A Letter to my “Representatives”
(The following letter, with the addition of a personalized introductory paragraph) will be going out to the senators and congressperson of my district… and perhaps others. If the letter says anything you’d like to say, please feel free to copy, paste, adjust it for your own uses if you are so inclined.)
While I know that you are not directly associated with the events that have taken place at Standing Rock, or with the deportation of refugees, it’s your name and address that I have and unless our system of government is now completely broken, as I understand it, it’s your job to take input from so-called concerned citizens. And speaking of your job, I am sure that you do your best to do your job well. I understand that and I appreciate it; I think the majority of people do. And I think that the majority of people are good people.
That said, I am mystified by a supposedly Christian country conquering a land and its people, taking their land from them, murdering a fair number of them for trying to keep their own homes and then attempting genocide to make them disappear…. as if they had never been here. I am ashamed to live in a country that can act as though it ever had any kind of right to do such a thing and that now, having begrudgingly ‘allowed’ these people a little piece of their own land on which to live, that they attempt to take even that away.
We live in a country where a so-called Statue of Liberty stands at the gates of one of its largest, most populated and diverse cities in the country and bears the words, “”Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores…” Apparently we mean none of it.
I am ashamed to live in a country where monster corporations that generate enough wealth to feed a country will crush whomever they need to grow bigger, to buy bigger yachts and bigger houses for themselves and have the gall to claim that they are both superior and worship a God that is superior.
Steve Miller — and others — displaying publicly, in the line of duty — the white power symbol? An immigrant woman awaiting brain surgery removed from a hospital and incarcerated? Mothers separated from their children? Transgendered kids deprived of the right to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with? (These kids are born that way, you know; they or their parents have to make a choice at some point and it’s been shown, from decades of parents making the choice at birth, that that doesn’t usually work out.) Peaceful protest being outlawed??? I don’t know what to expect next… oh, wait, yes I do. Our already underfunded schools which are turning out students with less than mediocre language skills and math skills that are even more mediocre are going to get even less money which equals even less qualified teachers which equals an undereducated populace which, while fit to work in factories and fields is unfit to make decent life decisions.
This is shameful behavior. This is disgusting. Laws are being trampled underfoot, treaties ignored, people devalued and attempts made to keep the rest of us knowing as little as we can possibly know about what is going on. Where do I live? What land is this where the luxurious, overblown and unnecessary desires of corporate owners are given priority over the necessities of life for the common person, I think this may be hell itself.
It was always my understanding of Christianity that people had souls… that ALL people had souls and were of value, that ALL people were equal in the eyes of God. What kind of Christianity is this that is being propagated now? No person who had any kind of honor, never mind religion, would allow this kind of thing to happen.
I can recall as a child being terrified by stories of the Nazi regime, by the pictures that I’d been shown by my uncle of bodies piled high like so much downed timber. I knew that people did bad things as a child, bad things were done to me, but until I saw those pictures I had no idea exactly how bad it could be, and now I feel as if there is every possibility that most of the people in this country are about to be overwhelmed by the very same kinds of people who initiated that genocide and slaughter, subject to the kind of secrecy that goes on when evil is being perpetrated. I am sad beyond words… and I am angry too, but I am old and a little crippled and, golly, if the standards get any wider for who is worth keeping alive and in this country, I suppose I may have something to worry about. Meanwhile, I’m worried about everything. This country was never perfect but it strove for improvement constantly in ways that were for the most part dignified and thoughtful.
Standing Rock, mass deportations, and a loss of civil rights are only a few aspects of a very ugly trend towards denying the humanity of people. Here in West Virginia where I live, the companies that frack for oil have little regard for people’s drinking water… I’m sorry, have literally no regard for people’s drinking water. Water is necessary for life. How does anyone, any corporation, justify depriving someone of what they need to live? Of taking away someone’s land simply because they need it to make more and more and more money by pulling out of the earth a fossil fuel that will end up polluting the air, causing disease and damage, when it is common knowledge by now that both solar and wind power can provide all the energy we need.
There is no president that runs this country, greed runs it.
Who is it that wants to live in a world where generosity is non-existent, where compassion is ignored, where the vast majority of people apparently just don’t matter? I’m glad to have had a life in which I had the chance to feel as though I were free and to enjoy a simple pleasure like clean water from a well and my heart breaks for those who will not get to know those things.
People are people are people no matter what god or gods they worship or don’t, no matter what color their skin is, no matter where they come from, no matter if they were born into bodies that didn’t make them easily identifiable as boys or girls. No people are better than any other people and no amount of money can make it so. If you have a heart and a soul in your body, please remember that everyone else does too and please, please think on that when you make the decisions that you must make in the course of your occupation, working for the people — all the people — of OUR country.
Very sincerely, the daughter of an immigrant and the great granddaughter of two more immigrants,
Victoria Pendragon
