1/ This is beautiful, and gut-wrenching. And horribly true. So let me tell you a story.
I've felt an anger boiling in me lately. I try to keep those kind of feelings at bay and use humor to make my points. It seems better, for some reason. Maybe even more productive.
I've felt an anger boiling in me lately. I try to keep those kind of feelings at bay and use humor to make my points. It seems better, for some reason. Maybe even more productive.
2/ But between the catastrophe of Trump's coronavirus response and the senseless, cult-like devotion of his supporters, I feel angry. Mad that people aren't fully rejecting incompetence and rank cruelty. Mad that damn near 40% of the country seems lost. And I mean lost. Gone.
3/ That video from tonight's convention reminded me of the root of my anger. Before the rest of the country heard of "family separation," I got a tip about a little girl being held in Chicago. She had been separated from her mother, who fled Africa with her in mortal fear.
4/ I wrote about that child and the lawsuit the ACLU filed to reunite her with her mother. Those amazing attorneys won, and after about six hellish months apart, the mother and child were brought back together in Chicago. A few months later, I was at a shelter for asylum seekers.
5/ A little girl came along, and we chatted and I gave her my notebook so she could draw a picture. It was the girl I had written about. She was bright, chatty, dancing around the shelter. She sat as I interviewed the shelter director about how the shelter might have to close.
6/ When the girl heard this, she grew scared. She started shaking and crying. It was like a switch went off. The director took her away and comforted her and it was all I could do to not put my fist through a wall. Our country did that to her. Our country damaged that child.
7/ No matter what, she will never fully recover from being ripped away from her mother and taken to a strange place in the middle of a county she didn't know. It had been emotional enough writing about her and her mother when they were apart.
8/ But seeing her. Seeing those eyes, happy one second, terrified the next, will haunt me for the rest of my life. It is unforgivable. And it is right at the goddamn heart of everything this monstrous administration has done. Unnecessary cruelty. Policies designed to hurt.
9/ Words meant to foment hate. And lie after lie after lie after lie attempting to justify it all.
That was a defining moment for me. It chopped away any hope I could ever excuse those who support a man like Trump. If you support him, you support what happened to that child.
That was a defining moment for me. It chopped away any hope I could ever excuse those who support a man like Trump. If you support him, you support what happened to that child.
10/ So this is personal. Deeply personal. And I sometimes forget what made it so, but that video brought it all roaring back.
We can disagree on policy. We can disagree on social issues. We cannot disagree on basic human decency.
I pray this country wakes up, and rises up. END
We can disagree on policy. We can disagree on social issues. We cannot disagree on basic human decency.
I pray this country wakes up, and rises up. END
