“Many small people, who in many small places do many small things, can alter the face of the world.”
In November of 1989, down came the Berlin Wall. The world watched as the infamous barrier to democracy and freedom crumbled at the feet of those who built it. The Soviet Union claimed the wall was meant to “protect” those in the East when in truth, it strangled the lives of the Germans trapped behind it.
The Berlin Wall didn’t come down in one night. Cracks in the foundation began with the brave souls who fought their way across it. The wall represented a divide between who they were told to be and who they wanted to become. In search of a better life, many from the East left their families behind and risked their lives crossing the death stripe, in pursuit of finding freedom in the West. It was those individual acts of bravery that began the movement to tear down the wall, with the notion that the government had no right to deny the people from pursuing their happiness.
Despite Germany’s triumph, history continues to repeat itself.
Walls continue to be built around us — physically, politically, socially and ideologically. These walls stoke fear and hatred in our current society, forming barriers that continue to divide “us” from “them.”
East Germany was a world constantly under watch. Neighbors reported each other, friends were imprisoned for listening to the wrong songs, books were burned, jobs were lost without reason, and family members disappeared in the night. East Germans lost their fundamental human rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of press and freedom of thought and expression. Many of these inherent rights are still being threatened today — freedoms we must work to preserve.
Every wall can come down. It only takes those individuals with the strength of courage to reach across into the unknown and fight for the rights of those on the other side, to end the divide.