Writing - Page 10 - Clare McCullough

The Woman’s march on Washington was a collection of identities that intersected in one purpose; rallying for Civil Liberties. Joining together for the freedom that was promised to us as our birthright. America is our home; she is our adopted mother. During President Trump’s inauguration speech, he promised to put America first.

But his rhetoric is indicative of a single type of America, a single story. The American that is of European decent. The one that is rich in money and intolerance. The one who has gotten what was promised to him from the moment he was born. That is not the Common American. She is one of many faiths, ethnicities, abilities, orientations, occupations, genders, and other many cultures. We are proud, intersectional, and we are strong.

The America that I know is one that is made stronger by our differences. The lines that divide us; we use to build the strongest foundations. We have grown from 200,000 in 1963 (History) to 470,000 in 2017 (NY Times). Arm in arm we march and we lend our voices to each others life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

We marched for that America.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a preacher who was viewed as more of a threat to our society than the disease of segregation, than intolerance, and especially the domestic terrorism that has been waged and still is being perpetrated against the most vulnerable of us. In my eyes this domestic terror starts with hate speech, and that violence has no place in this nation.

During the hearing of Dylann Roof, a young man who shot nine black Americans in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Chruch on the basis of their race; a victim’s family member said this “We are the family that love built, we have no room for hating” (CNN) Our strength in the face of violent hate and after losing so much, is forgiveness.

But, we must remember the pain of extrajudicial killings from police officers; the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, and countless unnamed others whose justice was denied without police accountability for their fatal actions. Remember that the change we need doesn’t come from a single person, it comes from a movement, it comes from a place of love.

We have not come to denounce each other, we are here to grow in our understanding of each other. To show our solidarity to all others who are also living their nonviolent struggle for peace. I am here to say that Black Lives Matter, Islamophobia is Anti-American, we stand in solidarity of our water protectors in Standing Rock as well as all those people still suffering in Flint MI. Among so many others we stand in solidarity. We must answer the hate by filling the world with more love. I’m hoping by standing out here that the other side will see the validity and soundness of our arguments and appeals. They will gather around the firmness of our truth and our love.

But as Gandhi once wrote back in 1918 in the Indian times, “Prejudices cannot be removed by legislation… They yield only to patient toil and education.”

Donald Trump attended Fordham University and the University of Pennsylvania (BS). And in places of such learning, it saddens me that some lessons didn’t stick with President Trump. With his prosperity, he went to turn over the earth, instead of building bridges and he built walls around his home.

He forgets that we are not opponents on either side of an ideological war. We are not authoritarian soldiers coming to take everything that he holds dear. We have no guns, no tanks, no swords; We only have our pens, our voices, and our want for peace. Especially for those backs that this country was built on. Those who are still searching for the freedom that they came here to find, and who’s justice has been denied for far to long.

To invoke the words of Martin Luther King Jr, just before he was shot like so many of ours today. I have been to that mountaintop, He saw America for all that she could be. He was dismissed as a radical by many but as he states in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” He is a radical of love. He lived the revolutionary moment that existed in his mind. And like him, I have seen that shining city upon that hill.

You are here because you have seen what I have. You have heard the words of our new president and you know that those words do not represent America, our shining city that exists in all of our minds. We have seen a world were people are heard and believed and protected from those who would do us violence. Looking at the past of America; we know that intolerance will fail as all things tended with hate do. Progress is achievable because when we rise with love in our hearts; we win.

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M1WJ48_wac&w=854&h=480]

“There is nothing more American than peaceful protest”

— Russ Feingold

http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/march-on-washington/videos/martin-luther-king-jr-leads-the-march-on-washington

Essays

Empathy is Prejudice?

by Clare McCulloughon February 3, 2017February 3, 2017Leave a Comment

You’re most likely to empathize with people who are like you and those who have been kind to you. Empathy is vulnerable to bias; you must choose who you believe; choose who is important. Paul Bloom describes this as a “Spotlight effect” in his book, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion – we focus on certain tragedies while unable to empathize with those who are affected by them every day. We shouldn’t be trying to be empathizing while making decisions, because we’ll always play favorites and we won’t know where to put the bright-line. Ask yourself if altruism is really the best tool to solve these problems. While It’s okay to feel outrage for someone; it’s okay to feel grief for someone but, those who devote themselves to compassion are not using their empathy. Doctors do not focus not on feeling bad for others. It’s useless to live suffering vicariously through others, that will only leave you sad, drained and ashamed. Instead focus on the problems that causes that suffering, even when we use empathic ideals and galvanize people in order to get things done.

With this “We have to do something” mentality we laser-focus on certain issues we empathize with, and as a society the issues that we chose to address are not to those who actually may need our help. Our existing biases aided and reinforced mostly by an empathetic largely white mainstream media, while never trying to solve the root causes. People still do nothing; being empathetic is not only useless but a unsustainable mindset to use a framework. Often, our gut feelings are not good policy. Sometimes military intervention is necessary but there is too much suffering in the world. We cannot alleviate all of the harm done, and most of the time we do more harm than good. The reason for military action shouldn’t be based on empathy, it should be based on effectiveness.

Essays

The Super Power of the President

by Clare McCulloughon February 3, 2017February 3, 2017Leave a Comment

As Barack Obama stepped down and continued the tradition of peaceful transfer of power, another man with radically different political goals took his place. Donald J. Trump was elected November 8th 2016 and since then his administration has begun sweeping changes via the dismantling of regulatory executive agencies such as the EPA, and other executive orders, such as the ban on travel between us and seven Middle Eastern and African countries. But what does the leader of the free world really do?

A very important power of the president is called an executive order. In the first two weeks of his presidency Donald Trump has used his single-most powerful tool liberally. Presidents have been getting stronger since the beginning of our government. Executive Orders, according to NBC, “stem from a president’s desire to bypass Congress. The legislative body is not required to approve any executive order, nor can it overturn an order. The best it can do if it doesn’t like an executive order is to pass a law to cut funding for the order’s implementation. But even then, the president can veto such a defunding law.”

The President is the Chief Executive Power; Commander in chief of the army, his decisions affect every aspect of our government. The president’s role isn’t covered in the constitution extensively, so its hard to say where the limit was intended to be. Throughout our history the presidency was shaped by the wearing down of time.

Franklin Roosevelt expanded the power of the presidency in the New Deal by issuing over 3,000 executive orders over the course of his presidency. With the start of World War II, FDR issued the executive order to force any US citizen of Japanese descent into internment camps, which has been regarded as one of the more deplorable acts in US history. FDR was also the only president that had served for more than two terms. Another time decades later, during the 70s, Nixon reluctantly begun the Environmental protection agency and passed the Clean Air Act due to public pressure.

According to the Constitution, Congress should be the center of lawmaking as well as deciding whether or not we go to war. However, during the cold war, the president was given unilateral authority over the CIA, which during this time was doing a lot of shady things abroad to say the least. (Klein) A president has tried to wage full out war without congress’s approval, which ended up as the 1973-war powers act which checks the President’s power to commit to conflict.

Which brings us to the fact that our separation of powers; checks and balances itself but it doesn’t operate the way people think it does. The president is the leader of party, country, and entire executive branch. But he’s not all powerful. He’s not superman. He needs cooperation from party and the nation. Guantanamo bay is a good example of party blocking, for example; Bush was blocked and Obama was blocked by both his own party and the GOP. He had to sidestep congress and execute his executive order just like so many presidents before Obama.

In 2014, Obama tried to revamp immigration processes and help undocumented migrants in his executive order but was blocked by the state of Texas along with 26 other states; In United States v. Texas, No. 15-674. Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, stated “Today’s decision keeps in place what we have maintained from the very start: One person, even a president, cannot unilaterally change the law, This is a major setback to President Obama’s attempts to expand executive power, and a victory for those who believe in the separation of powers and the rule of law.”

While a President’s executive orders were ultimately meant to further the quality of life for the common American and therefore fulfill their duty, a check of powers is necessary in order for a government to work sustainability and service its people properly. A solid democratic and representative Government is not based on the whims of a single administration, or a single group of people. It is based on the strength that our diversity and our reason brings us.

http://www.cnbc.com/2014/01/28/executive-orders-what-they-are-and-how-they-work.html

https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation

https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/obama.html

Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Metropolitan /Henry Holt, 2007. Print.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/24/us/supreme-court-immigration-obama-dapa.html