Not #MAGA, #LABAA

Do you suppose the tRump campaign and supporters realize they appropriated a meme from one of America's greatest black poets and cultural treasures, Langston Hughes? Before anyone can "Make America Great Again," we all need to Let America Be America Again. Instead, for more and more of us, the refrain from Hughes' poem keeps ringing out in lieu of the Liberty bell: "(It never was America to me.)"

let's review what we're celebrating, shall we?

Photo by J. Harrington

Once upon a time, America was a welcoming country. The French gave a statue honoring Liberty to America back in the days when Americans were known for liberty and democracy. On the pedestal upon which the Statue of Liberty stands is a poem written to help raise funds for that pedestal. That poem, The New Colossus, includes the memorable lines:

"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!"

Recently, a young man, Jose Bello, yearning to breathe free, was arrested by ICE agents shortly after he read a poem he had written titled Dear America. The American Civil Liberties Union has petitioned the court in support of Bello's First Amendment rights, you know, "freedom of expression."

Meanwhile, a #FAKEPOTUS wastes taxpayer funds by demanding tanks and jet fighters as an unprecedented part of his regime's celebratory activities later this week while children, and parents, seeking asylum in America, are separated from each other and held in overcrowded, inhumane conditions.

Before there was Jose Bello's "Dear America" poem, several other noted American poets raised objections to the biased ways liberty and democracy have been exercised in this country. Allen Ginsberg wrote a poem, simply titled America, that has some lines particularly relevant these days.

America its them bad Russians.

Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.   

The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages.

Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.

Before there was Ginsberg, there was Langston Hughes, who wrote Let America Be America Again which concludes with the oh so appropriate lines:

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

Before we celebrate Independence Day this week, let's solemnly promise that, between now and the end of November next year, we'll "make America again!"

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