The Lehigh County Board of Commissioners lost part of its soul when Jon Irons resigned.
Now the remaining commissioners must select a replacement. They must select a substitute that comports with Iron’s views and those 34,000 Lehigh County citizens who cast their votes for him. To do less is to effectively disenfranchise them.
Irons had the courage to speak and act outside the box. This young man flipped the usual script, teaching me, the old man, how to think differently. He taught that bold ideas begin first by simply saying them, out loud, in public, bucking the odds, against the grain — battling the unrelenting abuse conventionalism heaps upon those who color outside the lines. Irons kept his crayons always at the ready.
By interrogating longstanding opinions, Irons stretched our intellectual borders, inviting us to imagine a better world. So what’s wrong with thinking, about debating, about criticizing the status quo? Wasn’t the American Revolution a gigantic question mark, rebuking the tyrannical abuses of a king? Irons had the courage to question the tyranny now unleashed upon our land by one man and his obsequious acolytes.
Irons initiated discussion about “open borders” and about compassion for those seeking to enter our nation. Once upon a time, borders were open, at least before imperialist fantasies of “manifest destiny” found the U.S. appropriating lands populated since ancient times by the very peoples we now shut out or deport. As the proud grandchild of four Italian immigrants, I reject treatment of them then and newcomers now as the dreaded “other.”
Irons called for no more masked men on streets of America terrorizing people. He valiantly opposed the graphic hatefulness too many of us cowardly accept in stride: killing of fellow human beings on our streets, their blood staining our Constitution, rendering its truths indecipherable.
Irons conducted learning sessions to teach people how to oppose Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and not end up beaten, arrested or dead. He argued that mentally ill inmates should not be warehoused in the shadows of solitary confinement in our jail, their inhumane “treatment” in concrete boxes sealed with steel bars. Irons saw the whites of their eyes, and got emotionally proximate to their undignified plight in a cruel system. Irons felt their pain and championed their cause through relentless advocacy against a frequently heartless bureaucracy.
Irons fought the fascism and oppression of a government commandeered by a president who by fiat ordered the literal explosion of scores of poor fishermen on the open seas with no due process and zero evidence of drug trafficking. Or who bombed sweet, innocent school children in Iran in a war seemingly entered into to distract from his long-term friendship with a horrible child molester. Or assaults upon our media and history to “thought control” our people. Irons courageously called for the obvious: an ordinance against fascism.
Irons refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and was berated by those who think freedom means that they determine what others should be permitted to think and say and do. Attacks for his refusal conjured up McCarthyites forcing teachers to resign in Philadelphia for refusing an oath, or Japanese-American citizens walking hand-in-hand with their children into internment camps, or Black students beaten for sitting at lunch counters.
Irons made me consider this pledge question much more deeply. After mindlessly standing for the pledge my whole life — in grade school, at ceremonies, during government meetings and the like — what exactly was I pledging to?
Here’s the original pledge, written in just two hours, in 1892: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands—one nation indivisible—with liberty and justice for all.”
Irons got me to thinking from a different angle: Do we truly have “liberty and justice for all,” or are these just words robotically recited to get us all goose-bumpy at parades?
Here’s my advice to whoever replaces him:
Like Irons, stay seated during the pledge, if you want. Or stand. That’s your call. But, like Irons, stand strong for what is right and just. He always did. Without that, the pledge is just hollow words.
This is a contributed opinion column. Ettore Angelo is a criminal defense attorney in the Lehigh Valley. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author(s), and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication. For more details on commentaries, read our guide to guest opinions at themorningcall.com/opinions.