The United States has undergone a profound transformation in the three years since 2008, when the national economy teetered on the brink of collapse. Our outlook on life, work, and the future has been fundamentally altered. Job creation has stalled and the employment market has largely evaporated. A stubborn recession continues to ravage home values and depress stock markets to previously unimaginable lows. Uncertainty clouds the horizon regarding what lies ahead for the nation’s children, aging parents, and vital programs like Social Security, Medicare, and national health insurance. Each passing day brings news that the oil spill disaster expands further, yet despite technological prowess, we cannot plug a nine inch pipe. We believe the government’s crisis response has fallen short of what was needed. Rather than immediately mobilizing 100,000 of the unemployed for the nation’s most expansive and thorough clean-up effort, the president’s approach has centered on rhetoric—allowing words to overshadow concrete action. These contemporary challenges pale beside what Americans endured at the Battle of Bunker Hill in Charlestown during June, 1775. From homes near the Mystic River, Chelsea residents climbed to rooftops to witness the battle unfold. Leadership was present. There was resolve about sacrifice. A powerful summons rang out among those fighting for freedom from British rule and royal authority—the call to take up arms and secure liberty. That call produced the Battle of Bunker Hill, the defining moment when the British encountered, for the first time in 300 years, men who stood their ground against the Red Coats instead of fleeing. They fought. They fell. They bled by the hundreds. Yet they demonstrated that the British were not unbeatable and that their dominion over North America was destined to end. Yorktown in 1781 confirmed what Bunker Hill had begun, when British General Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington. America’s spirit emerged from that victory and independence. Today we face numerous economic and social trials. Yet as a free people, we endure as a symbol to the world, the embodiment of one nation, under God, indivisible, with freedom and justice for all.
Of Bunker Hill and battles to come
