One of my goals last year was to step up my civic engagement game by writing letters to the editor. I even did a training with Catholic Climate Covenant, but I never quite figured out where to start. And then the New York Times asked for submissions with reflections on Obama's presidency. So below is my first ever letter to the editor submission. It didn't get published, but it doesn't make me any less proud to have taken that first step in the world of LTEs!
As a Black woman in the United States, I grew up feeling marginalized. And then the election of Barack Obama in 2008 felt like a victory for all of us in the margins. That feeling was most explicitly realized for me in President Obama’s 2013 inaugural address, in which he reminded this nation of our better nature through those moments at Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall when people bravely demanded that they too were America. We knew that by joining him in hoping for and even demanding that better America, we made ourselves vulnerable. President Obama invited us to recognize our vulnerabilities as sources of strength. Through him we saw the both the power and the limitations of hope. We were sometimes frustrated with him, often felt he could and should have done more, but personally, deep down he always felt like my champion. President Obama has shown me that America is worthy of my civic engagement as someone who believes in love and justice, freedom and equity. And because of President Obama, I believe that even in these United States it is possible that, in Seamus Heaney’s words, “justice can rise up, [a]nd hope and history rhyme.”
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