Via Chicago: Day 3, ‘A fight for our freedoms’
Vice presidential nominee Tim Walz gave a relatively short speech on the third day of the convention, but stuck to the evening’s theme.
Andy Bailey illustration
Editor’s note: “Via Chicago” is Smoky Mountain News Politics Editor Cory Vaillancourt’s pop-up daily dispatch from the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Look for a new installment each day this week, through Friday.
Most Americans take for granted hard-fought freedoms so ingrained in the infinitesimal minutiae of daily life that they’re difficult to notice. Economic freedom — especially for the working class — is one thing, but social freedom is quite another.
Speakers on the third day of the Democratic National Convention were given the theme of “a fight for our freedoms” and used it to outline what they say are threats to some of those freedoms, like LGBTQ+ rights and abortion.
But the rest of the night shaped up like an old-timey variety show. The blind Motown pianist. A television talk show host. Another former president. Pop sensations current and past, covering a Prince song in honor of vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’ beloved Minnesota. Sandwiched in there between them all, and probably overlooked by many, was maybe the least-known but most profound speaker of the night, 26-year-old former U.S. Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman.
In 2021 at the age of 22, Gorman read her poem, “The hill we climb” at President Joe Biden’s inauguration. The poem focused on the struggle to maintain and improve the nation, starting with an acknowledgement of hardship and loss. Invoking dawn and light as metaphors of a new beginning just two weeks after a mob of violent insurrectionists penetrated the Capitol, Gorman called for unity and for purpose by emphasizing common goals and finished with a call to action — for America to rise above chaos and work together to create a better future.
“… when the day comes we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid, the new dawn blooms as we free it, for there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.”
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When her time came, Gorman rose above the fracas, the celebrities, the politicians, and offered a new piece, “This sacred scene.” Similar to “The hill we climb,” Gorman’s latest poem emphasizes love and empathy, but correctly identifies the maintenance of unity as “the hardest task history ever wrote.” In redefining the American dream, she demands that Americans become and remain worthy of it.
“Only now approaching this rare air are we aware that perhaps the American dream is no dream at all, but instead a dare to dream together.”
For Walz, that dream is the freedom to build the future in which you want to live.
“When Republicans use the word freedom, they mean that the government should be free to invade your doctor's office, corporations free to pollute your air and water and banks free to take advantage of customers,” he told the crowd during his relatively brief speech/high school pep rally. “But when we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love, freedom to make your own healthcare decisions and yeah, your kid's freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall.”
