Letter on Immigration from our friend Lori Evenhouse

On Wednesdays we expand our family letters a bit to include our friends.  All letters on this blog are also mailed to the White House.  In the event that we get a reply from the President, we will scan it and post it on this site as well.

 

 

1110 E. 168^th Place

South Holland, IL 60473

President Trump

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Washington DC  20500

1 February 2017

Dear President Trump, 

In the early part of the 20th century two of my grandparents, then children, came through Ellis Island and became citizens of the United States. They were fortunate to not have to flee religious or political persecution; they were coming to America to join extended family already here and start a new life. I am the granddaughter of immigrants and while every person's experience is different - some more dramatic than others, some more dire than others -  coming to that realization about myself made me think very carefully about what it means to come to United States in hopes of a better life and reunion with family.

Refugees don't have the luxury of leaving one home to go to another. They are without a home, without security and many times without family. They have already gone through one of the most in-depth and extensive vetting processes, often waiting years to be reunited with their children or parents. They have petitioned relentlessly for the privilege of making their home somewhere safe and secure. Every person has the right to these things and this group is particularly vulnerable - why should we hold back the same opportunities that were afforded to us, to our parents and grandparents?

We should be safe in our procedures and welcoming to those looking to come to this country - these two ideas are not exclusive.  On Ellis Island there were rules and procedures in place to ensure safety and security. But even then, the thousands coming through those doors each day, were welcomed from other lands, "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore"

Because my great-grandparents and grandparents stepped off of the boat and onto Ellis Island, I need to do everything I can to make sure that other Americans in the future have the chance to be with their families, live safe lives and to say "I am the granddaughter of immigrants." 

Sincerely, 

Lori Evenhouse

 

Advice from a Fourth Grade Teacher

President Trump

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Washington D.C 20500

31 January 2017

 Dear President Trump:

          My fourth grade class is a wonderful, creative, inquisitive bunch of nine-to-eleven-year olds; nevertheless, they need daily reminders nudging them toward inclusion, kindness, and peaceful behavior. They come in many shapes, sizes, and colors.  The day of the election, one thoughtful young man told me in all seriousness, “If Mr. Trump gets elected, it will be the end of the world.” 

          You were elected.  It is not the end of the world, but it is—according to the Doomsday Clock—now two and a half minutes to midnight, whereas it stood at three before the election.  That sounds too much like making American frightened again. 

          What could you do today that would reverse that?  Consider this my daily nudge urging you toward inclusion, kindness, and peaceful behavior as well.

Sincerely,

 

Amy Boerman-Cornell

         

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How to be a better president

Our youngest daughter made these suggestions about how President Trump could be a better president. 

This is our ninth letter to President Trump.  No replies yet.

 President Trump

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington D.C. 20500

39 January 2017

Dear President Trump,  

I was recently thinking about the qualities that could make you a better president if you could put them into practice more. I will list five characteristics/words below, along with their definitions, so that you will know what I mean.   

Kindness: (noun) the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate.  You could be kind to Mexican immigrants by not building a wall to keep them out.

Welcome: (verb) to greet (someone arriving) in a glad, polite, or friendly way.  You could welcome Muslims into America. Not all Muslims are terrorists--that’s an extreme generalization.

Presidential: (adj.) having or bearing a demeanor befitting a president. You could act more presidential by getting off twitter and not yelling at reporters. 

Self-control: (noun) the ability to control oneself, in particular one’s emotions and desires or the expression of them in one's behavior, especially in difficult situations.  You could use some self-control when others say mean things about you. The Bible tells that if someone slaps us in the face, we should turn the other cheek, instead of lashing back at them.

Accepting: (adj.) amenable; open.  You should be more accepting towards people who are different than you are, whether that be in the way they look, the way they talk, or the way they act.

I think if you tried to do these things, it would make you a better president.

Thank you,

F.

Freedom of the Press

President Trump

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Washington D.C.  20500

28 January 2017

 

 

Dear President Trump,

 

As a senior in high school, I took what is probably my favorite class of all time, AP US Government and Politics. We were required, for the final exam, to pretty much memorize all of the amendments to the US Constitution. Some were more difficult to remember the particulars of, but the first amendment was easier to remember, as both political parties invoke it often to bolster their side of an issue. Anyway, it's as follows:

 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I would like to write you several letters concerning different parts of this amendment, but today my point is about the freedom of the press. Quite frankly, this is something that has concerned my since the early days of your candidacy: the way you treat newspapers and websites that have written unkind things about you. Unless they publish something that is absolutely false about you, in which case I would support a decision to pursue litigation against them, it is unconstitutional for you to discriminate against them in any way. This is true when you were just a businessman, but it is even more true now that you are the president of the United States. To persecute journalists, even if they are writing horrible things about you, sets a dangerous precedent. I'm not the only one who thinks so. 

Benjamin Franklin said, "Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government: When this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved." John Adams, the second man to occupy the position you now hold, had this to say: "“But none of the means of information are more sacred, or have been cherished with more tenderness and care by the settlers of America, than the press.” Finally, Thomas Jefferson states that, “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” 

Sir, I am not the only one who firmly believes in an unrestricted press in America. I stand in good company. 

Regards,

K

Save the EPA!

 

President Trump

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington D.C.  20500

27 January 2017

Dear President Trump:

The Chicago Tribune reported on January 25 that you have issued an order to Environmental Protection Agency employees telling them to “temporarily suspend new business activities” and also “barring news releases, blogging, or social media posts.”

The Tribune did not report the reasoning behind this move, but I wanted to write you to let you know that, as a citizen of the United States, I consider the work that the EPA does to be vital and important in protecting the quality of life of the American people and I encourage you to lift both these orders immediately.

My dad spent his entire work life as a construction manager and I know that sometimes environmental quality rules made his work difficult.  There were times when he was frustrated by the need to preserve wetlands on a job-site, or to have to wait for an environmental impact report before starting work.  I understand his frustration.  Perhaps it is these aspects of the EPA’s work that you are reacting to.

But I also know that there have been huge environmental disasters in the United States as a result of either ignorance or deliberate choices to maximize corporate profits at the expense of the people who live in the regions where the disasters have occurred.  Whether we are talking about the Love Canal disaster in the 1970s, where the Hooker Chemical company left 20,000 barrels of toxic waste on a site, causing higher rates of leukemia for residents and requiring a superfund operation that only finished cleaning up the site in 2004, or the current USS Lead Superfund site in East Chicago – we are talking about an agency that can make life better and safer for many Americans. 

I do not understand the order to prevent EPA officials from talking about what they do.  Free and open communication leads to informed legislators and citizens.  A gag order is the sort of thing I would expect from a totalitarian despot, not a president of a democracy. 

I don’t work for the EPA, but I am glad it exists.  I want it to continue cleaning up disaster sites and continue enforcing anti-pollution laws so that more of this sort of thing does not happen.  If you shut down this agency, you will cause people to get sick and die.  That is plain and simple.  

It is my hope that, as President of this country, you will reverse these decisions that put the people of our country at risk.

Regards,

Bill Boerman-Cornell

 

 

 

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Cancer and Insurance and Stuff

President Trump

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington D.C.  20500

26 January 2017 

Dear President Trump:

I know that you and congress are working to repeal the Affordable Care Act.  I first want to ask you to spare two provisions of it.  And then want to ask you, in your replacement proposal, to consider retaining the spirit of the ACA.

I am a hard-working person.  In the 27 years since I graduated from college, I have worked full time as a writer, editor, high school teacher, and college professor.  Throughout this time, I have been employed full time, even while working on three more college degrees. 

Six years ago I was diagnosed with skin cancer (melanoma).  Because of the ACA’s provision that guarantees that insurance companies cannot drop me because of a preexisting condition, I have been able to continue to work full time while battling cancer.  During those six years, I have taught close to a thousand students and have help them get responsible employment and become tax-paying citizens.  When you and congress repeal the ACA, I may be unable to get insurance if my college switches carriers.  Because of my preexisting condition I may  consequently may be unable to get employment.

The ACA also has a provision that prevents insurance companies from imposing a lifetime limit on spending by the insurance company per insured person.  I was on an immunotherapy study that eventually gained FDA approval.  That drug, Pembrolizumab (or Keytruda) is expensive, but has also shrunk my tumor.  In three months, I will be able to go off the drug.  However, if that provision is taken away, I will have surpassed the lifetime limit as it existed before the ACA.  This means that even though I will be healthy and able to contribute to my insurance plan, I will be unable to benefit from it. 

Finally, though this does not affect me directly, the ACA allowed many people who did not have health care to gain access to it.  Studies have shown that when people do not have health care, they cost the system far more because they need to rely on emergency rooms for care. 

So if you and congress must repeal the ACA, when you replace it, please ensure that the provisions for no preexisting condition clauses, and for no lifetime limits remain.  And if you want to save money, either continue coverage for those who got insurance under the ACA, or if you really want to improve on the ACA, as you said you do, extend coverage to even more Americans than were covered under the ACA.  

Thank you for considering how to take care of Americans.  It is important.

 

Regards,

Bill Boerman-Cornell

Some Empathy Talk

This blog is about our family's attempt to send a letter to President Trump every day of his presidency that has mail delivery.  Since family is kind of an open term, on Wednesdays we will feature guest writers who are sort of a part of our extended family.  This letter is from our friend Tony.

 

 

President Trump

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington D.C.  20500

21 January 2017

 

President Trump:

 

Scanning the headlines on the morning after your inauguration, I made a Freudian slip: In place of your proclamation that “the time for empty talk is over,” I read “the time for empathy talk is over.” For a split second I thought you were dismissing President Obama’s repeated calls for greater empathy during his presidency--but of course you meant to dismiss all of his words and actions over the past eight years as “empty talk.” And yet your inaugural address also contained the seeds of a powerful form of empathy that I hope will mark your own words and actions as president.

 

I may have misread that headline because I’ve been talking about empathy a lot lately with the students in my community college English classes. We’ve watched Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk on “The Danger of a Single Story,” for example, which challenges all of us to move beyond shallow or stereotypical views of others by listening to--and really hearing--their individual and collective stories. We’ve been reminded by Roman Krznaric that empathy is not “a nice, soft, fluffy concept” but something “fiery and dangerous,” not merely an individual emotion but a vehicle for social change.

 

Some may hear in your proposals a repudiation of empathy, at least of the sort of empathy that progressives enact when they embrace equal rights for women or fight for LGBT Americans or proclaim that black lives matter as much as any other lives. Many Americans--so many of us--are deeply worried about your plans for America.  And the words of your inaugural address did not calm those concerns: in fact, when you assured us that “There should be no fear,” some of us felt only more fear; and when you promised that “Now arrives the hour of action,” some of us could hear only a threat.

 

But your speech also promised that you will work for all of us, that your “oath of office” was “an oath of allegiance to all Americans,” and that pledge was grounded in an appeal to empathy. You described the struggles not only of unemployed factory workers but also of children “born in the urban sprawl of Detroit,” and then proclaimed that “their pain was our pain”: the very definition of empathy.

 

My hope, though, is that you will ground your actions as president not in a “nice, soft, fluffy” version of empathy, the kind that says “I feel your pain” without first saying “let me hear your story.” I’m hoping instead that you embrace a much more radical, challenging, fierce kind of empathy, grounded in the recognition that there are as many American stories as there are Americans, and that listening to only some of those stories inevitably skews any understanding of “we the people.” If you mean what you say about representing all Americans, I hope you will commit to listening carefully to a lot more stories. As Chimamanda Adichie concludes her brilliant talk, “Stories matter. Many stories matter.”

 

Where can you find those stories? Some of them you will need to actively seek out, to be sure; others, though, will come right to your door, in the form of thousands of letters from American citizens. My final plea is simple: That you will direct the interns or staffers reading through all of those letters to pass on some of the most challenging ones to you each week along with some of the most supportive. Listening to even a few of these voices each week may be the very best way for you to insure that, as you promised, “the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.”

 

Sincerely,

Tony VanderArk