To Some Of Us, The Lincoln Memorial Is Home
Bob Vogel, Regional Director of the National Park Service, Washington D.C. 20242
Dear Mr. Vogel,
You don’t know me, so let me start by introducing myself. My name is Cristina Lopez and I left my home country, El Salvador, to pursue career and life dreams in this country about 4 years ago.
I wasn’t planning on staying here (no one with an actual understanding of how arbitrary and harsh the American immigration system is would, really). I had a home and a life brimming with love and friends in a land where it’s always summer. A land that I love, so much, that I tattooed its volcano skyline in a finger on my right hand so that I can take it with me wherever I go.
However, two years into what I thought was a temporary stint away from home, something changed. I fell in love. Not with a person, with Washington, DC. Conditions in my country had become harsher, so much that the chances of building a life I loved in the place I called home were growing slimmer. I needed a new home. I needed to stay. Unfortunately, because loving DC isn’t the kind of love that ends in marriage and a visa, staying would require jumping through the million hoops of the immigration system, battling uncertainty, and getting a job. And I would have never been able to go through all of that if it hadn’t been for November Project, the community I met at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The place that after 2.5 years, the agency you lead wants to ban us from.
It was in this steps that, while running up and down, I met mentors who coached me through the uncertain waters of the job market. Friends who gave me hope and encouragement in the darkest hours of the immigration battle. What started as “I would really like to stay because I love DC” eventually, after months of running the Lincoln steps, evolved to “I can’t possibly leave because DC is now home.”
Luckily, immigration authorities let me stay. So home — the feeling — took a geographical meaning as well. So much, that I felt it was only fair that I honor it with a corresponding tattoo, on a finger in my left hand. It wasn’t hard to figure out which place, out of all the places in DC, was most representative of that feeling of home: I tattooed the coordinates of the Lincoln Memorial in my finger. So I can take it with me wherever I go.
So, Mr. Vogel, before making a final decision — because I’m sure you guys don’t mean what you said in that letter — please join us, at least once, at the steps of Lincoln for a workout. You’ll never feel more welcome, whether you’re an athlete or not. You’ll find friends since day one who will tell you Lincoln secrets probably hidden even from you, at the top of the NPS. I’ll even share one of them with you now: If you’ve seen the sun rise behind the Capitol and paint the Lincoln reflecting pool with the colors of fire, you’d know why Abe never gets up from his marble throne. Who would want to lose that seat?
Your ads this year told us to find our park and we did exactly that, 2 and a half years ago. Our love for the Lincoln Memorial and our weekly dates with its stairs are not a threat to you doing your job, but in fact, a reflection of a job well done on your part by creating and preserving spaces people actually want to be in. It’s precisely my appreciation for the job that you and the thousands of good-willed people at NPS do something I bring to mind every April, to make tax season less bitter.
So please, please don’t take Lincoln from us. You’d be taking our home.
Respectfully,
Cristina Lopez G.
