What Do You Hope For America?

A Saturday Prompt

(Photo by Steven Beschloss)

France’s gift to America has stood majestically in New York harbor since 1886. The original idea for the Statue of Liberty grew out of the desire to exemplify the American ideals of liberty and freedom. Lady Liberty’s spiked crown was meant to symbolize rays of sun beaming out to the world. Her tablet was inscribed with July 4, 1776. Sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi placed a broken shackle and chains at her feet to represent the end of slavery.

For more than 140 years, she has held her torch high, providing a beacon to the world, an expression of freedom and a welcome to those in trouble. So has been the inspiring poem of Emma Lazarus, “The New Collossus,” etched in bronze and placed at the pedestal: “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Millions of arriving immigrants saw this symbol of compassion and hope for a better life with their own eyes. Millions more yearned to see it and experience its promise for themselves.

I have always taken pride in America’s commitment to immigration and its burgeoning diversity. I have done so knowing that our history has been fraught with conflict as bigotry and competition have often pitted Americans against newcomers. I’m still moved by Hakeem Jeffries’ first speech after becoming House Minority Leader in 2023. “We believe that in America our diversity is a strength. It is not a weakness. An economic strength, a competitive strength, a cultural strength,” he said, adding, “Out of many we are one. That’s what makes America a great country.”

I won’t recount now the myriad ways the current cruel and hostile regime is exploiting its power to try and force millions of migrants out of the country without due process. The daily stories of masked men without proper identification grabbing people off the streets and taking them away in unmarked cars is an intolerable horror.

Add to this the Supreme Court ruling yesterday, enabling the Trump administration to revoke temporary legal status for more than 530,000 immigrants from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela—a humanitarian program created by the Biden administration in 2023 to address the peril they faced in their home countries. It’s hard to overstate the heartbreak and fear this ruling will cause, as all the previously protected people (adults and children) now face the possibility of being deported back to danger. We are all paying for decades of failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform, which has provided the conditions for a hateful demagogue to target migrants as a key reason for all that ails us.

Amid the daily assaults on people and institutions that have defined a decent and compassionate America, it may seem almost frivolous to pause and imagine what we hope for in a better America. But it’s important that we don’t lose sight of what we’re fighting for; this tyrannical regime is hoping to replace our dreams with their nightmares. The more we keep alive the vision of the future we want, the more we will be motivated to make it happen.

So what do you hope for America? Perhaps your hope concerns the reawakening and spreading of positive values that have built our democratic republic. Perhaps it concerns the quality of life you want for yourself and your family. Maybe it involves a return to leadership that models compassion, kindness and decency, not just as a matter of character but in the policies pursued. Maybe it’s the end of oligarchic, kleptocratic rule and the attendant corruption and extreme economic inequality. Perhaps it involves your own neighbors or something as aspirational as the end of racism and poverty. Perhaps it would be the reinstatement of foreign aid that has reduced starvation, disease and death. Feel free to be as concrete or abstract as you wish.

As always, I look forward to reading your observations and the opportunity of this community to hear from each other. Please do be respectful in your remarks. Trolling will not be tolerated.

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