Anne Thinnes recently wrote she was appalled by Oak Park’s Fourth of July parade. As a native Oak Parker and resident for 27 years, I was stunned but admittedly not surprised by the insensitive expressions contained in her letter.
For many years, Oak Park has espoused its “openness” to people from all walks of life, then turned around and built a wall in the form of culs-de-sac along Austin Boulevard when the Austin community was going through racial change. Thinnes longed for the “celebration of America.” In her own words, she wasn’t there to be put into a “controversial, political position of gay rights and gun violence.” In response to messages in the parade suggesting “black lives matter,” she wondered why it didn’t say all lives matter.
Perhaps Thinnes should go visit that “wall” on Austin Boulevard and ask Oak Park historians why it went up in the first place, or why the more recent “wall” that’s been gradually constructed along North Avenue started to go up. Perhaps then she will understand why people in the 2015 Oak Park Fourth of July parade were carrying signs that read “black lives matter.”
It’s 2015, and the people participating in the Oak Park Fourth of July parade were expressing their freedom of speech rights granted by our Constitution in the interest of establishing justice and insuring domestic tranquility. That is not appalling; it is a great celebration of America.
Mary Kay Minaghan
Forest Park