There are more heartbreaks in the world today, of course. Terrors continue in Gaza, Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo. There is no shortage of sorrows. Then close to home, there are those who don’t take the current moment seriously, there are those who don’t take anything seriously, including their own lives and work. There are people who don’t know what they don’t know. Some days a mean spirit and pettiness abound. There are those moments when I discover all these shortcomings in myself too.

At the same time, there are sparks of light that scatter these darknesses, even if only for a few moments. I have students so dedicated to poetry, they humble me. I have students who so earnestly want to learn, to know about the world, to become deeper thinkers. I have a brother, a newly resettled refugee in Canada, who tells me daily of the kind people he meets in St. Catharines, Ontario. The small interactions, the help offered. I don’t know if these sparks of light balance out the smallness and cruelties so easily felt. But these sparks of light do help.

If nothing else, these illuminations serve as reminders of the humanity we share, that we can amplify, that we can open our hands to, if we choose.

Today, we took a walk in Rock Creek Park, Washington, D.C. near our home. This is a common occurrence for me. I find myself there once or twice a week. In the winter, Rock Creek offers a bare and severe beauty. In the snow, it feels monastic, still, reverent. This morning it was all of that. We walked on a road that usually is not closed. But this morning, to our surprise, it was closed to traffic and we were there alone, with only one or two other walkers. We could hear the gentle power of Rock Creek itself far below us. We could hear starlings and other birds exploring the melting snow for something to eat. We could breathe in the 40-degree air in all its brisk freshness. I felt surrounded by beauty, by the waiting world itself.

I need to take more seriously my obligation to joy, to kindness, to telling the truth and then smiling, no matter how, or if, that truth is received. I don’t know if the world will ever reach a balance of joy and sorrow. I surely don’t know if the world will ever find itself operating on more joy than sorrow. Regardless, in the moments I have here I will wrap myself in truth-telling, kindness, and joy.

What will you do? What will you take more seriously? What practices can you undertake that might, as Aeschylus said, “make gentle the life of this world?”

Photo Credit: The author took these photographs in Rock Creek Park, Washington, D.C. late morning, 2/16/2026.

In 1967, Dr. King wrote his final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? I commend the whole book to your reading. Simply put, he says America is at a crossroad, where we can either choose violence or peace, thriving or suffering, economic stability or poverty, justice or injustice. He explores, in detail, what these choices might look like, not just for Americans, but for the world. In less than a year, he would be assassinated.

It looks today, like America has made its choice. We have to be clear-eyed about the country and the world we live in today. It is a sum of our choices.

In America, we have a president and an administration that is cruel, corrupt, and lawless. We have a majority party in the Congress and on the Supreme Court, that appeases them. They don’t dispute them.

While it’s clear today that many Americans oppose everything this regime does, most Americans chose it. They knew what he would do. No one can suggest they didn’t know it would be like this. In this way, while the president is a problem, he is not the problem. Americans have made a choice. This one man has given voice to the worst attributes of American society: its racist core, indifference to the suffering of others, a self-centeredness that disregards laws to which we have all agreed.

The landscape in which we live today is flooded with the cruelty, corruption, and lawlessness I mentioned above. It would be difficult to write a short summary of these realities without burying this reflection in the details. But let us look at a few of these realities.

Cruelty

The vicious language and behavior this president operates with daily, gives permission for others, who already hold the views at their core, to act with the same viciousness. Permission to slaughter Palestinians in Gaza, to foment hatred against vulnerable immigrants with lies, to degrade women, minorities, and anyone who disagrees with him. Perhaps because I am a poet, I care deeply about the language and its effects on our culture. To be sure, he does more than talk cruelly. He enacts with it every day. He shows in policies and actions large and small, a deep and conscious meanness. He shows in tone and substance a lack of care for the well-being of others.

We see the cruelty of this president and administration most clearly in its treatment of Black, Brown, LGBTQ, and other minorities. His language and policies create a permission structure for people and institutions to demean Black people, to harass any person of color, and to deny basic human rights to LGBTQ people, especially Trans people.

Corruption

From deals with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to domestic deals with businesses who work in the US, this president enriches his own family fortune daily with his work as president. We see others doing the same in his administration. Receiving gifts for his personal and permanent use is common, most laughably, but dangerously, a plane from the UAE worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Congress and the courts have completely failed in role of oversight. These crises alone have rendered America broken.

The president has turned the Department of Justice into his own legal firm. Where there is supposed to be a professional distance, between the White House and the DOJ, there is none. He uses the DOJ to go after his “enemies,” anyone who disagrees with him. For those of us old enough to remember the 1970s, this is shocking.

Lawlessness

This is a massive category to write about and perhaps the most damaging. The president is legally required to make sure the monies Congress allocates to any item or service get spent on that. This president has stopped funds appropriated by Congress, he has used appropriated funds for purposes other than what Congress chose and Congress has, again, allowed this. He destroyed USAID, an organization created and funded by Congress, that saved millions of lives every year. He has destroyed the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Environmental Protection Agency, (EPA), turning it into a watchdog for major corporations to pollute with freedom. This is entirely illegal.

Similarly, it is Congress’ role alone to enact tariffs on imports. However, this president does it daily as personal punishment to industries and countries who will not appease his desires. He changes tariffs twice before lunch on some days. But to be clear, anytime the president applies a tariff, he is breaking the law. Tariffs are reserved for Congress alone. They are failing America.

More recently, he has made, with Congress’ approval, ICE, Immigration Control and Enforcement, the largest law enforcement agency in the country. Its budget, now in the billions, exceeds all other law enforcement agencies in size and funding. They act with complete impunity in cities all over America. They kidnap, arrest, harass, and kill citizens and non-citizens, while wearing masks, working from unmarked cars. It is Nazi Germany’s tactics in the US.

In the same effort to terrorize Americans to obey his will, he has turned various parts of the US military on Americans in cities that did not vote for him. From Los Angeles to Portland, to Washington, D.C. to Chicago, and now in Minneapolis, he has illegally used state National Guard troops, ICE, and other federal agencies, to kidnap, harass and kill.

Have we made a choice?

While many Americans today are waking up to the destruction of our country, the destruction continues. It looks to me like we are making a choice. This is the America some people want. While many of us do not want this, are we enough? Will we do what is needed to stop the destruction of our country?

I wonder what I will write here on Martin Luther King Day, 2027.

The photograph above shows Dr. King in Detroit, Michigan, 1963. The photograph was taken by Francis Miller.

As some of you know, for the last several years, I have been involved in a project to help, resettle, and amplify the voices of LGBTQ refugees in East Africa. I first connected to the LGBTQ community in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, known as Block 13. After a couple of years, when it became clear that the Kenyan government would never allow UNHCR, (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) to process LGBTQ refugees, many of them, hundreds, undertook the dangerous journey to Gorom Refugee Settlement in South Sudan, where there were rumors and hopes that UNHCR South Sudan would work on their cases and move them toward resettlement. They did not all go at once, they went alone, in small groups, in couples, over the course of two years.

While there are still LGBTQ people in Kakuma Camp in Kenya, there are hundreds now in Gorom and they have received help. UNHCR South Sudan has done a heroic job of finding countries to offer them resettlement. They have done this in the midst of war and profound indifference among wealthier nations.

Let’s explore why LGBTQ refugees arrived here and then let me share some of the Christmas celebration happening in Gorom this Christmas. While the story of every LGBTQ person is unique, most of their stories contain similar details. Many of the LGBTQ people in Gorom today are from Uganda, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. Most of the people there whom I have come to know are men from Uganda. Recall that in Uganda, laws criminalize LGBTQ people and the criminal punishments include the death penalty. Uganda, a largely catholic country, is a viciously dangerous place for LGBTQ people. There are women too, of course, from all of the same countries. Their stories often unfold something like this: their families discover they are Gay, usually because they are caught with someone. The family, school, and village tortures them and then banishes them. These people, often as young as 15 or 16, usually make their way alone to a city, where they might find some refuge with other LGBTQ youth. They survive with whatever work they can find. They are often abused and not paid. When neighbors find out they are LGBTQ, their houses are burned, they are attacked, and once again banished. This happens over and over to some LGBTQ youth, until they finally end up at a refugee camp, either Kakuma in Kenya, or others. Many LGBTQ people are killed by neighbors, co-workers, and family, when they are discovered, never to make it to the relative safety of a refugee camp with other LGBTQ people.

In Kakuma, many experience the first LGBTQ community they have ever known. Block 13, a section of the immense Kakuma Refugee Camp, became a center for LGBTQ refugees, they became active on social media, they tried to take active control of their own lives. In Kakuma, they were often met with violence from other refugees, neighbors near the camp, even the UNHCR security in the camp.

After some had been there for years, rumors began to surface that there was a refugee camp in South Sudan where UNHCR might process LGBTQ refugees. Slowly, as they were able, people made the dangerous journey to Gorom, South Sudan. Today, there is a large LGBTQ community in Gorom, between 300 and 400 people. UNHCR has been processing people there and trying to get countries to accept them for resettlement. Canada, Germany, Australia and others have been generous. Under the Biden Administration, hundreds were accepted for resettlement in the US, but when Trump became president, that stopped immediately, leaving hundreds of LGBTQ people abandoned in Gorom with no pathway. The USA betrayed its commitment to these vulnerable people and to the other countries who were helping. UNHCR continued to work, resubmitting their cases to other countries and Canada has been a true world hero in this work. They initially took many Trans women, the most vulnerable people, into Canada. Today, they are taking many more people. Two of the people in Gorom whom I know best have finished their interviews, which often take years, and they are just waiting for flights to Canada. They could come any day.

Gorom has not been easy. Everything is expensive in Gorom because nearly everything has to be imported to South Sudan. Also, the government of South Sudan regularly threatens to evict all of the LGBTQ people because they are LGBTQ. UNHCR has found ways to calm these threats and they have not come to pass yet. Still, South Sudan is a dangerous and violent place. Many people have guns and Juba is not a city one wants to be in at night. South Sudan is a lawless place.

A few years ago, my friend Episcopal Deacon Ethan Bishop-Henchman and I, founded an organization called AND YOU WELCOMED ME. We have worked to advocate for the LGBTQ people in Gorom to various embassies, asking them to open more slots for resettlement and to accept these vulnerable people. We have sought to find people in the US who can befriend and support them. We have also worked to amplify their voices because they can speak on their own behalf.

Christmas in 2025, sees the largest number of LGBTQ people waiting for resettlement. Usually, people gather in groups of 10-15, share their resources, and create a Christmas gathering among their friends, “chosen family,” as we in the LGBTQ community call it. This year, some of the people I know were going to do the same thing, gather their resources and make a meal for 10 or so people. However, because some are leaving soon, they decided to pool all their resources and have a larger Christmas celebration. They purchased a cow and are having a much larger Christmas gathering this year. The reason? So that those who are not yet processed, can say goodbye to those they have known for years, for some, since Block 13 in Kakuma in Kenya. The moment is full of gratitude and anxiety: gratitude that some LGBTQ people are going to a place where they can live and thrive, but anxiety because many are not going yet.

I learned just this Christmas morning, that their shared meal served around 300 people. These are among the most vulnerable people in the world and they cook, feed, and serve one another. This is Christmas.

When this next group moves to Canada, there will still be many LGBTQ people left in Gorom, and of course, there are thousands remaining in places like Uganda and Kenya, where being known as LGBTQ can be a death sentence.

AND YOU WELCOMED ME will continue to be present to the people in Gorom. As we recall the birth of Christ in poverty and peril, as we recall the Holy Family’s escape to Egypt, seeking safety from a dictator’s violence, we will stand beside the LGBTQ people in Gorom and we hope you might join us.

If you are interested in our work, reach out to me at josephross20017@gmail.com and explore our developing website at andyouwelcomedme.org You can make a difference. Together, we can all make a difference for some of the most abandoned people in the world.

As the Trump Regime continues to ravage people living in America, citizens and guests alike, as well as American institutions, one of the best tools for people of conscience is our ability to create community for collective actions. It is easy to feel alone, easy to be discouraged. Sometimes it’s necessary to rest in that loneliness and discouragement, but it’s important not to stay there too long. This new ugliness in America counts on us getting tired and not staying in the for the long haul. But that is where we are and where we must be.

Trump and his vicious fascism didn’t arise overnight and it won’t be healed overnight. We must reach out to like-minded people and stay on track.

Whether it’s a neighborhood organization, based on where one lives, or an interest organization, based on a cause one cares about, these are the places we must begin, connect, meet, and ultimately, to protest.

Sometimes I think it makes sense to look close to home first. Neighborhood organizations are often very effective because their scope is immediate. Does your neighborhood, town, or region have an organization whose purpose is to protest this administration? Consider http://www.indivisible.org http://www.common http://www.cause.org http://www.naacp.org or http://www.hrc.org among others. More locally, consider http://www.freedcproject.org All of these groups oppose the administration for a number of reasons. You don’t have to agree with everything a group stands for to stand with that group. But connect with others. That is what matters.

Masked men, with no uniforms, no badges, no identification, are grabbing people off the street, from Home Depot parking lots, from outside immigration courts, schools, churches, hospitals and many other places. They use violence that is unprofessional and brutal. They take people to massively overcrowded facilities and then move them without their families knowing where they are. Some of these people have lived in the U.S. for decades. For one example, read the story of Narciso Barranco HERE. Some of these people are undocumented but that need not result in the cruelty being unleashed on them.

These arrests and this policy do not reflect anything about American values. These masked men do not answer questions, they do not explain why they are arresting the person. They do not explain where they are taking the person. They do not respect due process and the rule of law, to which, even undocumented people have a right. I am not going to enter the debate about whether we have a police state yet, because clearly we do. When masked, unidentified agents can grab people off the streets and take them away, America is lost.

As in the first Trump administration, when it was clear that “the cruelty was the point,” today it’s clear that the cruelty is the policy.

In the meantime, the Congress is about to pass a huge budget bill pushed by the administration. One of the many horrors in that bill is a $170 billion increase in the budget for ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This makes ICE the largest law enforcement agency in American history. Please note that is larger than the entire budget of the U.S. Marine Corps. If this passes, ICE will have the funds to continue, enhance, and multiply the illegal, vicious, and un-American behaviors it is doing now.

Is this who we have become? Is this who America is now? If you ever wondered what you would have done during the Holocaust, American slavery, or the civil rights movement, look at what you are doing right now. That is what you would have done.

Photo above courtesy of Kai Coggin and Bryan Borland during a NO KINGS protest, June, 2025

Perhaps the element of his work that most distinguishes him among poets is that he is a white poet who writes about race. While this is a complex landscape, he does it with respect, depth, beauty, and art. Many poets who, as Ta Nehisi Coates would say, have been “told they’re white,” avoid this topic. Philip C. Kolin is one who embraces writing about race, especially America’s brutal racial history, because he sees addressing it as necessary to healing and reconciliation. I admire him in this.

He is not only rare in his concerns, he is rare in that he is a very talented poet. His language, built with gentleness, holds surprise, clarity, rich images, and ramps into contemplation. My experience of reading his poems almost always includes reading, then stopping, and imagining my way into one of his images. He takes me somewhere I have not been.

His newest book, Evangeliaries, from Angelico Press, came out in 2024. It is rich in the themes I noted above. Philip C. Kolin is a prolific writer. He is the Distinguished Professor English Emeritus at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is also Editor Emeritus of Southern Quarterly. Over his long career, he has written over forty books on Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and various African American playwrights. He has written fifteen collections of poetry, among my favorites are Reaching Forever, (2019, Cascade Books) Emmett Till in Different States (2015), and White Terror, Black Trauma: Resistance Poems about Black History, (2023, both from Third World Press).

Personally, Philip C. Kolin is a kind and supportive poet. I have to admit here, he has supported my work in remarkable and generous ways. I am glad his work is in the world and I am glad to call him a friend. Perhaps that is more personal than most reviewers allow. But there it is. I hope you will consider his work. It challenges, confronts, soothes, and teaches. Its art holds beauty and surprise in equal measure.

Let’s explore a few of the poems in Evangeliaries.

Evangeliaries is divided into five sections. Many of the poems use reference to Jewish and Christian scriptures. But all point us to the world we inhabit, a world where flawed people, strive for goodness. These poems are not preachy in any heavy-handed way. They show and invite. I love that about his work.

In “The Poor in Spirit,” shows us the heart of a spiritual life in orienting one’s self toward others. “The poor in spirit” were the group first mentioned by Jesus of Nazareth as those who would inherit God’s kingdom. Kolin’s poem shows us why.

…they wash lepers’ feet
and bestow bread on the poor.
They care for orphans and widows.
At Easter they plant lilies everywhere.

He goes on to conclude:

If they have the keys to the Kingdom,
it is only to unlock it for others.

He writes in “Federico” of a medical doctor who worked with the poor in Nicaragua.

You sought holiness by being one of them,
relieving their poverty of loneliness

by touching them in brotherhood.

He writes also of resistance and bravery when he says that Federico also acted to subvert suffering.

When the Sandinistas came to take Christ
off the cross to interrogate him for insurrection,
you hid his wounded followers.

One of Philip Kolin’s great strengths as a poet is that he shows us moments in life and lets us discern what they mean. He takes us places we would rather not go, as in “The Women’s Shelter.”

The shelter is almost always full–
booked with running invitations because
a spouse battered so many commandments.

It is a hospice for the terrified of heart…

One of my favorite poems in this collection is “The Capuchin Food Trucks.” This poem shows us friar followers of Francis of Assisi feeding the hungry in a city somewhere. This is the religion I understand.

On Tuesdays and Fridays they bring miracles
to the homeless multitudes who live on the rough edge,

under bridges, tucked into flea-lined
bedrolls, or over grates on soul-chilling nights.

He goes on to describe their work–

to feed a crowd of mouths missing
teeth, futures, infected by despair.

I urge you look for Philip C. Kolin’s work, especially the titles I noted at the links above. Philip C. Kolin’s work will last and survive because his topics root in the world we know. His artful poems hold beauty and accessibility, they matter. We will be reading his poems in a hundred years.

In this reflection/review, I will comment on a few of the poems that give this book its singular beauty. It is a collection I return to often these days.

One of the most stunning poems in this book is “Shoah survivor defends immigrants in sacramento march 29, 2017.” This poem has powerful resonance today, given the mass deportations, largely illegal, the Trump administration is enacting. The poem recalls a holocaust survivor, Bernard Marks, having an exchange with Thomas Homan, who then was the ICE director. Today Homan is the administration’s immigration “czar.” Marks says, and the poem quotes him as saying, “history…will not be on your side,” to which Marks condescends quite dramatically, “poor little man…knows nothing of the legalities.” It takes quite a bit of confidence to over rule a survivor of the holocaust when it comes to suffering, but Homan has that confidence. The poem’s power is that it doesn’t preach, it just recalls the conversation. It leaves the reader with the fact of what was said and the truth the conversation reveals.

In the poem, “texas snow,” the poet recalls her own lack of knowledge of what it might have been like to work enslaved in Texas cotton fields. The humility in this poem stands in powerful contrast to the arrogance in the earlier quoted poem. This poem, in numbered section, recalls:

distance distant
time called past
when black hands/brown arms pulled these white
blooms
dragged cotton sacks
under a texas july sun
my silence is such a painful distance
what do i know
and
what i cannot know

Hickman, a Catholic religious sister, takes a dive into scripture for a few of her poems. In “the flight into egypt” she imagines the holy family as refugees.

it must have been spring when they left
she olive dark and child
and he with tallit over fervent shoulders

She does some similar imagining in “eight questions for even after eden.” She wonders:

what did you feel when adam first made love to you

and then

years later how did you learn of abel’s murder
the death of your second child

and

finally, what did you feel when you watched him go
a marked and haunted man

In the poem, “the retired lady at the texas assisted living facility” she takes a simple moment and sees its extraordinary richness.

“a thousand times thank you”
she told me
then she walked away pushing her cane
and her coke bottle bottom glasses gliding
her down the hall
she the small scrap of paper
she the dandelion blown into wishes

There is a second poem about a Shoah survivor. She recalls standing in a Post Office line when she noticed a woman in front of her with the tattooed numbers on hard arm.

i thought she was a cancer survivor
then i noticed her left arm
on the glass counter to the left of us
numbers inked into her skin
since then
when i remember her
i also remember soup lines
ashes and swirling smoke

As in this poem, perhaps this is what Hickman does best. She notices. She sees what many of us would look past in our rushing. She notices and then she writes of it in the simplest, artful ways. She does not hype, she does not understate. She states with precision and humility, admitting what she sees and what she does not see.

While there are many more poems I did not mention, poems about religious sisters serving as Civil War nurses, about broken people and moments of beauty, this collection is a little scripture, a prayerbook for those times when I don’t want to see. It serves as a book of observations that are true and beautiful at the same time. While it’s easy to see the hard truths of our country and world today, it’s not always easy to see beauty too. Lou Ella Hickman helps us with that very human challenge.

On this Martin Luther King Day, 2025, we’ve also “got some difficult days ahead.” We inaugurate a president whose policies, language, and actions are about as far from Dr. King’s vision for America as one can imagine. He regularly uses racist language, violent language, and proposes policies that demean immigrants, people of color, women, LGBTQ people, nearly everyone except white men. He talks about the working class but promises policies that help the wealthy. He lies regularly, showing disdain for competence, expertise, and kindness.

What can we say that America chose this man to be president? How do we go forward into these “difficult days?”

If we truly believe in Dr. King’s vision of a just, peaceful, and compassionate world, then we cannot give up in the face overwhelming difficulty. While we have to take care of ourselves, we cannot go silent in the face the cruelty the new president promises.

We must reach out to others. We have to make connections with people with whom we can build Dr. King’s vision. Whether this means joining organizations that promote economic justice, nonviolence, or racial equity, we must join with others to build the world we want.

We cannot normalize the new president’s violent and vicious language and behavior. The more “normal” his words and actions become, the more difficult it will be to build after he is gone. We have to remember that many young people do not know many politicians other than this president. While his actions are shocking to many of us who know the norms and guardrails our country have lived within, many are not shocked by his words and actions. In this context, we must speak up, to point out the cruelty and incompetence of his behaviors and policies.

Some people have said we cannot confront or resist every act he takes. Perhaps. But we also cannot afford to let him poison the culture we know we need to rebuild. We have to call out, confront, and name the cruel behaviors we know are coming.

He promises mass deportations of our neighbors. We must confront this. If we have friends and family members in police departments and various parts of the military who will be called upon to carry out these cruel actions, we have to talk to them about what they will participate in, how much they will do before they say refuse. Police officers and members of the military must be clear as to what is a legal order and what is an illegal order. They must know their rights and their conscience. We do not want friends and family members to be asked to do something they know is wrong, but then to just go along simply because they have not thought it through.

He promises to allow police departments to use more force than usual. He promises to remove all efforts at building diverse and equitable communities in schools and other institutions. What will we do when we see people silenced in our workplaces? What will we do when we public funding withheld from states, counties, cities that disagree with the president?

Dr. King envisioned a world free of, what he called, the giant triplets: racism, materialism, and militarism. We must be ready to speak up and act up when we see these realities in our midst. And we already see them. Just as Dr. King refused to be silent in the face of these injustices, we too cannot afford to be silent.

Even though we have “difficult days ahead.”

The simple fact is that America has always carried a strong strain of racism, sexism, homophobia, fear of others, and simply put, hatred. While this is not all America carries, it is a significant part of our culture. After the election of 11/5/2024, there is no denying this.

On a feeling level, the election was a gut-punch. I truly thought we were better. But we are not. That’s hard to admit, hard to think, hard to write, hard to accept.

In spite of everything we know about the cruelty of Donald Trump, Americans chose him. Despite what we know of his angry, small, vicious, character, Americans chose him. Despite the hatred he speaks and amplifies against Black and Brown people, women, LGBTQ people, those in any way “other,” those who disagree with him, Americans chose him.

At least now we have a more clear view of who we are, as Americans. We know.

In light of this awareness, how do we respond? What do we do? To be honest, I am not ready to write much on this yet. I know a few things: 1. We need to listen to those who are hurt by this election. We need to hear what they have to say. 2. We need to consider what it means that Americans chose this. 3. We need to stay connected and begin new connections with those whose lives will be affected by this new choice. We need to consider our own talents and imagine how we can use them in more effective and life-giving ways to build the country we still desire.

Having taught American Literature for many years now, I am convinced that the most beautiful vision of America is not racist, sexist, small, or cruel. It is the dream of Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes. It is the dream of Emma Lazarus and Lucille Clifton. It is a dream of an America where all are welcome, all are valued.

More on this in the coming weeks.

I took the photograph above at the gate to the Viriginia Mae Center, Washington National Cathedral, Washington, D.C.

I know people have strong feelings about this and I know many of my friends have strong feelings about Harris and her support of Israel. Please remember, there is no perfect candidate. Voting for an American President is always a calculation: Who will do the most good? Who will avoid major harms to the country? In this year’s election, I think the question is two-fold: 1. Who will maintain American democracy? 2. Who will not unleash cruelty on particularly vulnerable people? Given the realistic choices, Harris/Walz is the right choice.

Refugees presently in our country and those who hope to come here, are depending on us to not elect a vicious, racist president. As many of you know, I have been working for some years to help LGBTQ refugees in East Africa come to the United States. We are on the brink of real progress in this effort as the U.S. readies to accept many LGBTQ refugees from Gorom Refugee Camp in South Sudan. These are East African LGBTQ refugees who had lived in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya for many years. They made the courageous journey to South Sudan when it became clear that the Kenyan government would not allow UNHCR to process their cases. If Trump is elected, this program will come to an immediate halt. These vulnerable people would be subject to years more danger and uncertainty in countries where their very existence is illegal. The U.S., under the Biden/Harris administration, has been slow but it is moving now to accept and resettle many of these people. My family and friends are working to sponsor one of them and I have been involved with others in helping to resettle several of these good people in the D.C. area. This is life-saving. Please remember how your vote will affect these people.

Similarly, everyone knows the mass deportation plan Trump and his allies are preparing. There is no reason to believe he will not do everything he can to execute this vicious plan. The world is convulsed with refugees and people are vulnerable. Even the refugees and asylum seekers who are in the U.S. now will be vulnerable to Trump’s new plan should he be elected. His world view is a cruel, self-centered, incompetent view. It does not matter how much the U.S. economy needs these people. He will damage their families and their futures. Remember what the Trump administration said last time about separating children from their refugee parents: “The cruelty is the point.”

Remember too what Trump will do when it comes to people of color and policing in America. He will encourage the worst elements of American policing and his Justice Department will close consent decrees with city police departments who are especially brutal to people of color. There will be no progress on more just policing if Trump is elected. We cannot afford four more years of unchecked state-sanctioned violence against people of color. But we can expect it if Trump is elected.

I know many of my friends oppose Kamala Harris over her support of the Biden administration’s policies regarding Israel and Gaza. I understand this concern. I would just say that remember what Trump will do. He will give Israel free rein to destroy people in Gaza and Lebanon, and who knows where else. Remember also that Harris, as Vice-President, was not free to dissent from the Biden administration’s policy. It seems to me that Biden honestly tried to get Israel to limit its response to October 7th but he completely failed in that effort. At least Harris has spoken clearly about need for both Israel and the Palestinians to live in peace and security. She has seen and spoken about the suffering of Palestinians. I know it has not been enough but it is far better than the alternative. As I wrote above, voting for an American President is always a calculation. It’s not a matter of perfect conscience. No candidate is going to match up completely with one’s values and hopes. Regarding Israel and the Palestinians, Harris is far better than Trump. And those are the two choices.

Consider also what a Trump victory will mean for your LGBTQ friends and neighbors here in the U.S. Trans youth will be under complete attack with no Department of Education to support them. LGBTQ families, like mine, will similarly be under attack. Can Trump reverse gains in civil rights for LGBTQ people? Will he create a Supreme Court that will overturn marriage equality? Of course he can and he will. He can do a lot of damage through Congress, executive action, and especially through more Supreme Court appointments.

Please consider these ideas I have written here. I know there are other issues which matter too. But these are top of mind to me. There are vulnerable people in the world, and here in the U.S., for whom Harris/Walz will offer much more help and hope. Please use your vote to support them.