We the People

God bless those who are protesting non- violently and defending the values we hold dear.
Here a few quotes to encourage you.  Keep the faith.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Edmund Burke

“[Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. 

 

Are we winning yet?

 “We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with winning.”

This is what the President often promised on the campaign trail. America of late he said was always losing. If we got behind him, we would win again.

The truth is we all like to win.  I never met someone who would say that they would prefer to lose not win. We want win in every game we play. We want to win in every game we watch. We want to win the hearts of those we love. We want to win that scholarship.  We want to win that dream job.  We want our children to win at school, at sports, in short, we want them to win at life.

Victory is not a bad thing.  But albeit late in life, I have learned from my mistakes that it is not just what you win but HOW you win.

That is the opposite view held by our President and his administration now.  Instead of bringing together people of good will to address the real and thorny problems that we have with immigration, he has chosen to profile whole countries as potential terrorists.  No one is against vetting. In the climate we have today, we have to vet each case carefully, but he has singled out seven countries where he will refuse all immigrants and refugees.  He has done this - notwithstanding the fact that we have American citizens who hail from these very countries.  We have permanent residents and college students who are from these countries.  And as for the refugees of Syria, Libya and elsewhere, this administration is turning its back on centuries old tradition and shutting the door on the stranger in need.  

This is how he says we will win again.

Even some of his former detractors can be heard saying:  “Well, if he starts bringing in the jobs that he promised and the prosperity that he promised then, it will be OK.  We will be prosperous. We will have won.”

But will we?

If we are prosperous and have forsaken every ideal that we stand for, we will have lost.

If we are prosperous and forsaken the very foundation of the Constitution we hold dear, then we will have lost.

If we are prosperous and we are no longer generous, we will have lost.

If we are prosperous and we close the door on the stranger, on the homeless, on the refugee, we will have lost.

Who are we? We are a winning a people but a winning people who understands that a Pyrrhic victory is no victory at all.

If you stand at the top of the heap of unhappiness and despair, sooner or later you too will be unhappy and despairing.

You will have won all but your heart will be empty and the worst part is you won’t understand why.

You will look around at your riches and at your trophies and wonder: how is it possible for me to be so unhappy?  And THAT is what will drive you to despair.  

You will look around at your winnings and the fruits thereof and despair that you no longer have the friends and relationships that you used to have; and then you will find your winnings and your trophies will be of small comfort.

Mr. President, you said that you want the American people to win so much that they will be bored with winning. Don’t take it from me. Take heed to Jesus’ parable of the rich fool.  (Luke 12)

 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, ¹⁷ and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ ¹⁸ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹ And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ ²⁰ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ ²¹ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God."

Some of us do not want to lose our souls.

The America that raised me

The America that raised me was compassionate.  The America that raised me was loving.  The America that raised me was welcoming.

I was born on the island of Jamaica and migrated to NYC at age 12.  In those days, I used to take the Staten Island ferry on weekends just for the boat ride.  I loved the ferry. I loved being on the water and pretending that it was a very large sailboat.  But most of all, I loved passing the Statue of Liberty. I loved waving and saying out loud, “Hello Lady liberty !”  I loved all she represented.  “Give me your tired, your  poor, your huddled masses,….” she had said to countless waves of immigrants from days gone by.   And here it was she seemed to be saying the same thing to me and my family.  

We had been welcomed here by a church, by a family and by a school.  I remember in particular my little Anglican school, St. Hilda’s and St. Hugh’s on the edge of Harlem.  One saint was not good enough for them.  They needed two for good measure.  And why not?  In my mind, even to this day, it was twice the school of an ordinary school. I still measure most schools against this one, perhaps unfairly, and not just because it was rigorous because that still exists in some quarters –but because it was generous.  The nuns there sought neither fame nor money but held so closely to their vows.  They were Lady Liberty in the flesh to me and so many others because it was a school that welcomed immigrants like myself.  Amidst my American friends, I had friends from Russia, from Iran, and from Latin America.  We learned each other's languages and cultures in an environment that put God first and so treasured His people.  The values of Lady Liberty were not some abstract history lesson but were real and tangible to me as I felt welcome in every sense of the word.  I  felt that there were people all around me that wanted me to succeed. I felt there were no limits except the limits I placed on myself. I felt, and I know others did too that this was a fair place, this America. This was a loving place, this was a welcoming place.  It didn’t matter where you came from.   It was not inconvenient if you were from some war torn place, or if you were fleeing persecution. It just didn’t matter. 

It was years later that I was to learn of course that countless other black children like myself were languishing in substandard schools and did not experience what I had experienced.   Yet I still felt that the underlying values of America were attainable …and worthy of my efforts to make them more accessible to others.

I still believed that the America that raised me was at its core compassionate, welcoming and loving….yet now I hear of another America that boldly says, “America first! “  and “Make America great again” with clenched fists instead of outstretched hands.  Now I hear of another America that is turned inward not outward. Now I hear of another America less proud of its welcoming past and more concerned with its own problems, its own plight. Now I hear of another America which suddenly has no more to give.  And I weep because the America that raised me stood head and shoulders above the world precisely because it dared to link its fate to the fate of Lady Liberty’s tired, poor, and huddled masses.  It dared to join its soul to those dejected souls.  It dared to share and it dared to reach out and it was in those moments that it was first and it was  great.

 Anne Bailey

 

from laoca.ru