Devastated But Not Done

Tuesday, November 5 will forever be remembered as a day of infamy. Like Pearl Harbor day, or September 11. Only this time, the attack did not come from a foreign enemy but was rooted in our own racism, misogyny, and ignorance. Americans voted for a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, a racist, and facist to be the 47th president of our nation. It’s devastating to learn that we are not the nation so many of us hoped we could be. Not the land of the brave and home of the free. The candidate who was elected to lead the nation prevailed by preying on our fears. We are apparently not a nation committed to empathy for our neighbors, not a nation rooted in the ideals of freedom and justice for all. Not the welcoming nation that Emma Lazarus foresaw in poem:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

But we are not done…

We can still be that nation. We can still live up to the ideals that we claim to embrace. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” Now is the time to renew our zeal to work each day towards the kind of nation we hope to become. We have done it before. We can do it again. We must, as Abraham Lincoln charged, work to ensure “…that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”

Be courageous. Have empathy. Be kind. Love one another. Work for justice. Welcome the stranger.

Posted 7 November 2024 by Mark ·