Is this what you envisioned Mr. President elect Trump post your victory, your win, an America where school children can’t so much as hold a mock election without someone repeating something offensive you’ve said shutting it down? Is this the nation you thought you’d be leading, presiding over, guiding where students in middle school chant build that wall while Latino, Hispanic, Mexican American students, likely born here, not illegals cry, where students in a high school lock hands going down a hallway shouting white power and holding a Trump campaign sign? Is it gratifying to you to see scrawled signage reading F- all porch monkeys# whites only# white America, above a blurred or sanded down sign reading F n*ggers, in a high school, a doll lynched on a poll in an elevator on a college campus, supposed to be places of higher learning, diversified thinking, opening minds of all ages to new possibilities, things different from themselves; where instead a white student’s black-face Snapchat post got them expelled? Added to swastikas painted on churches, signs over drinking fountains in one school reading whites only and colored, your name among the graffiti, one student’s promise to a black classmate he would shoot her (12) and all the black people he could find? Is this what you meant when you said make America great again usually found somewhere in these hate filled messages to the ‘other’ elements in America who are something other than white, have retained pieces of their native heritage no matter how long they have lived in the U.S. whether they were born here keeping the rich traditions of parents, grandparents, great grandparents come before? Were all advocacy and minority assistance, outreach, resource groups correct when they speculated make America great again was code for make America white again…Perhaps most disturbing is schools knew how to deal with these instances even amid shock of having to, in America of all places, cities knew how to deal with it firing mayors for racist comments, firing teachers for theirs, expelling students behind racially motivated harassment, internet posts, violence to Trump supporters or protesters, other educators doing the best they can to teach life lessons in the moment, New Balance rejected the white supremacist and people won’t be coming to the coffee shop of a ranting Trump supporter who called African American’s monkeys, referred to the Whitehouse as public housing and called for Hillary Clinton to be sodomized. Contrastingly you tell Americans not to be afraid; we ask you how we can not be when this is our reality as brown persons, black persons, bi-racial persons, Muslim persons, Latino, Hispanic, Mexican persons, LGBTQ community members? At the same time all you can say is, during an already scheduled interview, stop it, noncommittally, nonchalantly, unsure it will help, make a difference….. It’s not enough Mr. President, not nearly enough when Keith Lemont Scott was shot in the back for possibly rolling a joint in his car, when authorities concede the officer responsible for the death of Philando Castile had no reasonable cause to shoot him as both he and his girlfriend tried to alert the officer to his legal permitted gun, in his pocket in an open carry state, gun retrieved from that pocket off his dead body post the officer standing there shouting panicked ‘I told him not to reach for it’ (forget what he was reaching for was the I.D. license and/or registration that officer just asked to see); you said yourself officer Shelby, who shot Terrance Crutcher appeared to choke shooting him over a stalled vehicle in the road, a man in need of a tow truck. It’s not enough Mr. President, far from enough to say you will protect LGBTQ persons, shield them against an Islamic foreign ideology, where you think surges in homophobia originate, when you can’t name one clear, substantial policy you have aimed at their community, they can’t find a single one on any of your websites either to date. When your supporters think your campaign and now your achieving the presidency means open season on them; in light of the man sentenced earlier this year for pouring boiling water and his girlfriend’s gay son and his boyfriend innocently sleeping in the same bed after a hard day’s work, oblivious to debilitating, horrifically painful second and 3rd degree burns he left on them necessitating weeks and months in the hospital respectively… Thus being a person with a disability I take particular umbrage to your mocking of a reporter housing an obvious birth defect to his hand, but rather than hold him up as an inspirational example for people with disabilities and what they can accomplish despite challenges, you made a caricature of him because he called you out on an issue. That not holding a candle to what you ordered your staff, security, to do, what they did to a 12 year old boy, also with cerebral palsy, fearful of what will happen to him and other children living in spite of disabilities upon your election; ejected from your Florida rally, your supporters chanting USA, shoving, kicking his wheelchair. We are your America too Mr. President with all of our abilities, quirks, special needs, accommodation requirements and things both tangible and intangible we give freely to society at large, not simply take from it. To that end I and others like me don’t need our social security, supplemental security income payments yanked out from underneath us beside senior citizens because you’re fellow party cohorts want to privatize the program in order to ‘save’ it from insolvency, snatched from us, though we qualify through rigorous parameters because you, your forming cabinet members think we can work. Completely sidestepping the reason many members of the disabled community, the developmentally delayed community, those with mental health struggles can’t work, don’t work, have such an agonizing time finding work independent desire to be productive is because the employment world refuses to make a place for us, recognize our abilities over our disabilities, employment being more about who you know that what…You have a Muslim little girl writing to you begging you to be good, she isn’t the only one vocally or silently pleading for you to do the right thing by all of the citizens comprising the country you fought and won the right to lead. Please Mr. President elect, be better than the basest campaign promises to jail your opponent, ban an entire religion from entering our borders, throw out all immigrants even those defacto US citizens born to illegals; please be better than all the hatred inspired, carried out in your name… To Trump voters on one hand I get it the solid, good paying jobs your parents had, you once had are no more, you don’t have that to pass on to your children, your grandchildren; they are all leaving for greener pastures elsewhere with better opportunities while used to be booming towns become ghost towns, barely survive, everyone’s on welfare, food stamps or social security, jobs pay minimum wage, maybe as high as $8.00 an hour. Then came the financial crisis, recession, people in bigger metropolitan cities 2 years later talking about recovery; at a time when you’re thinking recovery what recovery, and not just from the latest economic downturn we’ve been struggling like this for years and no one in Washington, in government speaks to our issues… Perplexing is the pride exhibited in a job, an industry actively making your children and grandchildren‘s asthma worse, taking serious chance you’re grandchildren’s grandchildren won’t have a planet to live on, at least not as we know it: clean water, air, animals a plenty; pride in a job, an industry, a tradition known to give it’s workers black lung, maxing out insurance, making it more difficult to get with a preexisting condition, simultaneously hating Obamacare. Perplexing is where the emphasis, seen in the 1950’s let’s say, on education has gone, knowledge once seen as a vehicle to bigger and better things than the steel mill, coal mine, if that’s what children chose, key word being choices, a larger swath of them, a larger swath of the world open to them fulfilling the 11th commandment to give better to your children than you yourself had… Baffling until it borders on irritation, particularly for my generation and anyone younger is how it is ok for older adults, by as little as 5 years, all the way up to little old ladies and mellow grandpas the former of whom were born into an era where they weren’t allowed to vote casting ballots on election day, to chastise millennials for their characterized unwillingness to move, relocate for employment, chase a dream cross country like fictional greats you read about in school a-la The Grapes of Wrath. While they’ve expected presidents going all the way back to JFK in the 60’s to save their coal mining, manufacturing jobs from progress, automation, not ‘tree huggers’ environmental regulation, alternative clean energies, dido manufacturing steel to cars, to goods you buy at Wal-Mart. Because… I don’t know it’s an American tradition, the American way somehow forgetting what’s happening in West Virginia coal country, throughout the rust belt today is what happened to California boom towns after the gold rush was gone, economies change, times change… Additionally proving public commenter 2’s point you’re not standing up demanding job training in comparable fields where you can use your skills at physical labor, clean energy refits to homes, putting solar panels on roofs to name 2 possible jobs, construction, plumbing, heavy equipment operation, HVAC; you’re howling bring back our old jobs. Mirroring what I said about Brexit, glaring, urgent need for local revitalization, both there and here, government nationally has failed in any plans to revitalize urban blight, Detroit to rural areas, i.e. West Virginia coal country, Appalachia, yet you’re not vocalizing your anger at local city, state, county commerce boards for having seen this coming for 50 years, reiterating public commenter 1’s words, and a total lack of even attempted diversification, business enticement to bring something besides coal mines, a manufacturing plant or 2 to your town meaning jobs, growth for your area, federal government entities for the same thing; you’re screaming bring back our old jobs… . Again where is the initiative to revitalize your own neighborhoods, communities, where are the non-for profits using donations to do what one Michigan woman did in honor of her son, collecting donations, putting neighborhood young men to work refurbishing bought dilapidated houses to create a library, park, homework house and café, local efforts with handyman skills and a bucket of paint putting a fresh look on Glouster Ohio, will to try opening a business or marketing an idea, entering a contest for anything you appear to have a talent in like the woman who entered a greeting card contest turning funny pictures of her dog into a business— redundant, these people haven’t tried once… Mostly I feel sorry for America post November 8th, I feel sorry for anyone who didn’t vote Donald Trump on their ballot, who chose any other name present, I feel sorry for what’s coming next to immigrants, gays, Jewish persons, Muslims and other minorities under this conservative, republican oligarch headed for autocrat. I feel sorry for the labor workers who weren’t enticed by something reading like a Johnathan Swift essay but everyone didn’t get the joke, I feel sorry for working class workers coming into dying fields, simple manufacturing who will have to contend with choices made by someone other than themselves. I feel sorry for the American Brexit-esque situation of regret, buyer’s remorse non-Trump voters know is coming when those who voted for him finally see through him, see he won’t keep his promises, there was never a way to keep them in the first place, that he literally pledged to do 21 long, lengthy, detailed things in one day, his first day in office when he and the majority of his staff will still be mastering building layouts and office spaces… Read More
