From Fire to Freedom: A Pledge for Justice, Dignity, and Democracy

In Tricks, by Ellen Hopkins, Seth sits in first class. They touch down sixteen hundred miles to the west. Carl likes Seth on his arm.

In Her Majesty’s Royal Coven, by Juno Dawson, Helena, transphobically calling Theo a thing, says she will grow into a man. Why doesn’t Helena, a fellow witch, know what it is like when hatred stems from a fear of difference? Niamh asks Helena what happened to her.

In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by Victor Hugo, everything that reminds Gringoire of the festival of the day irritates the bitterness of his dramatic misadventure. He is on the point of turning to the Pont Saint-Michel. Avoiding children running around with fire lances and rockets, he falls back to the Pont au Change, where the rabble is admiring the house at the bridge, affixed with three small banners for the king, the dauphin, and the Duke of Austria; along with six little penions portaying six other nobles.

In order to be received among the thieves, Gringoire must prove that he is good for something. Being told he must search the manikin, he tells the king of thieves he’ll search anything the king likes. Watching several thieves erect a gibbet in front of him, he notices that nothing is missing, not even a rope.

Time has caused the staircase of the Notre Dame to disappear. Architects were the ones who threw down the two rows of statues, left the niches empty, cut a new arch in the middle of the central portal, and framed in a heavy door of carved wood beside the arabesques of Biscornette. Inside the edifice, Time wasn't what overthrew the colossus of Saint Christopher and swept away the myriad statues.

After briefly pointing out the greater part of the beauties the Notre Dame possessed in the edifice in the fifteenth century, the narrator describes the view from the summits of its towers. If one were to climb that high, they would see a fine spectacle of Paris spread out on all sides at once. Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries Paris lost more in beauty than it gained in size.

As a young clerk at sixteen years old, Claude Frollo might have held his own in mystical theology, in canonical theology, and scholastic theology. He rendered clear and familiar to himself the vast and tumultuous period of civil and canon law ranging from 618 to 1227 AD. By the age of eighteen, he made his way through the four faculties of liberal arts, arts, languages, and science.

When someone knocks on the door of his study, an older Claude cries “Who’s there?” He goes to open the door when a voice replies, “Your friend, Jacques Coictier.” When he opens the door, both men standing outside are cloaked in long slate-colored robes. Their hands, feet, and eyes are conceled by the thier sleeves, robes, and caps, respectively.

For the July 4th weekend, I spent most of my days trying to stay awake during the blistering week that we have had. I ran out of sodas a day prior, and was going through some serious energy withdrawals. It doesn’t help much when just walking outside is blisteringly hot. It also doesn’t help much when you are living alone, and it’s the first year you don’t even have your mother to call. Maybe this time next year, I’ll have someone to share watching the fireworks through my north facing window with. The scene was pretty spectacular.

I am thinking about the lives taken during the flash floods in Texas. They always used to warn kids not to play in culverts or dry creek beds when I was a kid, because you never knew when a flash flood would hit, and by the time you realized it, it would be too late. Shortly after that, while still counting the bodies of those that couldn’t be rescued, I heard the news that flash flooding also hit the state of New Mexico. We used to get reliable weather reports of flash flood warnings, and I don’t know if that may have been impacted by the reduction in force at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration that is responsible for weather forecasting. It wasn’t a smart move, especially when we are suffering major climate disruption due to the use fossile fuels and their high carbon output.

What also doesn’t help is the reduction of federal subsidies to pay for clean energy alternatives that don’t leave a carbon footprint, like wind and solar, and battery storage backup. It cost close to thirty thousand dollars to install a battery on my home, and I was relying on tax incentives to help bring the price down. Now, I’m not too confident those incentives will be there. Trump’s Big “Butt-Ugly” Bill which got approved by congress is going to do more harm than good, putting more people out of work, kicking people off medicaid, eliminating efforts to turn the tide on our worsening economy. My daughter in Washington state is scared of the impact, and so am I.

Another concern is the Supreme Court’s decision to let states punish people who provide gender affirming medical care to minors at a critical moment in their life. By forcing them through puberty, when it’s a high probability that they will likely transition, they will suffer increased emotional costs and surgical bills, not to mention being ostracized because their bodies developed in a way so not allowing them to participate with the people they belong with to do the things they love. For the minority of people that decide later on that they don’t want to physically transition, it’s as easy as stopping the puberty blockers. Once blockers exit the system, puberty kicks in. There are some who think that puberty blockers can make you sterile. They don’t, otherwise late bloomers would be sterile. Cross-sex hormones most of the time do cause sterilization, and that is a conversation that an 18 year old can have with their doctor on how to prepare for the future.

The worst part of the Supreme Court’s decision is they said that the denial of the treatment is based on age discrimination, not sex discrimination. That paves the way for a federal law passed by congress to get the approval of the Supreme Court, which would extend the suffering to all fifty states, and Marjorie Taylor Greene is already working on it. We can’t have that. The only tool we have at our disposal to stop a federal ban is to elect enough people to at least one of the houses to block it. Better if we can take both.

We can’t count on people to shift their vote from one party to another. The swing voter, as evidenced by this last election, is the registered voter who doesn’t vote. They sit the election out, and whichever party is better able to mobilize its voters wins, with a significant number of people not voting. I get it. It’s not comfortable having to pick between two candidates who don’t completely line up with your values, but if we want democracy to survive, we need to vote.

I am pledging today that I will vote for whichever candidate helps us get to a better world, where truth, dignity, respect, honor, transparency are used to protect our independent autonomy and hep us to eliminate suffering, even if those making more have to pitch in more. Join me in my pledge. Put it in writing, share it with others, and encourage them to do the same. If we want our democracy back, we have to fight for it in the polls, on the streets, in the town halls, and wherever our elected officials show up. And I am for sure not voting for anyone who wants to Make America a Gutter Again.

In a world caught between blistering heat and bitter headlines, where injustice echoes from ancient cathedrals to modern courts, we are reminded that change does not come from comfort—it rises from courage. Whether it’s Seth finding fleeting comfort on Carl’s arm, Theo standing tall in the face of Helena’s hate, or Gringoire forced to prove his worth in a den of thieves, each story urges us to reclaim our power in the face of adversity. When our leaders fail us, our institutions falter, and even the weather betrays us, we still have one undeniable force: our voice, our vote, our values. We don’t need to be perfect—only brave enough to show up, stand up, and speak out. So pledge with me, not just for yourself, but for the world we hope to leave behind—one where justice means something, dignity is non-negotiable, and no one is left fighting alone in the fire.