How it feels to be free
Change will not come if we wait
for some other person or some other time.
We are the ones we have been waiting for.
We are the change that we seek.– Barack Obama
Everyone wants to be free. Those who are lucky enough to be born into freedom’s glories (because they are wealthy, educated, white, male, able, and also happen to live in a country untouched by war or climate-change upheaval) have the luxury of taking it for granted. Those who are not (because they are poor, un-educated, brown/black/red/, female/gay/trans, disabled, live in a conflict zone or in a climate-challenged region) – they’ll just have to hope they’ll eventually be free.
Human history is written by those who, though unfree, won’t relinquish the dream of freedom, no matter what the cost. In every age there have been and will always be forces of oppression and entitlement – people who want the best for themselves alone, who will take it from others and who are not inclined to share. Equally, in every age there exist the forces of freedom and justice – people who want a fair share for themselves and for their children. These people change history not only for themselves, but for all of us.
In India and America – the two countries I call home – forces of exclusion are growing louder and more violent every day. Their voices find echoes across the world – in Turkey, the Philippines, the United Kingdom. We are witnessing a closing of ranks around the globe, a hardening of the universal heart, an absurd consensus that only certain people are welcome, that freedom is only for a few, that there is some test, based largely on accidents of birth, which only the chosen can ever hope to pass.
For people with disability, freedom is as elusive and unreachable as it is for any poor person, any refugee, any undocumented alien. The forces that shut out those who don’t have passports or money or homes also reject those who can’t walk, see or think fast. Exclusion is exclusion.
But exclusion is based on a fatally flawed logic and it carries the seeds of its own destruction. We exclude at our own peril. Nowhere is this more glaring than with disability, the single most cross-cutting fact of human existence. Regardless of age, gender, class, color, creed, sexual orientation, nationality or economic status, disability can happen to anyone. And when it does, understanding dawns instantly: We are all the same. We are not invincible. We all need support.
The unbreakable law of the universe is that what goes around comes around. Maybe not immediately; maybe not even in this generation. We may never see the fruits of our actions – good or bad – yet still, as the sun follows the night, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
This year, in a time of closed borders and open fear of “the other,” the Karuna Vihar calendar celebrates freedom. We remind ourselves that we each have the power to bring about change. We hold on to the dream of a just world and we challenge ourselves to make it come true.
Open the doors. No more walls!
– Jo Chopra
The calendar was designed and illustrated by Shalini Sinha and printed at Thomson Press, New Delhi. The photographers – Ken Carl, Soumya Gupta, Joe Gidjunis, Rahul Saini, K S Pradeep and Jo Chopra – all graciously donated their services. Special thanks to Jesse Kornbluth for graceful editing at the speed of light and to Cathleen Chopra-McGowan for inspiration and poetry. All donations go to support the Latika Roy Foundation’s vision of a better world for children with disabilities.
