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Johnson is a United Methodist pastor, the author of "Holding Up Your Corner: Talking About Race in Your Community" (Abingdon Press, 2017) and vice president of the Bridge Alliance, which houses The Fulcrum.

Some months ago, I accepted the challenge posed by Eric Liu to wrestle with the question: "What does it mean to be an engaged American in today's divided political landscape, and how do we restore hope in our country?" Through Liu's Citizen University Civic Seminary I was introduced to civic sermons. These thoughtful proclamations weave together historical texts, current events, and reflections of democracy, patriotism, citizenship and love. This is one in a series of reflections on the evolving of the nation's "civic religion."

For many, who are other-ed, it is difficult to see ourselves in this nation's founding figures like Franklin, Jay, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison and Washington. We, who are other-ed, must strain to discern our voice and our respective stories in this nation's founding documents. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights speak of inalienable rights, shared socio-ethical principles and promise of liberation entitled to us all such is "freedom." The suppression of one's inalienable nature or suspension of constitutional rights forfeits our humanity and is in effect "unfreedom."

Given our nation's current socio-political climate, the time invites each of us to reimagine our responsibility to freedom as choice, cause and covenant because "it's our duty."

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Freedom is a choice that emanates from within.

Samuel Adams in 1776 affirmed, "Our unalterable resolution should be to be free."

Freedom is a condition in which people have the opportunity to speak, act and pursue happiness without unnecessary external restrictions. It means the possibility of contrary choices. Choices like to love or hate vote or abstain ... agree or disagree vehemently. Freedoms such as to assemble or associate are not unconditional, rather they are conditioned by individual choice.

C. Wright Mills provides further elaboration: "Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them and then, the opportunity to choose."

Our choices speak to our earnest commitments. They are in response and obedience to deepest values, greatest expectations and pressing demands revealing our individual and collective character. I concur with the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said, "Fight for things you care about but do it in a way that will lead others to join you."

Freedom is a cause that gives rise to action acts of commitment, defense and advocacy. While the gift of freedom is inalienable, the want of freedom is instinctive. Freedom requires each of us to do something and when injustices exist that could mean fighting. We should fight not merely to be contentious or oppositional, but rather as an imperative to take part; to engage; and struggle with and for. Freedom oftentimes is not to be free, but it's what this country is about.

Of course freedom is at the forefront of the history of our country. The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred in December 1773 at Griffin's Wharf in Boston, where frustrated and angry American colonists felt justified in opposing their experienced oppression. Their protest and looting is revered as the first major act of defiance to British rule over the colonists. It gave rise to a greater cause of resistance against the threat of tyranny and rallied American patriots across the 13 colonies to fight for independence.

And today the fight for freedom continues. Every injustice has awakened more people from their dream of "it's all okay." Each new death at the hand of system enforcers violates our social contract. These unjust fatalities incite a distinctly different visceral reaction. For some people, it was Trayvon Martin. For others Eric Garner or Sandra Bland. Or Charlottesville. Or Ahmaud Arbery. Or George Floyd. Or Bernie Taylor.

For me and countless others, it was Michael Brown. The streets of Ferguson, not unlike Boston, became our civic laboratory, our front lines and sanctuaries in the fight for freedom. Freedom as a cause lit up the minds and hands of founding figures, chattel slaves, abolitionists, suffragists, the civil rights and Black Power resistance fighters and activists, refugees, Dreamers and Black Lives Matter champions.

Current events remind us that democracy is fragile a volatile experiment. Also, this electoral and legislative climate reveals a democratic hallmark the vote is neither fully free or accessible to all. Expressions of political protest signal that many persons and communities are continually disregarded, dehumanized and damned by systems and practices that espouse to protect and to perpetuate liberty; yet do the opposite. Civil rights leader Howard Thurman once directed: "Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive." And that statement deserves to be followed by another Thurman quote. "Often, to be free means the ability to deal with realities of one's own situation so as not to be overcome by them." Freedom is a cause worth fighting for!

Freedom is a covenant, a binding promise of far-reaching importance to relations between individuals, groups and nations. It has social, legal, religious and other aspects. Freedom is a divine imperative and cornerstone of our social contract that draws each of us into reflection, service, and account with and for one another. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "We ought to access our own bias, partisan politics, systemic participation and privileged patronage that we often note in others." In other words, "Every issue that threatens freedom is not our fault, but they remain our fight!"

Freedom is a covenant that invites collective embodiment and agreement requiring mutual sacrifice. An understanding that it's each of our duties. "It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains."

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Freedom is part of our civic religion - The Fulcrum

May 21, 2021: Seventy-nine percent (79%) of government workers voted in the 2020 presidential election. According to Census Bureau figures, thats higher than the total for those who work in the private sector or are not working.[1]

Among the self-employed, 69% cast a ballot. Thats similar to the 68% who work for a private-sector company. As for those retired or not in the workforce for other reasons, 64% voted. Just 58% of the unemployed cast a ballot.[1]

Each weekday, Scott Rasmussens Number of the Day explores interesting and newsworthy topics at the intersection of culture, politics and technology. Columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author. Scott Rasmussens Number of the Day is published by Ballotpedia weekdays at 9 a.m. Eastern. Columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author. Scott Rasmussen is founder and president of the Rasmussen Media Group. He is the author of Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System, In Search of Self-Governance, and The Peoples Money: How Voters Will Balance the Budget and Eliminate the Federal Debt. Read Scott Rasmussens Reports More Here.

Read more at Newsmax 2021 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

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79 Percent of Government Employees Voted in Election 2020 | News Talk WBAP-AM - WBAP News/Talk

At 46, David Harbour is itching to become a first-time dad. But his new wife, Lily Allen, is already a mom of two and a friend says she's not quite ready to grow their family just yet.

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"Lily's pregnancies weren't easy, so it's no surprise she's reluctant," the friend says of the songstress, 36, who shares daughters Ethel, 9, and Marnie, 8, with ex-hubby Sam Cooper and has talked openly about her struggle with postpartum depression.

However, "she knows David is eager to move things along." The Stranger Things star is an amazing stepdad, so for the pop performer, "it's not a question of if but when," continues the pal, noting that the couple only tied the knot last September.

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"Lily just feels there's no rush to have a kid. But David doesn't want to wait until he's 50. He wants to get busy making babies ASAP!" said the insider.

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Source: Lily Allen/Instagram

The two got married at the Graceland Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas and it was reported that the couple only managed to secure a marriage license a day before the event.

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The newlyweds later confirmed the marriage on Instagram by posting a series of pictures from the intimate affair which included an Elvis Persley impersonator.

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Harbor and Allen were first linked in January 2019 after they attended the BAFTA Tea Party together. They were then spotted together in August that year on the set of Harbour's film Black Widow in London and were seen heading into the SNL afterparty after the actor's hosting gig that October.

The duo made their red carpet debut together at the 2020 Screen Actors Guild Awards.

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Baby Debate: Lily Allen 'Reluctant' To Expand Her Family While Husband David Harbour Is Ready To Be A Dad, Reveals Friend - OK!

As the city reawakens from the long pandemic, some of the most iconic spots are now open for business.

Tourists flocked to Central Park Thursday. For some, a stop at the nearby Plaza Hotel was once again part of the plan.

The beloved landmark on Fifth Avenue and Central Park South has been a city staple since 1907.

For the first time since the COVID-19 shutdown, patrons like Alexis Stewart and the ladies in her family wee allowed back inside. They were sure to enjoy an Eloise Tea Party at the famed Palm Court.

I just love spending time with my family and it feels like home, said Stewart.

The lavish venue is stocked with supplies of tea and champagne, even if a 2021 hotel experience requires social distancing and a reservation.

Plaza Hotel Managing Director George Cozonis said the reopening is symbolic.

New York is finally reopen and beginning to welcome guests again from around the country and around the world, said Cozonis. We felt until the Plaza reopens we cant say New York is reopened.

As more hotels follow the Plazas lead, COVID impacts on tourism will change.

The numbers of visitors to the city plummeted from a high of 66 million in 2019 to just 23 million in 2020.

With that came 200,000 jobs lost.

To aid in recovery, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an executive order that eliminated a nearly six percent hotel room occupancy tax rate for three months, starting June 1.

According to Vijay Dandapani, the CEO of the Hotel Association of New York City, this incentive allows hotels to lower the cost of their rooms, urging customers to return.

5.875% is nothing to sneeze at. Its a $200 rate, youre looking at $12 bucks you save on a single night.

Dandapani says hotels are still only operating at around 40% capacity.

Plus, international travel restrictions remain in place as well as a decrease in business and convention travel.

Even so, the citys economy is slowly moving in a profitable path.

Our hotels are ready to work again and most importantly [in a] safe, clean and welcoming city, said Dandapani.

Health and safety of guests and employees will remain a priority. And instead of large galas, for now, the Plaza expects to see smaller, more intimate gatherings.

The goal is to get back to 100% capacity by the popular holiday season.

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Tourism returns to NYC much to the delight of the hospitality industry - WPIX 11 New York

To get into the V&As blockbuster about the influence of Alice, I had to stand at a security gate for ages, waiting to be called forward into the silent museum. It was a tiny bit Kafkaesque. Then I remembered Kafka was probably influenced by Carroll so it was in fact Carrollesque. Both Carroll and Kafka create slippery, unstable realities in which hapless characters face menacing trials. They both define our world but one was a modernist and the other a 19th-century don. This is the question this hugely enjoyable and thought-provoking exhibition raises: how did a Victorian childrens author create one of the myths that sum up the modern condition?

Its huge fun, of course, from the acid colours of a 1967 poster of the Cheshire Cat (with Jefferson Airplanes Grace Slick singing White Rabbit nearby, natch), to Heston Blumenthals recipe for mock turtle soup, one preparatory part of which takes, he says, about 67 hours. But what really plunged me down the rabbit hole was a film by artist Mariele Neudecker revealing that Cern has a physics experiment going on that it calls Alice A Large Ion Collider Experiment. This is a nice literary crossover, as the experiment frees quarks from their bonds quarks being a word invented by James Joyce, whose nonsense masterpiece Finnegans Wake is a Carroll homage. From psychedelia to avant garde cuisine to quantum physics, Alice has come to symbolise how, in Slicks words, logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead.

This permanent revolution began more than 150 years ago with an Oxford mathematician telling a story to a friends children. Picture yourself on a boat on a river. Curiouser and Curiouser might be a glib romp if it wasnt so securely anchored in the Victorian world of Lewis Carroll himself or rather Charles Dodgson, lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church, pioneering photographer and friend of the college dean, Henry Liddell. The puns and (il)logic games that permeate his writings, the show reveals, go back to his own childhood: a school report describes the young Dodgsons constant, compulsive punning as if it were a tic. His mathematical research, too, took him through the looking glass, as we see in a scribbled page of Fallacies in which he gleefully demonstrates false syllogisms in algebra. The wit and weirdness of Carrolls creations comes from these obsessions with the pitfalls of language and logic: one false word and youre in another reality. When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean, as Humpty Dumpty tells Alice.

The surrealists adopted Alice as a document of psychological mayhem. Theres a letter here from the British surrealist Eileen Agar about why Carroll was a godfather of this movement that wanted to unleash the unconscious. Max Ernsts collage of a Victorian railway carriage compartment in which a bird-headed man is observed by the Great Sphinx appears to be on a riff of one of John Tenniels illustrations in Through the Looking Glass, which shows a man in a paper suit (his face that of Benjamin Disraeli) sitting opposite Alice, while she is closely observed by a porter with binoculars. If there was any doubt that Ernst is thinking of Carroll here, its removed by his painting called Alice in 1941, in which her grown-up body is encrusted with red melting rocks in a decomposing goo.

Voyeurism and nudity here is a door the exhibition doesnt want to open. It has Dodgsons haunting portrait of Alice Liddell in profile, but keeps his other photographs of children to a minimum. He was an enthusiastic photographer of girls.

Yet the V&A makes a powerful case for Carroll as an overwhelmingly positive influence on the world. It stresses Alice Liddells own agency first as an assertive child who bullied him to write down his story about her, then as a woman growing up among artists, tutored by John Ruskin and posing for Julia Margaret Cameron. We see how her hugely publicised visit to America in 1932 got Hollywood interested in Alice. Disneys creation of a pop culture Alice is explored in detail but so are more eclectic versions, such as Jan vankmajers Freudian puppet nightmare and Jonathan Millers black and white 1966 vision with Ravi Shankar on sitar.

Alice is revealed here to be so universal, so multifarious in modern culture that pinning down the Mad Hatters tea party or Jabberwocky to one interpretation, one ide fixe is futile. And to understand that you need to go back to its Victorian creators, plural. For the icon that is Alice was a collaborative creation. If you want to accuse anyone of creating a fetish blame Tenniel, the original illustrator of the Alice books.

Tenniel was already a celebrated political cartoonist. Their close working relationship is set out here. When Tenniel said a chapter of Through the Looking Glass called A Wasp in a Wig was too dull to illustrate, Carroll removed it. The artists sketches and trial pulls of the books plates are brilliant. Theres a study for the corkscrew nose of a Slithy Tove, illustrating Humpty Dumptys explication of the nonsense poem Jabberwocky: an image of mutating, nonsense nature that must have made contemporaries think of Mr Darwins dangerous ideas.

Curiousest of all, Tenniels picture of Alice climbing on to the mantlepiece and through the mirror above it, which melts like mist, proves there was no surrealist dream, no cinematic special effect, these Victorians didnt anticipate. The power of Tenniels designs is their confident realism. Perfectly matching the way Carrolls prose is clear yet creates delirium, Tenniel firmly draws the impossible.

Or is it all too possible? Tenniel himself, in his day job, used Wonderland as a satirical weapon, mocking contemporary politics in a Punch cartoon captioned Alice in Blunderland. Its a move many have made since, from a 1911 suffragette play called Alice in Ganderland to a recent Martin Rowson from the Guardian in which Theresa May says: Why, sometimes Ive tried to believe six impossible things before Brexit.

Perhaps Wonderland really is the landscape we negotiate, changing shape like Alice as we struggle to adapt to the latest dream of the Red King. In the end, this delightfully unhinged journey offers no answers and ties itself to no theory. It just leaves you marvelling at how a childrens bestseller from the Victorian age defined our modern sense of lifes oddness in a way matched only by far less accessible modernist texts such as The Trial, Finnegans Wake or Endgame. There must have been something in the tea. See this and feed your head.

Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser is at V&A, London, from 22 May.

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Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser review a wonderful tumble down the rabbit hole - The Guardian