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Freedom Is Not Free
Full-size versions of all the images you see here are available by clicking the individual images.
Welcome to Freedom Park!
The first thing that one would encounter going through Freedom Park is the Journalists' Memorial, a magnificent steel-and-tinted-glass structure.
Inscribed on each of the glass panels is the name of a journalist who gave their life for the sake of journalism.
Listed is the journalist's name, who they were working for, and where they were killed.
Continuing over the skywalk to the other side of the highway, alongside the Newseum, begins a string of replicas and originals symbolizing freedom or the fight for it. Here, we see a replica of the Statue of Freedom, which sits atop the Capitol Dome, as seen below in this February 2, 2002 Schumin Web file photo.
Women's suffrage was a major issue before the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, at last granting women the right to vote.
A bronze casting of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s jail cell door reminds us all that even in our own country, we must fight for freedom, and even lose what freedoms we do have in the process of the pursuit of true freedom.
A bronze casting of a Cuban boat, found on the Florida Keys, September 10, 1966.
A bronze casting of a ballot box from the year Nelson Mandela was elected President of a new, post-apartheid South Africa. This was a long time in the making, and we're glad to see that they at last succeeded in making apartheid a part of South Africa's past.
Cobblestones from a ghetto in Warsaw, Poland, April 19, 1943. An eerie reminder of the gruesome event which was the Holocaust.
Back in 1990, the Soviet Union was beginning to crumble, their discontent visually shown here in this statue of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union. The statue was first toppled, and the head broken off. On December 25, 1991, the Soviet Union was no more, as Mikhail Gorbachev officially resigned.
Let us not soon forget what happened in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, when a number of Chinese citizens erected their own version of our Statue of Liberty. The Chinese government did not take that too kindly, as they used military force to disperse the demonstrators.
And last and certainly not least, we are now leaving the American sector, and entering Berlin.
The Berlin Wall was built to keep the citizens of Communist East Berlin from leaving and going to West Berlin, where it was a free and democratic society. Taken down in 1989, parts of the Berlin Wall made their way to Freedom Park.
Guard towers like this one were for the purpose of making sure people didn't try to do anything funny, like try to cross over it.
I think that the thing that amazes me the most is the fact that the two sides of the wall are so starkly different. The side facing West Berlin is covered with graffiti of all kinds, while the side that faced East Berlin is nearly pristine, with only an "E" and a "Z" spray-painted on there. It just goes to show the difference between the two sides of Berlin.
It was an incredibly happy scene, as seen here, the day the Berlin Wall fell, and freedom at last came to East Berlin. |
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Make no mistake - the freedom we take for granted in America is an absolutely wonderful thing. However, like everything else in life, freedom has a price as well. Many people have died, people have gone to jail, and suffered immensely in the hopes of eventually becoming free. At Freedom Park, next to the Newseum and leading over a bridge and across the street, one can find replicas and sometimes actual relics of the fight for freedom at home and abroad, as well as peaceful symbols embodying our freedom.
