The historical foundation of America is filled with atrocity from colonization to the genocide of Indigenous peoples and slavery. We need to face history and our roles in history as a continuing process. We have to do so to collectively heal and begin to fulfill the promise of our idealized foundation: liberty and justice for all. The Statue of Liberty stands over our eastern shore as the personification of America; as a symbol of welcome; as a beacon of freedom; and as a promise of protection from imperialism.

You probably memorized the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, but when was the last time you deeply reflected on the message we chose as the welcome for our immigrants.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” (Lazarus, 2002/1903)

This was a promise that was largely fulfilled for my family and so many European immigrants, who entered United States through Ellis Island, but it is disgracefully unfulfilled for many longtime residents and recent immigrants. What welcome do those entering United States via the Mexican border receive? What New Colossus awaits them?

Lazarus didn’t focus on the U.S. American reality, but instead on the U.S. American potential. Maybe we can't afford to do the same today, but it's worth reflecting on. It's worth thinking that decades later Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called upon the same aesthetic and same potential in one of his final speeches before his assassination in 1968 as he organized the Poor People’s Campaign:

In a few weeks some of us are coming to Washington to see if the will is still alive… in this nation…. Yes, we are going to bring the tired, the poor, the huddled masses…. We are going to bring those who have come to feel that life is a long and desolate corridor with no exit signs. We are going to bring the children and adults and old people who have never seen a doctor or dentist…. We are not coming to engage in any historic gesture. We are not coming to tear up Washington…. We are coming to ask America to be true to the huge promissory note that it signed years ago…. We are coming…to engage in dramatic nonviolent action, to call attention to the gulf between the promise and fulfillment; to make the invisible visible. (as cited in Smiley & Ritz, 2014, pp. 226–227)

I say we call upon equal parts rage and hope as we fight for the promises and dreams that America has authored.