The ban is back and we still hate it
I’m sitting in the commons talking with my friend when her phone lights up with a notification from Apple News. “Oh my god. There’s a new travel ban.” she says. Confusion and anger wash over us and we just sit there looking at each other dumbfounded. How can someone, let alone our President, be okay with keeping people out of country all because of their religion on native country? It doesn’t make sense to me or my friend along with many other people on campus.
Trump has already created so many orders and legislations it’s getting hard to keep up with him and the fear of what he is going to do next looms over us. After the first travel ban Trump signed in to order had been blocked by the federal government, he decided to “reevaluate” and try again. The current order now includes 6 countries that people without visas or green cards can not get into the United States.
While his first travel ban was met with extreme protests from people around the country in multiple different airports, it is unclear how this new ban will be “accepted”. Many politicians, activists, and organizations have already condemned the ban and are calling on those who agree to fight back. Just as people did during the first ban by protesting and donating, there is so much that can be done again.
The President claims that the order is to “protect our country from ISIS,” but this order is actually dividing our country and creating an even more negative rhetoric around the Muslim community. Living in this country is all about freedom and liberty. Coming to this country allows for people to do what they want and express themselves without fear of backlash. This order takes away everything this country is believed to be.
Lila Ella Gray writes in her book Fado Resounding: Affective Politics and Urban Life that “Fado as genre is sticky; unofficial and official histories, rituals, sounds, styles, affects, memories, and biographies attach to it, circulate, morph.” Politics, just as fado is in Lisbon, is sticky in our country. We have good and bad times in our history just as we have parts in our history we want to remember and we want to forget. This is a time in our history where we will one day wish to forget, but it’s also a time when we have a movement of people pushing back.
Negative or positive these next four years are going to make a huge impact on the number of protests, activists, and more happening in our country.
