Who Was Marjory Stoneman Douglas?

Review by Bill Doughty

Regrettably, "Marjory Stoneman Douglas" High School will always be remembered the way "Sandyhook" and "Columbine" are remembered – places of learning devastated by murderous gunfire. Students at MSD High School, "the Eagles," are demonstrating resilience and redirecting their anger and grief toward positive change.


So who was Marjory Stoneman Douglas?

Seventy-one years ago Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1890-1998), newspaper journalist and freelance writer, wrote "The Everglades: River of Grass" (Pineapple Press, 1947).

The book is a fascinating history of "the great pointed paw of Florida," describing its nature, peoples, history of conquest, and challenges in the face of development and destruction of the Everglades.

Fellow writer John Hersey, author of "Hiroshima," called Stoneman Douglas's description of the Everglades "an unearthliness, a strong rhythm, a compactness of natural imagery that is dazzling, and, above all an organization and discipline that approaches poetic form."
Here's an example of her poetry in prose:

"The water moves. The saw grass, pale green to deep-brown ripeness, stands rigid. It is moved only in sluggish rollings by the vast push of the winds across it. Over its endless acres here and there the shadows of the dazzling clouds quicken and slide, purple-brown, plum-brown, mauve-brown, rust-brown, bronze. The bristling, blossoming tops do not bend easily like standing grain. They do not even in their own growth curve all one way but stand in edged clumps, curving against each other, all the massed curving blades making millions of fine arching lines that at a little distance merge to a huge expanse of brown wires or bristles or, farther beyond, to deep-piled plush. At the horizon they become velvet. The line they make is an edge of velvet against the infinite blue, the blue-and-white, the clear fine primrose yellow, the burning brass and crimson, the molten silver, the deepening hyacinth sky. The clear burning light of the sun pours daylong into the saw grass and is lost there, soaked up, never given back. Only the water flashes and glints. The grass yields nothing."

Science meets art in her writing, much like Rachel Carson, as Stoneman Douglas paints with her words.

Baby bald eagle in the Everglades. (National Park Service)

She describes the destruction of birds, killed out of greed for their feathers, their plumes. At sunset, like birds everywhere, birds of the Everglades would return "in their white thousands and tens of thousands, with the sounds of great stiff still banners ... rivers of birds pouring against the sunset back to the rookeries ... down to the right next in the clamor and squawking and curious yelping, and queer deep grunting of the fuzzy open-beaked hungry young."

"When the sun rose the ethereal whiteness of the plumed parent birds shone like frost against the blue, blue sky. They  were white in the nights under the moon, or to the torches and firepans of the men with clubs in canoes slipping along behind the lights. A few men with clubs or shotguns rising suddenly by those low rookeries could kill and scalp hundreds of birds in a night. By morning the bloody bodies would be drawing the buzzards and alligators. The great black Florida crows that shed the light like water from their feathers would clean out the dying young. Ants in long lines as fine as pepper would carry off the rotting pieces of their bones."

White egret (Photo courtesy National Park Service)

In "The Everglades: River of Grass" Stoneman Douglas takes us through millennia – Cretaceous, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene – to more recent history of the Age of Exploration and Conquest, through the Civil War and into the first half of the 20th century.
"History," she writes, "the recorded time of the earth and of man, is in itself something like a river."

So is childhood – or a journey through high school.

We learn about colorful characters in Florida's history, including Billy Bowlegs, King Carlos, Juan Ortiz, Juan Ponce de Leon, Hernando De Soto, Col. Zachary Taylor, Maj. Francis Dade, Andrew Jackson (who waged war against the indigenous people 200 years ago, 1817-1818), Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, and Osceola.

Osceola

Osceola would become a "patriot and warrior" hero who was to "epitomize for future history the highhanded injustice" of captivity, a symbol in the first half of the 1800s to  those, including Indians and escaped slaves, who fought for freedom and righteousness. A town, lake, county, many individuals, and even a species of snake were named after him. So were several U.S. Navy vessels, including a gunboat during the Civil War, harbor tug and seagoing tug #47, all called Osceola.

Stoneman Douglas brings the imagery of the sea into her writing, and she seems to have a special affinity to the tough and gritty sailors who ventured aboard wooden ships and into the unknown.

"These were not the men of the Mediterranean galleys, the long narrow ships that went mincingly on the tideless inner sea, from headland to known headland, by the banked oars of slaves. These were free men of that limitless, turbulent ocean, the men of the bucking, hardy cargo carriers, the round ships, broad of bow and beam, that thrashed forward only before the wind in their single, clumsy square sails. They came about only by a miracle and could hardly beat to windward at all. Many a ship and crew was blown far out into the unknown and disappeared under the unturning, savage, westgoing wind. Not that that mattered. There were men in every port eager to follow them. Their concern was not safety. Their concern was going out. Sailing. Finding out. Seeing. Never mind the coming back."

Seagoing tug USS Osceola

We see how early explorers, Spanish Catholic crusaders, and English traders fought over the "paw" of Florida and subjugation of the people there. 
The U.S. Navy, under USS Flirt and Fort Flirt, played an important role in Florida's early history, protecting against piracy and bootlegging and eventually in the Civil War fighting against "the accepted evil of slavery."
Admiral David Porter – and later his son David Dixon Porter – protected Florida, commercial trade and the United States on both sides of the peninsula.
Stoneman Douglas offers a meticulous description of the lives of the earliest residents of the Everglades, the indigenous "Indians": Calusa, Mayaimi, Tekesta, Talasi, Yochi, Tallahasee and others. Eventually they would be lumped together under a catch-all name: Seminole.

Calusa

By the mid 18th century the original people of the Everglades had disappeared. "Only the scattered Calusas were left, ranging throughout the area. It has been repeated often that after 1763 they left for Cuba en masse. I do not believe that there was ever a time when the Glades were empty of villages," Stoneman Douglas concludes.

"They had great courage. They came of people who had lived hard and savage lives and their children were not weakened," she writes.

The author was successful in convincing people to conserve and preserve much of the precious Everglades. In December 1947, the year her book was published, President Truman dedicated the Everglades National Park, helping people realize the life-giving value of the ecosystem – and the dangers of draining the water, leading to fires and rising salt water.

"Unless the people will act the fires will come again. Overdrainage will go on. The soil will shrink and burn and be wasted and destroyed in a continuing ruin. The salt will lie in wait. Yet the springs of fine water had flowed again. The balance still existed between the forces of life and of death. There is a balance in man also, one which has set against his greed and his inertia and his foolishness; his courage, his will, his ability slowly and painfully to learn, and to work together."

The Courage... the will... the "ability slowly and painfully to learn, and to work together."

Her legacy lives on.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School family – students, teachers and loved ones – are taking a stand on behalf of those who were killed by promoting common sense gun safety to prevent more tragedies. Their school's namesake channeled her passion toward positive change on behalf of something she deeply loved too, part of a resilient ecosystem that supports life.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas

Enough Marches

Washington and Lafayette with the militia at Valley Forge. (Lib. of Congress)

Review by Bill Doughty

Fear of a standing army and navy prompted the Framers to draft the stilted wording and punctuation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution that called for citizens to arm themselves as part of civilian "well regulated militia." But after the Revolutionary War, when members of the militia were not compensated for their service, officers threatened to mutiny and march on Washington D.C. The mutiny was put down by George Washington himself. That was in March 1783 – 285 years ago this month.

Michael Waldman recounts the story in "The Second Amendment: A Biography" (Simon & Schuster, 2014), a good primer for anyone interested in how fear and paranoia of tyranny brought on a passion for firearms in the United States.

Waldman explores the meanings of "the right of the people," "the security of a free state," and "militia" in what it means to keep and bear arms and not infringing on that right.

Fear and paranoia have been potent weapons for decades in preventing legislation for sensible gun laws, according to Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly, authors of "Enough: Our Fight to Keep America Safe from Gun Violence" (Scribner, 2014), a personal but clear-eyed look at the issue.

Senator John McCain and General Stanley McChrystal both endorsed their book, with McChrystal calling the authors, "inspiring voices for responsibility. We need to listen."

Giffords and Kelly show how  "wannabe military" militia  try to look the part, speak in acronyms to sound cool, and align themselves with fundamentalist, white supremacist survivalists who, like the National Rifle Association, pose a real threat to society. The NRA is dangerous to citizens when they attack background checks, prohibit research into gun violence, and prevent voting on restrictions on armor-piercing bullets, ultra-capacity magazines, and assault-style military grade weapons, according to the authors.

Astronaut Capt. Kelly recounts his time in the Navy and having to lock his handgun in the Yokosuka base armory while he was stationed aboard USS Midway in 1990. "We tried to handle the deadly weapons of war with the utmost respect," he writes. Kelly lived off base, where firearms (and gun incidents) are unheard of. He fought – and dodged incoming fire as an F-14 fighter pilot in the Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm.

Both authors are gun owners who, even after Giffords was nearly assassinated by a gunman in 2011, shoot at ranges. Kelly is an avid hunter. Neither wants to do away with the Second Amendment. But they don't understand why the United States, which has only around one percent of the world's population of children, has 85 percent of the world's children deaths by guns.

"Enough" was one of the first words Giffords said after the senseless massacre of twenty young children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut just before Christmas, 2012. This powerful book walks us through the preventable tragedies of Tucson, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Aurora and Newtown. The book was written before mass shootings and killings in Orlando, Las Vegas and, of course, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Lakeland, Florida last month.

Gun control was part of society in the 1800s, including in Tombstone and Dodge City. Laws have come and gone, depending on the fear-inducing power and intimidation of the NRA: The National Fire Arms Act of 1934 after an assassination attempt on FDR; The Gun Control Act of 1968 in the wake of assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK; the Brady Bill of 1993 after an attempted assassination of President Reagan; and the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 after a spike of violence.

In the mid-90s white identity fundamentalists at Waco, Ruby Ridge and Oklahoma City (Timothy McVeigh) fomented hate, fear and violence. McVeigh had been a member of the NRA and shared NRA leader Wayne LaPierre's "demonization of the ATF" (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives). In the wake of McVeigh's bombing of the Murrah federal building that killed 168 people, including children in the day-care center, and wounded more than 680 others, George H. W. Bush resigned his life membership in the NRA.

Domestic terrorism can still explode in our society. Witness the bombings this month in Austin, Texas. But the number of bombing incidents pales in comparison to mass shootings. Those who fear tyranny are causing a tyranny of violence. Navy Veteran Kelly rejects their paranoia, promoted by the NRA:

"The NRA has, in essence, turned the tables on the Declaration of Independence. Forget about a government designed to protect 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' Most of us trust our government: even if, sure, the average ninth grader can build a better website, we believe the men and women we elect to represent us have our best interest at heart. But to hear the NRA tell it, once federal or state governments start to pass laws to reduce gun violence in any way, shape, or form, it's a 'slippery slope' or 'jackbooted' federal agents banging on a gun owner's door to demand he turn over his firearm. As a Navy pilot who risked his life during bombing missions over Iraq and Kuwait, I find that preposterous and offensive. I was fighting to protect the ideals of a country and a government that I believed in. I blasted into space for my country, in a government-financed spaceship. The NRA'S slippery slope is a fantasy, and a dangerous one. If the NRA gets its way, we'll be left with a country where everyone is armed but no one is safe."

When Gabby Giffords was shot, the shooter was tackled while trying to reload. When a bystander grabbed the shooter's gun, the bystander was nearly shot by someone responding with a concealed weapon. In the chaos of a shooting, more guns may not be the answer. And in a peaceful society, more guns indiscriminately in hands of more people is not the answer, according to the authors.

As long as there are lax laws for background checks, mentally ill people, including paranoid conspiracy theorists, Islamist terrorists and other end-times believers, have relatively easy access to firearms in the United States.

The irony is that crazed assassins who want to become famous for killing a public figure can instead become famous for spurring responsible gun control regulations and legislation.



"March for Our Lives": Yesterday, an estimated 800,000 students, survivors and supporters marched in Washington D.C. and thousands more marched in more hundreds of cities across the United States in a call for positive change for safer schools and streets and sensible gun laws, including restrictions on offensive military style weapons designed to kill people rather than for hunting or defense.

Yolanda Renee King stands with Jackie Corin.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas student Jackie Corin said last week, "The people of America care," adding, "The love outweighs the hate, no matter what." Corin said she and other students are following the inspiration of "students during the Vietnam War era" as well as the nonviolent philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Corin stood with MLK's nine-year-old granddaughter Yolanda Renee King yesterday. King said, "My grandfather had a dream that his four little children will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character," adding, "I have a dream that enough is enough."

David Hogg at March for Our Lives March 24, 2018.

Fellow student David Hogg, hoping for common ground in the debate, said, "People get afraid and then misunderstand people. We're not trying to take your guns; we're trying to save the future of America."

In Michael Waldman's Second Amendment "biography," which calls for focusing on the phrase "the right of the people," the author concludes this about gun violence:

"This is a remarkably dense and thorny issue. The controversy is thick with symbolic politics. It pits rural culture against urban norms. It asks us to avoid emotionalism, to rely more on research, to find policies that actually work. Efforts to enact sensible regulations of guns face many obstacles: powerful organizations, inflamed opponents, cowardly politicians, a media culture that (when not suffused with violence itself) quickly loses interest. To surmount these will require grit and wisdom. It should not have to require overcoming a hostile judiciary, misreading history, over-interpreting text, and imposing political views in the guise of judicial philosophy."

The burning of Washington D.C. in 1814 proved the weakness of relying on the states' militia.

After Waldman recounts venerated George Washington's role in preventing a march by a mutinous militia on Philadelphia, the nation's capital at the time, he tells how the militia service itself "withered."

In the War of 1812, the British overran state militias and they marched on Philadelphia, burning the White House. It was clear that a well-regulated and equipped military was needed more than a "well-regulated militia." Fear of a standing army and navy gradually gave way to a sense of confidence in the strength of a free democracy, relying on the people and their right to vote, being able to withstand a rise of tyranny, even from within.

Waldman reminds us of this quote from Abraham Lincoln while debating slavery and an earlier Supreme Court decision: "Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions."

Three Navy-blue Green Presidents

Review by Bill Doughty––

Six United States presidents in my lifetime were Navy veterans: John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush. Each in his own way and to varying degrees was an optimistic champion of the environment.

Efforts of the first three –– JFK, LBJ and RMN –– led to the first Earth Day in 1970, now Earth Month in April.

The environmental movement is sometimes overshadowed by the other tectonic shifts during that era: The Cold War, Civil Rights, and the Vietnam War. But Douglas Brinkley takes the history of the green movement out of the shadows by centering on the three presidents of the era, as well as highlighting the life and work of ecologist-writer Rachel Carson, in “Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening” (HarperCollins, 2022).

Sailor JFK

The Navy had a large part in shaping the vision of the presidents who defended pristine wilderness, clean air and water, and preservation of the environment.

For Kennedy of Massachusetts, it began with a deep love of the sea and shoreline, according to Brinkley, who opens the book with this:

“Beguiled by the way sea and sky played together, almost always unpredictably, John F. Kennedy was enthralled by the complexity of the Atlantic Ocean: the moody sky, the invisible might of the tides, shifting clouds, and the yaw and pitch of movement. To be on the water in a sailboat, even in a cruel wind, provided him with a profound connection with nature.”

Kennedy saw, in his own words, the human “biological fact that all of us have, in our veins, the same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean,” he said.

Johnson of Texas, was saddled with fighting the Vietnam War, poverty, segregation, and voter suppression. Environmentalism took somewhat of a back seat to other priorities. Brinkley writes:

“On the conservation front, Johnson probably should have been aware of of the importance of intelligent land stewardship. His favorite novel –– John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ (1939) –– was based on a man-made ecological catastrophe during the Great Depression that destroyed ranches and farms in Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. It was soil depletion that led to the Dust Bowl. Johnson, however, was left wanting to help the rural poor, without setting an equal priority on nurturing the natural world around them. Johnson liked Bureau of Reclamation dams, because he knew first-hand how electricity lit up forgotten regions, literally and figuratively.”

LBJ’s penchant for dam-building, both at home and abroad, as well as his escalation of the Vietnam war, caused consternation for environmentalists.

LBJ

Yet, in 1968, Johnson signed the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. “Rivers, Johnson believed, from the far-flung waterways of Alaska, Idaho, and Wyoming to those coursing through the rural countryside of Vermont and Maine were the lifeblood of America,” Brinkley observes.

Johnson “forged ahead on conservation legislation to protect wild places because it was part of America’s frontier heritage.” LBJ is responsible for bringing about the Wilderness Act, Highway Beautification Act, and a commitment to “a green legacy for tomorrow.” According to Brinkley, Johnson should be given more credit for his advocacy to conservation, particularly of America’s rivers (just as President Eisenhower is recognized for the national highway system). As regards LBJ, “His Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was a visionary law passed purely on behalf of the aesthetics of rivers.”

Nixon of California, was captivated by the Pacific Ocean, as a child in Orange County. In 1969 he would make his home, as Kennedy did, next to the ocean. In Nixon’s case, it was in San Clemente, where he enjoyed whale watching. Though facing his own corruption issues that would eventually lead to his expulsion from office, Nixon still managed to achieve positive global initiatives such as rapprochement with China and arms control talks with Russia. And he not only supported the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and National Environmental Policy Act, but he also created the Environmental Protection Agency.

“If Nixon’s signing of NEPA and his Everglades protection were the first big time indications of the administration’s serious commitment to environmental protection, the State of the Union address on January 22, with its plea that ‘Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions,’ was seen by surprised Democrats as the Great Reconfirmation that Nixon indeed harbored a genuine TR streak … When Nixon delivered a Special Message to the Congress on Environmental Quality on February 10 (1970), he listed fourteen executive orders and twenty-three legislative proposals to combat pollution and provide parkland. ‘The time has come when we can wait no longer to repair the damage already done,’ he told Congress.”

Brinkley notes several times that Nixon was “suspicious” of liberal traps, so he did not appear on TV for the first Earth Day. He even asked FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, to spy on high-profile Earth Day events on college campuses, fearful of their ties with the anti-Vietnam War movement.

Yet, Nixon’s support of conservation, preservation, and a clean environment persisted.

Nixon

In 1970 he created the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, and he signed the Clean Air Act.

On October 21, 1972, Nixon signed the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act of 1972, an achievement to the legacy of Rachel Carson. He signed the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

And he signed the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act (limiting nationwide speed limits to 55) and the Federal Energy Administration Act in 1974 (the same year he was forced to resign because of Watergate).

Brinkley briefly shows how the Navy stopped pumping sewage into San Francisco Bay while in port. He also discusses how, during the Nixon administration, Marines at Camp Pendleton helped protect endangered wildlife. In coordination with the Department of Interior and NASA, the Navy sponsored the first all-women team of aquanauts in Tektite II to study the ecosystem at the bottom of the sea.

All three Navy-veteran presidents –– two Democrats and one Republican –– were following the lead of conservationist Republican President Theodore Roosevelt of another generation, and who had his own strong ties to the Navy and who championed nature and national parks. 

In two appendices Brinkley lists scores of national wildlife refuges and national parks created or authorized by Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.

One of President Nixon’s many environmental preservation initiatives included establishing a federally designated Wilderness area, the Cumberland Island National Seashore. “Because Cumberland National Seashore encompassed twenty-three different ecological communities, Nixon agreed that only three hundred tourists at a time be allowed on Cumberland Island. Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, a moderate Democrat, played a major conservation role regarding the saving of Cumberland…"

Rachel Carson talks about "Silent Spring" in April 1963

This massive book (857 pages!) includes dozens of evocative photos, memorable stories, and captivating personalities of the people who created the environmental enlightenment and “awakening” in the 1950s, 60s, and early 70s.

Rachel Carson provided much of the inspiration for the environmental movement leading up to the first Earth Day and the public’s demand for clean water, air, and land. She wisely connected the long-lasting danger of atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons with the hazards related to DDT, a pernicious pesticide that altered ecosystems. We have referenced or featured Carson’s works several times here on Navy Reads.

Carson’s “Silent Spring” and her Sea Trilogy inspired John F. Kennedy. Family matriarch Rose Kennedy gave a copy of “Under the Sea-Wind,” published in 1941, to JFK in the mid-1950s.

“Although ‘Under the Sea-Wind’ sold in low numbers, perhaps because Pearl Harbor occurred right after it debuted, it became celebrated by marine biologists and other lovers of the animal kingdom,” Brinkley writes.

Carson was, in turn, inspired by Albert Schweitzer. And it seems everyone was inspired by Henry David Thoreau. 

Brinkley also follows the influence and positive impact of artists, writers, scientists, and politicians: Ansel Adams, John Muir, Carl Sandburg, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, William O. Douglas, Linus Pauling, Harold Ickes, Wallace Stegner, Robert Frost, Ted Sorensen, Robert F. Kennedy, Cesar Chavez, Jacques Cousteau, Sylvia Earle, Barry Commoner, David Brower, Lady Bird Johnson, Howard Zahniser, Ralph Nader, Robert Boyle, John Saylor, Katherine Ordway, Chief Luther Standing Bear, Laurance Rockefeller, Russell Train, Stewart Udall, Ronald Dellums, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Frank Church, Philip Hart, Gaylord Nelson, Edmund Muskie, William Ruckelshaus, Walter Hickel, Al Gore, and John Ehrlichman.

In the book’s preface, Brinkley praises those “serving a cause bigger than oneself” and warns against the ostrich syndrome of ignoring ongoing threats to the environment, including climate chaos. 

He writes: “The poisonous climate cocktail of ravaging wildfires, mega floods, and monstrous blizzards costs American taxpayers billions of dollars every year (soon to climb to trillions), disrupts lives, causes vast displacement, ruins communities, and kills countless citizens.”

Brinkley says, “In some small way, I hope this book illuminates how an engaged citizenry can bring America’s natural beauty back from the brink.” He writes, “Optimism must remain in our oxygen.”

I remember the feeling of optimism, hope, and activism of the first Earth Day in 1970, the first recognition that something needed to be done to confront pollution, overpopulation, and other ecological threats.

Among more than a dozen books, Brinkley is the author of “The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America” (2009) and “The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House” (1998).

History Has Its Eyes on – Hong Kong

Review by Bill Doughty––

The soundtrack to Joshua Wong's account of the trials and tribulations in Hong Kong can be found in Lin Manuel Miranda's "Hamilton."

"Unfree Speech: The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, Now" by Joshua Wong (Penguin Books, 2020) is written by a young man who is "young, scrappy and hungry" and ready to "rise up." He seems to echo Hamilton: "I'm not going to waste my shot."

Wong's is the voice of a boy becoming a man –– a self-described "diehard fanboy" of Gundam, OnePiece, Marvel and DC comics, as well as a student of Gandhi and MLK. He and his close friends Agnes Chow and Ivan Lam (top photo) were sentenced to prison this week by a court in Hong Kong for a pro-democracy protest they held last year.*

Wong offers a brief history of the situation in Hong Kong since the time of the transfer of sovereignty from Great Britain to China, July 1, 1997: The recession in '97, the SARS outbreak in 2002, "misguided housing policies," the National Security Bill, the barring of political organizations, growing demands for more democracy, and the rise of the Umbrella Revolution/Movement.

"The movement didn't happen in a social vacuum. The broken promise of electoral reform and subsequent police crackdown catalysed the unrest, but they didn't cause it. It took decades of pent-up frustration over income inequality, social immobility and other injustices for public anger to finally boil over. Martin Luther King Jr famously said that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor and that it must be demanded by the oppressed. The Umbrella Movement was our way of making our demands heard."

"The movement's symbol, the yellow umbrella, captured both the humility and humanity of the non-violent protesters," Wong writes. From Hamilton: "I was aiming for the sky," "Forgiveness, can you imagine it?" and "Tomorrow there'll be more of us."

As important as the history is Wong's explanation of structure of Hong Kong's government: The Executive is chosen by Communist Party loyalists and controlled by Beijing. The Legislature is not truly representative (two 35-member chambers: GC-geographical, chosen by region, and FC-functional, chosen by Beijing-friendly business and industry. The Judiciary, supposedly independent, is becoming more deferential to the executive, where "the criminal justice system is increasingly used as a political tool to silence dissent."

Voter suppression, election interference and punishment of free speech are hallmarks of Communist China's war on democracy. "Hong Kong is gradually becoming an autocracy," Wong writes. He calls it ominously like Star Wars's "The Empire Strikes Back."

Much of this book, disjointed and rough at times, comes from his diary from prison, both at the Stanley Prison for adults and earlier while at the Pik Uk Correctional Institution for juveniles. He gives a commentary on friends, prison food, entertainment, and hunkering down during a hurricane. Again from Hamilton: "In the eye of a hurricane, there is quiet" ... "Blow us all away" ... "Look around, look around" ... "I'll write my way out, overwhelm them with honesty."

Wong describes a "perfect storm" building, and even though this book was published this year, it was before COVID-19 was part of that storm.

Agnes Chow

Wong and many of his fellow protesters, including Lam and Chow, began their activism at a tender age. They venerate earlier freedom advocates such as Ai Weiwei, who writes this book's introduction, and they commemorate the young students killed in the Tiananmen protests and massacre of June 4, 1989.

The cover of the book features a quote from Greta Thunberg: "Together we are one loud voice that cannot be silenced." Young people are at the heart of global calls for freedom and equality. Wong was inspired by Malala's memoir. We're reminded of the young people of Parkland, Florida who sparked a movement for gun safety in the wake of the killing of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. 

The subtitle of this book is "The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, Now."

"From Turkey and Ukraine to India, Myanmar and the Philippines, citizens are pushing back oppressive regimes in defence of their diminishing rights. But nowhere else in the world is the struggle between free will and authoritarianism more clearly demonstrated than here. In the new trans-Pacific cold war, Hong Kong is the first line of defence to stop or at least slow down the dangerous rise of a totalitarian superpower. Like the canary in the coal mine or the early warning system on a tsunami-prone coastline, we are sending out a distress signal to the rest of the world so that countermeasures can be taken before it is too late. As much as Hong Kong needs the international community, the international community needs Hong Kong. Because today's Hong Kong is the rest of the world's tomorrow."

Wong points out Russia's aggression and annexation of Crimea, India's invasion of semi-autonomous Kashmir, and Turkey's military regime's imprisonment of journalists and displacement of millions of Kurds. "Their motivation is singular: self-perpetuation. To consolidate and maintain power," he writes.

Military power is flexed, Wong writes, to impress and intimidate –– and so leaders can remain in power. "Oceans rise; empires fall" ... "The world was wide enough for both."

Ensign Ashley Welker, a Los Angeles native, along with other Sailors, speaks to a tour group visiting Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Sterett (DDG 104) during the ship’s port visit to Hong Kong, May 2, 2017. (MC1 Byron C. Linder)

In a call to action, Wong offers a 10-point action plan for civil action. He expresses appreciation to and for the United States and speaks glowingly of the support he received in Washington D.C. In September of 2019 he testified to the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC).

U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Wong

He received support directly from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Marco Rubio, Rep. Jim McGovern, and Rep. Eliot Engle. Rubio sponsored the "Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act." Pelosi told Wong, "You are an inspiration to young people everywhere. Thank you for your courage and resolve."

As "Hamilton" says, "It must be nice to have Washington on your side."

"Who lives, who dies, who tells your story,” in the words of Lin-Miranda.

Wong and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio

The late U.S. Representative John Lewis personified democracy and called for the "good trouble" as practiced by Wong and friends. Lewis, of course, played a pivotal role in passage of the Voting Rights Act signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. And he advocated strongly for each reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in 1970, 1975, 1982, and 2006.

In the face of voter suppression in some states, the House of Representatives passed Bill HR 1 –– The "For the People Act" in 2019. But "wait for it," as Hamilton intones: HR 1 is still awaiting a vote by the U.S. Senate.

*(Wong was sentenced to 13.5 months in prison; Chow, called the “Goddess of Democracy,” was sentenced to ten months in prison; and Lam received a sentence of seven months for inciting the pro-democracy protest.)