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Adrian Reyna
Strategy Director, United We Dream
Adrian Reyna
I was born in Mexico, and grew up undocumented and queer in Texas. My whole life, I was taught that I would overcome the struggle of being undocumented by having a piece of paper saying I belong in this country. This is false. As long as there are immigrants, women, and black, brown, queer, trans, and native people under attack, no one can be free—because our liberation is connected.
We must reckon with the consequences of race and class in communities of color, and have an honest conversation about it.
We must right all the wrongs that have come with creating a police state that prosecutes communities of color: the mass extermination of native people, the brutalities that black communities have faced, the harms brought onto LGBTQ people, the worldwide climate consequences from mass capitalism, and the world conflicts we face because of America’s hegemony across the globe.
Freedom calls us to course-correct and bring justice to every generation that has suffered under the grip of white supremacy. We await leaders who are ready to step up to the plate and embark on a new direction. Until then, we must continue to make our struggles visible and continue to be loud. Our world and our lives depend on it.
That is how America will become what it must be. That is how we all become free.
Michael Li
Senior Counsel, Democracy Program, Brennan Center for Justice
Michael Li
The motivations behind the American Revolution weren’t always particularly noble. Truth be told, “no taxation without representation” was as much about fears that the British Crown would attempt to regulate or even abolish slavery in the lands it ruled as it was about some nominal tax on tea.
But, despite their often unsavory motivations, the founding generation managed to stumble on a really important truth—if your interests are at the table, you should be, too.
John Adams perhaps put it best when he said that a nation’s democratic institutions should be an “exact portrait, a miniature” of its people. That doesn’t happen today in many places because the boundaries we use to elect representatives are manipulated through gerrymandering.
Last June, the Supreme Court took federal courts out of the equation when it comes to gerrymandering. That means the fight now shifts to the states and Congress to enact reforms to make the drawing of electoral boundaries fair, impartial, and, most importantly, representative.
* For the origin of this question, visit our all-time most-read piece, the 1962 essay “A Letter to My Nephew,” by James Baldwin, on Progressive.org.