, or not even. And I have been. Upon one occasion, I even rolled out the refrain, “But officer, how come the other guy didn’t get a ticket?” – which, of course, had nothing to do with personal rights (other than exercising the First Amendment), but I just liked asking that question and it was a thrill to join the crowd.
On a more serious note, I see the flag everywhere I go. I’m not talking about what’s on poles in front yards or at car dealerships above signs for Bob’s Buick, although that’s part of it. Not everyone who flies the flag has evil intent. But plenty of folks are not flying the flag in a visible way. They are living it – or trying to - and I’ve witnessed how they strive for the American Dream, have desired its promise, been thwarted by its failure, and try and try again. They have taken what’s in our founding documents to heart and sometimes quote it like scripture. Do you know how many times the word “freedom” appears on those pages? I don’t, but it’s a lot, and I don’t think you’ll find it in the origin stories of many other countries. There are far too few people who realize how deep this engagement goes and how deeply it resonates, and as I’ve seen it playing out in the lives of certain individuals, I’ve felt compelled to tell their stories. In my book Twentynine Palms, I wrote about two girls from military families who were killed in a sexual war zone on the home front and whose bodies were left on the field by Marines. I also recounted the efforts of their families and other members of the military to reclaim them.
One of these veterans testified at personal risk in the trial of the Marine who killed the girls - against a compadre - and I spoke with him after he was escorted out of the courtroom by a witness advocate and on his way to the airport so he could go right back to Tulsa, where he worked in shipping at Sears. “Although he had gotten time off to testify,” I wrote, “it was just for one day. He had not wanted to use up one of his vacation days to stay overnight in Victorville because his wife was nine months, two and a half weeks pregnant, obviously due at any moment. He wanted to use whatever extra time he had to be with her and his new baby, even if it meant taking three flights home instead of the two if he had waited until the following day to travel. And he was still not feeling well. ‘I have Gulf War syndrome,’ he told me as he looked away, as if in shame. ‘I get the shakes.’”
In my book Blood Brothers, about Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley in the Wild West Show, I wrote about how Sitting Bull was incorrectly “blamed” for killing Custer at the Little Bighorn and became Public Enemy Number One, leading to his vilification and exile, followed by his eventual return and unlikely alliance with Buffalo Bill as a superstar, and subsequently his assassination. After a book talk at the library in Cody, Wyoming, the town that Buffalo Bill had founded, a woman approached me after everyone else had left. She appeared to be embarrassed or ashamed, and she whispered a confession. “I had no idea that Sitting Bull didn’t kill Custer,” she said. “That’s what they told me in school. Thank you.”
And then she left, heading back out into a blizzard as the library closed and turned off the lights. It was one of the most astonishing experiences I’ve ever had at a book talk (and I’ve heard some mind-blowing revelations, such as the time a cowboy apologized to me for taking part in the brutal and ongoing roundups of wild horses, thus contributing to their eradication). For a stranger to admit that her personal apple cart had just been overturned took a great deal of courage, and I’ve come to believe that libraries are a kind of church, serving as a space where people convene and exchange stories. And that’s what holds us together in something that’s larger than ourselves – our amazing and complicated and heroic and tragic American narrative - and it’s not surprising that libraries are under siege in Republican strongholds. (You can read the full account of this experience here) Suffice it to say that there’s a hunger for the untold parts of the national story; people may not know it until they hear them – and are perhaps unsettled when they do - but in my experience, they are not turning away. The time has come.
As the moment of our Presidential election approaches, along with Veteran’s Day a week later, the fall is shaping up to be a season of bountiful harvest. When President Biden beat Trump in 2020, there were spontaneous celebrations from the North Pole to Pittsburgh to Paris. I’ll never forget the Native American man in Albuquerque who jumped out of his car amid a profusion of vehicles and honking and music and busted out an impromptu victory dance. The same will happen with a Harris/Walz triumph, only bigger and louder, with pow-wows, jigs, backflips en masse, and the wildest end-zone stepping that we’ve ever seen. Then a week later, flag-draped horses will parade down Main Street in honor of those who have served in the military or are now doing so. We must be mindful of the spirit of that day – and hopefully, by then, we will have not just picked up Paul Revere’s lantern but beat back the fascists on our doorstep. And let’s not forget the noble, four-legged with the mane and tail who carried us across the finish line, her historical descendants now out there running wild and free for the rest of us. We see them at the very beginning of the new campaign ad for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, who have just saddled up and hit the trail.
FROM PAUL REVERE’S RIDE by John Wadsworth Longfellow
A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
