Day 251- Leadership

Dear Mr. President,

I generally do not hold you accountable for the actions and beliefs of those who support you. Martin Peretz, for example, may be a prominent member of the media and a self-described democratic loyalist, but when he expresses his view that Muslims have no claim to first Amendment rights, I don't blame you for that. I do, however, expect you to speak out. I do expect you to show the rest of the world that America cannot accurately be represented by cult leaders in Florida or racists in The New Republic. I expect you to speak out because the world is watching these people and it is watching you.

I don't expect that you act alone. I think that you should get every prominent and influential politician in this country, Republican and Democrat, to collectively issue a condemnation for these hateful acts and words. To challenge Americans to rise above this, to be better than these small-minded men and women would represent us to be. I can imagine the power of you, both former Presidents Bush, President and Secretary Clinton standing together to make this request. I may not have agreed with President Bush, but he has an obligation to speak to the parts of the country still irrationally enraged at Muslims over 9/11. A tangible demonstration from current and former GOP leaders might go a long way toward calming down the violent Islamophobia on the right, just as you, Bill and Hillary Clinton might do for the left. I believe that silence in the face of these dangerous swells of anger is tantamount to complicity.

We expect our leaders to stand up in moments like these. I'm not asking that you outlaw the perfectly legal actions of these groups (no matter how reprehensible or dangerous they might be.) This isn't a legal issue but a moral one and you still wield enough influence over any audience you speak to that a few words from you might yet summon the humanity in these people to make them reconsider their actions. At the very least, it will demonstrate clearly that they do not act in the name of all Americans. This morning all I could think about were the young boys and old men in Palestine who asked me over and over again to tell my country they were not terrorists. Their own helplessness in the face of a media narrative that could not be stopped was deeply moving. I think I finally understand what they felt like. I want to write a letter to the world and say, please, believe me, American's aren't racists, we're not bigots, we're not violent and hateful and irrational. Please don't judge us by the actions of a few crazy people who act in our name.

So I hope that before Saturday you and every other influential American with access to a microphone has taken to the airwaves or written in the papers or published on the internet an unequivocal denunciation of the Qur'an burning and the rallying cries against Islam as a religion and Muslims as people. We must show the world that this is not who we are, and that has to start with our leaders. I think that few days in recent memory have as much power to transform as this year's eleventh of September has; I don't want to wake up Sunday morning and wonder what country I'm living in.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 128- Mom (part 1)

Today and tomorrow's letters are going to be connected, both because I think my mom is so awesome that I want to write two letters about her, and I'd like to spend tomorrow with her, not working. Today's letter will be completed before midnight and tomorrow's will be written just after, so I apologize for the short space between posts, and the relatively "fluffy" letters. I'll be back to real politics on Monday.

Also, check out the Mother's day event Michelle Obama hosted this week at the White House, if you're interested.

Dear Mr. President,

My mother is an amazing woman. She's raised three girls, worked her whole life to help others, for years serving our community as a police officer, specializing in helping children and victims of sexual assault. She certainly deserves more than just a day of celebration. I know you understand the important role that mothers play; I enjoyed your writing about your own mother in Dreams from my father, and your obvious respect for the First Lady shows how much you continue to appreciate the difficult job of raising children. My own mother has taught me countless things; she's prepared me for life as an adult by emphasizing self-sufficiency, education, and accountability. I think she would have liked to pass on more of her predilection for cleanliness and organization, but at least I got her eyes, her political leanings, and her sense of humor.

Tomorrow my sisters, brothers-in-law, and I are taking our mother to a baseball game. We don't get together as often as we should, even though we live relatively near one another. We all work, different hours and different days, we all commute, and my youngest sister has a young son to take care of as well. These excuses make it easy for us to go weeks, even months, without getting together. When I lived in DC, my mother would send me little cards every month or so; some had newspaper articles she thought I'd like to read, others were signed from all of the family cats. It made me feel close to her, despite the times zones that separated us. Now that we work in the same city, it's sad how little time we actually spend together.

My mother reads everything she can about you and your family, and especially admires your wife a great deal. I think she'd like it if I told you a bit about her. She's as remarkable as any woman; her story is unique and incredibly commonplace. She grew up in Michigan, the middle of 5 children, and wanted to become a teacher. She's great with children and animals, she's compassionate, brave, and sarcastic. Also, she can't watch the news without arguing with or yelling at the TV. I don't know her nearly as well as I'd like. She's made me the person I am today; I'm grateful to her for all of the wisdom and courage she's instilled in her children.

Mr. President, you've often spoken out for the importance of equal pay for women; you've worked to improve our education, health care and other social services, and you've appointed female role models like Hillary Clinton and Sonya Sotomayor. Thank you, for your commitment to our mothers, and the mothers of generations to come.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 79

Dear Mr. President,

Today a 16-year-old boy was shot and killed. His death, which will escape notice of your office or comment from you entirely, is due largely to the fact that he was Palestinian. He had no guns, he had no knives, he had no bombs. This boy, this child was shot by the Israeli military because he threw stones at men with flak jackets and automatic weapons. Tell me, Mr. President, if this boy were not a Palestinian, would throwing rocks be justification enough for his murder? Where is our outrage now, Mr. President? Where is the diplomatic scandal, where is the phone call from Secretary Clinton? Have we lost so much perspective, so much humanity, that we are willing to summon more anger and the slighting of our Vice-President than we are at the murder of a child?

These riots will only continue, the anger will only grow worse. The Palestinians cannot sit idly by while their children are being shot in the streets. He was 16 years old, Mr. President. His name was Muhammad Qadus, and he was murdered in the streets of Nablus today because we allow the weak to be oppressed, because we look the other way as their rights and their land and their dignity are taken by the bullies we fund and arm and support, because we give them nothing but stones. Today, I am so ashamed of the world we have created.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 73- Wha?

Dear Mr. President,

I'm shocked. I'm dumbfounded. The forces for transparency and justice seem to be winning! Secretary Clinton is upset, demanding answers. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is setting up a team to investigate this egregious offense. The scandal is all over the news.

No, it's not about the blockade of Gaza that's punishing 1.5 million people for the actions of a handful of militants. It's not about the arrests and attacks on peaceful protesters in Bil'in. It's not even about the illegal construction of 1600 Jewish-only settlements in East Jerusalem. This uproar is over the fact that the settlements were announced during Vice President Biden's visit to Israel. Wait, what? THAT is what we're upset about? THAT is what PM Netanyahu is asking a team to investigate? The timing of the announcement.

Mr. President, please tell me we are all still grown-ups. Who cares if VP Biden was there when it was announced? Would it have been any less awful if he hadn't been? Why are we mustering so much outrage over the impoliteness of this and not the injustice? Forgive me if this letter is just a series of questions, sir, as I am so appalled by the pettiness of my own government that I can't muster an articulate statement about this. This is like being invited to feast on poisoned food and complaining that we weren't given the right dinner fork. Excuse my bluntness, sir, but we pay for them to violate international law, and then cover for them at the UN when it gets ugly- are we really going to cry foul because they dare do it in our presence?

Respectfully yours in utter disbelief,

Kelsey

Day 7

Dear Mr. President,

Reading about you and your father is difficult for me, as it reminds me of my relationship with my own father, which I have conducted without your grace or self-awareness. I was raised by women, scolded and shaped as a person by my mother, my grandmother, my sisters and by the wisdom of so many teachers. My father lingers as a specter in my memory, not absent, at first, but certainly not present. Men in my early life were large and loud, they lived in comfortable chairs in front of the TV; set dressing for the defined, complex female characters to interact with. Men were manifestations of will, their anger hung in the room like a cloud, their favor elated me, their participation in activities or conversation lent importance and gravity. I grew up never resenting this, playing with the boys at recess and having slumber parties with the girls, never concerning myself with the differences in roles that were so obvious in adults.

You arrived in New York with your father's letter, full of the instructions to find your place that you, at the time, found inadequate. I read this and cast about in my memory for what "dime store advice" my father had sent me into the world with, and I can recall none. Instead, I enter the world fearing men, while at the same time searching each one for the unconditional love I feel is somehow owed to me still. (I'm sure even the most casual student of psychology would cite writing to you as a manifestation of this absence, as well.)

I've grown up in an age where "feminist" has, unfortunately, come to mean something militant, angry, inherently anti-man and, by extension, anti-traditional woman, as well. I grew to consider myself a feminist without ever feeling comfortable with the connotations, aware of the inherent sexism in many aspects of our society, but unwilling or unable to offer any practical alternative. When the nomination race for the 2008 election began, I initially supported John Edwards, as I'd been impressed after meeting him at a book signing, and excited by his proposal to forgive student loan debt. (The subject of another letter, but certainly a proposal worth considering.) After the race narrowed to just you & Mrs. Clinton, I read the Op-Ed that Gloria Steinem wrote in support of Clinton and felt, (as I'm sure Steinem intended,) that it was almost traitorous for me, as a feminist, not to support Clinton. This was a fleeting feeling, as I found myself drawn to the tone of your campaign, unimpressed with her tactics, and generally reluctant to support a candidate with her unconditional-to-the-point-of-unreasonable support for Israel. Did this make me bad feminist? Did I owe it to generations of suffragists to submit to the higher calling of electing a female president? Or did they, in fact, struggle to free me from this?

Sometimes it seems like life is a series of conflicts, falsely characterized as Good vs. Evil. Men vs. Women. Black vs. White. Republican vs. Democrat. Christianity vs. Islam. As I've matured, I've learned to reject these teams as constructions, attempts to unconditionally divide me from some people and bind me to others. These teams are safe, easy, even, at times, expedient. There are days when it still feels like a game, interacting with men, playing by their rules, striving for the approval or love that they define and they control. But I don't think that this applies all men.

Today I watched my nephew, who is one and a half, and the first male baby to be born in my immediate family. He, too, has spent his early life being raised by women, women like me, who lack a clear idea of what a good man is. Are we equipped to raise this child alone? Can we give him enough examples of who he wants to become? Luckily, he has a caring and responsible father figure, recently introduced, but happy and eager to show little Asher what a good man is. I am so grateful for him, and for the number of positive male influences I have had throughout my life. This gratitude reminds me to check my sweeping characterizations of gender, or my fear of a passing male figure on the street at night, reminds me to judge people as individuals and not as reflections of or upon any larger group.

On my arm, I have a few lines by Elizabeth Cady Stanton; "in that solemn solitude of self, that links us with the immeasurable and the eternal, each soul lives alone, forever." She spoke about self-reliance, about not ceding our ability to defend or support ourselves to any other, not because they cannot always be trusted, but because they cannot always be there to protect us. Not our parents, or our mates, or our families, or even our government. Learning to reconcile this self-reliance with the companionship we all need is where life gets difficult and complicated. You, sir, are a role model for my nephew, a figure I hope he one day aspires to be like, not because you are the perfect mythological figure of Manhood, but because you have reconciled the power of your position with the humanity that limits us all. Thank you, for that.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 6

Dear Mr. President,

Today the clashes at the Egyptian border have me thinking about Gaza. It's been more than a year since Operation Cast Lead. It has been one year, and still the reconstruction has not been allowed to move forward. One year and still the 1.5 million Gazans are kept near-starving by blockade. One year and still the people have not turned against Hamas. You, of course, already know all this. You know how much the people of Gaza suffer, you know the atrocities detailed in the Goldstone report, you know the role the US played in the conflict between Hamas and Fatah that led to the blockade in the first place. You know the punishment America and the rest of the international community were so swift to deal out when the Palestinian people held elections in 2006 & the results were not to our liking.

Not long ago you accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. You were awarded this honor due largely to your return to a diplomacy-based foreign policy, your belief in the power of non-violent solutions. You have reached out to the Muslim world in many ways, the most prominent of which being your speech in Cairo, in which you said "The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own."
But, of course, you know all that, too.

Why, then, am I writing you a letter about things that I know you already know? Why am I writing you a letter about a situation that must weekly, if not daily, require your attention? Because it has been more than a year, sir, and nothing is better. So much, in fact, is only getting worse. On your watch.

Not long ago, I sat in the living room of a Palestinian family in a small town outside of Nablus called Awarta. It was during the end of your primary race with Hillary Clinton, and already clear to us that the general election would be between you and Senator McCain. The father of the family, upon learning that I was an American, advised that I should vote for you. "Both would be bad for us," he said, sadly, "But at least Obama will give you health care."

I understand the political reality that makes supporting Palestine so difficult for you as a president. But that reality is not greater than one year of the needlessly prolonged suffering of civilians, of children, all because Israel may punish without fear of reproach from its allies. How are we acting in Israel's best interest by turning a blind eye to its transgressions? How are we serving peace when we undermine Abbas's authority by pressuring him to defer action on the Goldstone report? What does this accomplish, besides weakening the moderates and perpetuating the bleak reality that radical elements thrive upon?

You know the answer, sir. It has been more than a year. It is time to make your words in Cairo, the spirit of your Nobel Prize, and the promise of your presidency a reality. Do not let another year go by with no hope for Gaza.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey