We are nearing our 100th letter to President Trump. This has been an exercise in civil discourse from the very beginning, but it has also been hard since we suspect that on one in the administration is reading our letters -- and a one-way correspondence is hard to keep up. The original idea was also to participate in democracy by expressing ourselves and letting the president know what we think -- but again, if no one in the White House is reading our letters we aren't exactly participating in democracy at all.
We are trying to decide what to do after letter 100. We have talked about maybe redirecting our efforts to congresspeople and senators since they are more likely to read and respond. We have some other ideas as well.
So we are going to take some time off to figure this out before we write our way through ten more letters or so and hit 100. We'll be back at the beginning of July. Thanks for your interest and support.
--Our Family
(Oh, and today's letter is below).
President
Trump
The White
House
1600
Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington
DC 20500
16 June 2017
Dear
President Trump,
On the
campaign trail, you frequently spoke of yourself as a winner (and of others as
losers). I was thinking of that when I
was reading yesterday and ran across this quote from Benjamin Barber: “I’ don’t divide the world into the weak and
the strong or the successes and failures…. I divide the world into the learners
and non-learners.” (quoted in Dweck,
2016, p. 160.
Since you
have taken office I have been opposed to nearly all of your policies, some of
which I have viewed as potentially catastrophic for our nation and the
world. Through your presidency so far, I
have, perhaps unfairly, viewed you as someone who is a non-learner. I based that in part on your rejections of
science, your tendency to rely on bullying and denial when confronted with
criticism, and your dismissal of anyone who disagrees with you.
Then I read
in this morning’s New York Times that your administration has decided to allow
the children of illegal immigrants (sometimes called the Dreamers) to stay in
this country. This tells me that I have
perhaps unfairly dismissed you. This
action gives me hope.
There are
roughly 800,000 people affected by this decision. Most of them are kids who have grown up in
this country – often children of parents who fled oppression or unsafe
conditions in central and South America.
These children, in many cases, speak only English, and America is the
only home they have known. To deport
them to a country they have never seen, where they are not a citizen, where
they have no place to live, and where they do not speak the language is, by
definition, to endanger them.
I am heartened
that you had the conviction to make the right and good decision to retain the
DACA act, even though doing so may make you unpopular with some members of your
conservative base. Thank you.
Regards,
Bill
Boerman-Cornell
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