Jon Irons Spoke Truth to Power

Ed Angelo’s Esq. DISCLAIMER: For the record, I attest that the following tribute is entirely my own writing, created without assistance from anyone else. The opinions expressed are solely mine and do not reflect, nor are they intended to malign, any religion or deny any historical event.

The Lehigh County Board of Commissioners lost a huge part of its soul when Commissioner Jon Irons left the Board.

They must now select a replacement. 34,000 Lehigh County citizens cast their vote for Jon Irons after he waged a clear and vigorous campaign, making clear what he stood for.

They said yes. Commissioners, you too must say, yes, to a substitute that comports with the views of those 34,000 citizens.

Jon flipped the usual script, teaching me, the old man, how to think differently on issues.

I’m reminded of the slogan “think different,” from an Apple ad campaign. Jon gave genuine meaning to those words during his tenure.

Not selling computers or iPhones, but rather giving away free compassion for other human beings, the best bargain available in the entire department store that, sadly, our nation has largely become.

Jon taught me 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.

Jon kept his crayons always at the ready. By voicing unpopular opinions on controversial topics, Jon questioned the status quo and stretched our intellectual borders, inviting us to imagine a better world.

So say it: “open borders”. Jon did. Because compassion for our fellow humans demands it.

Once upon a time borders were open. Until concocted wars, quilted from 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.

More recently, “open borders” acted as an employment agency staffing our workforce.

That is, until fearmongering about immigrants as “the other” eclipsed profit-making in the brainwashing business. Say it: no more masked men on streets of America terrorizing people.

Jon railed against the graphic hatefulness too many of us cowardly accept in stride: murder of fellow human beings on our streets, their blood staining our Constitution, rendering its truths indecipherable.

Jon conducted learning sessions to teach people how to oppose ICE, and not end up beaten, arrested or dead.

Regrettably, it’s not melodramatic to say that Jon embodied the modern version of the WWII French “underground” who defied the Nazis.

And in organizing spiritual vigils to commemorate victims murdered by ICE, Jon channeled those who mourned after the “night of broken glass.” Old story, new cast.

Say it: mentally ill inmates should not be warehoused in the shadows of solitary confinement in our jail, tendered strange “treatment” in concrete boxes sealed with steel bars.

Jon saw the whites of their eyes, got emotionally proximate to their undignified plight in a cruel system.

Jon felt their pain and championed their cause through relentless advocacy against a frequently heartless bureaucracy.

Yes, say it: fight the fascism and oppression of a government commandeered by a would-be dictator, who by sadistic 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 bombing sweet innocent school children in Iran in a charade war to distract from his long-term friendship with history’s worst child molester.

Or assaults upon our media and history to “thought control” our people. Jon courageously called for the obvious: an ordinance against such fascism.

Say it, the unpopular thing. Jon 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 a totalitarian oath, or Japanese citizens walking hand-in-hand with their children to be imprisoned in concentration camps, or black students beaten for sitting at lunch counters.

Jon made me consider this 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 was I pledging to?

Here’s the original Pledge, written in just two hours, in 1892, by Francis Bellamy, a marketing gimmick, offering U.S. flags to readers who sold subscriptions, giving the whole thing a Wall Street flavor from the start:

“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands—one nation indivisible—with liberty and justice for all.”

Notice no reference to “God”. That was added during the “cold war” (as if God didn’t have enough to do), and as a lollipop for Joe McCarthy to suck on while hunting gaggles of communist ghosts.

Jon 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?

My advice to whoever replaces him: like Jon, stay seated at the Pledge, if you want. That’s your call. But, like Jon, stand strong for what is right and just. He always did. Without that, the Pledge is just hollow words.

To be continued! This is the week when Muslims around the world will commemorate the death of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and reflect on the truth about Saqifa. The Architecture of Delusion: Fantasies and Mirages explores the role of Colonial ZOR and the Imperialist USA in the war against IRI.