This Independence Day should come with an asterisk.
It’s hard to celebrate our freedom when this beacon of hope that is America dimmed its light for the world when it created a concentration camp style barracks called Alligator Alcatraz.
The United States has a president who jokes about people outrunning alligators, people who aren’t convicted criminals, people who are simply hungry for hope.
Alcatraz was a prison for dangerous convicted felons. The newly detained will be people who came here for freedom from poverty and persecution, freedoms we so cherish in this country.
His “migrant detention facility” will house up to 5,000 people in a remote area surrounded by alligators in the Florida everglades. Republican leaders are selling Alligator Alcatraz merchandise online.
Supporters of the facility sunk to a new low of cruelty in a country that once offered compassion and kindness, the kind Lady Liberty still promises in that harbor.
She offered it to all four of my grandparents. This is what Independence Day looked like to my gramma:
A crowded boat full of people like her, “tired, poor, huddled masses masses, yearning to breathe free.” She's there in the crowd. In the second row on the left, the first woman seated, the one wearing the white hat.
My mom is somewhere on that boat. A tiny baby. So are her three brothers and her sister. Ever since I found that photo, Independence Day means something different to me. Something more than fireworks, cookouts and s’mores.
It’s a day to give thanks that my ancestors chose America to call home. And that America let them in. Welcomed them.
All four grandparents made that choice. They left all they knew to venture across the sea for the great experiment that was America. They passed through New York where Lady Liberty still stands and still offers this invitation:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Those words Emma Lazarus wrote are the welcome mat to America.
I want them to still mean something.
I want our country to stand as a beacon of hope to the tired, the poor, those yearning to breathe free, whether they be from Mexico or Mali, from Ecuador or El Salvador, from Sudan or Somalia.
My dad’s parents left Ireland as teenagers. Michael was 15 and an orphan; Mary was 19 and had already lost her mother.
America was their hope. Their golden door.
My mother was born in Czechoslovakia. Her parents had told her she was born in Akron. It was a lie, probably one based on fear.
My mother had no papers.
My mother was an illegal alien.
We joke about it now, but it scared her back then. Would she be deported? My dad had to contact someone in Washington to get the mess straightened out. Mom became a U.S. citizen in 1961, when I was 5.
I wish we could have celebrated her naturalization with red, white and blue fanfare, with sparklers and songs. But my mom’s past was never celebrated. Back then, being an immigrant was something to forget, not something to celebrate.
After Mom moved into assisted living and we were preparing to sell the family home, I found a blue folder. Inside was my grandmother’s green card. I never knew my mom had saved it.
My gramma’s nationality is listed as Undetermined.
America welcomed her anyway.
My ancestors greet me daily every time I walk upstairs to write. My gramma on the boat, her green card and my mom’s naturalization document. I created a wall of fame for them all and for my grandparents from Ireland.
I want my grandchildren to know where they came from and how far their great, great grandparents traveled to choose the hope that was, and is, America.
My grandparents were WWII refugees from Estonia. The difference I think, though, is that our families were/are white, and while the advantages were small, they are still advantages over the circumstances of today’s predominantly non-white immigrants. I think that plays a big part in why today’s situation is so fraught and unfair.
A wonderful piece that resonated with me deeply—I often find myself reflecting on similar sentiments over the July 4th holiday. Thank you for articulating it so beautifully.
I love your sense of history. Something I feel is terribly important and often lost with younger generations. I’m struggling with something to celebrate…something to rekindle. It may be my Kindle that saves the day!