The Torch of Resistance

We've seen the dark days of late where the burning torch of Lady Liberty seemed to smolder in the wake of tyrannical efforts to tear apart our nation's moral fabric. We've seen our bedrock principles of religious freedom, equal protection, and due process come under assault by a president who takes advice from a white nationalist that peddles in conspiracy theories and alternative facts.

We've seen our government single out a religion and mistreat tens of thousands of people with visas and green cards: lawful visitors and residents, college students and professors, cancer researcher scientists, businessmen and women, actors (including an Oscar winner), U.S. Army translators, friends and neighbors, people with families and jobs and houses and pets and productive lives in the United States. We've seen seen our government prevent residents from boarding planes bound home after a work trip abroad or a visit to a sick family member, people who had the legal right to be here. We've seen our government yank law abiding folks off planes, detain them in our airports for over 15 hours, interrogate them without access to attorneys, separate families from their young children, and send people back to foreign counties in the face of court orders telling them not to do so. And we've seen our government deny shelter to refugees, mostly women and children, widows and orphans, turning our nation's back to the huddled masses fleeing a burning war torn country, yearning to be free, people whom America had already accepted after a strict, 18-24-month security vetting process.

We've seen the majority party in control of Congress, with a few notable exceptions, enable this atrociousness either by cowering in silence, in fear of a angry tweet, or by vocally supporting it in the hopes of enrichment in the form money or power. We've seen enabling from our fellow citizens who either choose to look the other way or who continue to vociferously support the man for whom they voted no matter what he does. President Trump once joked that he could shoot a man in the middle of 5th Avenue and his supporters wouldn't care. This joke is playing out in real life right now, in the broader context of an insidious agenda with far-reaching global consequences.

We sometimes look back in time and wonder how our country could've allowed certain historical atrocities to occur, such as when we forced Japanese-Americans into internment camps or refused to accept a ship filled with nearly a thousand Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and failed to pass legislation that wouldve admitted 20,000 more. We like to think it could never happen here again. But it could. And we are starting to see how the groundwork is laid.

We are being governed by a man who governs by fear itself, making us afraid of others in the name of security, dividing us, trampling civil liberties without due process, and stiff-arming those who desperately need our help. Just look at what's happening right now, and think about how ugly it could get if we were not living in a period of relative economic and geopolitical calm.

These are times that try our souls, when hope gives way to fatigue and despair. But amidst the darkness are moments in which the smoldering torch of Lady Liberty reignites, where America's greatness shines though the dark fog, guiding us to her beacon of light. These are the moments when citizen-heroes emerge to inspire us and give us the fuel to fight.

We saw this on January 21st, when millions of Americans peacefully marched to stand up for the rights of women and made their voices heard. We saw it when citizen-patriots rushed to airports, from New York to Los Angeles, to stand up for the rights of our Muslim brothers and sisters. We saw it through the tireless work of civil rights attorneys and organizations, like the ACLU, who spent their nights and weekends fighting for the constitutional rights of others. We saw it when acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates refused to defend an unconstitutional executive order at the expense of her job. We saw it through the brilliant work of Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson who fought and won a momentous court battle, convincing a Republican-appointed federal judge to halt Trump's disgraceful Muslim ban: not a "so called judge," but an honorable United Stated District Court judge who put his country before the political party that put him in power.

These moments are the sparks that ignite us and fuel our resistance. When the president uses fear to justify persecuting others, we will resist. When he abuses his power, we will resist. When he threatens the freedom of the press, disparages our judges, and undermines our Constitution, we will resist. Senator Elizabeth Warren summed it up well: "We will resist every single effort to make America into a small and spiteful place."

The resistance will continue as long as our core national values are under attack. We owe it to the brave Americans who fought and died for our civil liberties. And though the fight is far from over, it is one that we will win. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. so wisely observed, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."