I want to feel positive. I want to wake up feeling better. I want to believe maybe Trump will not be as bad as we imagine. But then Trump selects his cabinet: "A man associated with white supremacy and misogyny as the White House strategist; a man rejected for a judgeship because of alleged racism will be attorney general and an Islamophobe who has taken money from Moscow as a national security advisor." (Kristof, 11, NYT, 10/20). Not encouraging.
I have signed up for the Muslim Registry in the event they decide to deport and question Muslims in this country, many of whom are my students and friends. I went to a Muslim wedding just the other week. And I said, when people questioned me, I understand the Civil Rights movement, how people were willing to go to jail for a cause, and yes, I am not Black, but does it matter? How many Whites marched to Birmingham alongside Martin Luther King; how many Jews ended up in jail, since once upon a time, Jews stood up for human rights, since they understood them intimately; they had suffered the elimination of six million relatives in the Holocaust.
The older I get, the less frightened I become. I am becoming that little girl told by her father (mine) that I could do and be anything; that the world was my oyster, that-according to Franklin D. Roosevelt, "The only thing to fear is fear itself."
I feel fearless in the face of social injustice, since what do I have but my voice? If that sends me to jail, so be it, though I still believe that would never happen. As an only child, I have many brothers and sisters in the world to defend, and defend them I will, and I can only pray some kind God up there will defend and commend me for standing up for what I believe in!
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