Guest Post: On The Side Of Equality, Love And Inclusion

Beatrice Moritz  Photo © Alison Moritz

Today, I am giving But What If I'm Write? over to Beatrice Moritz, a friend of mine, a photographer extraordinaire, and, today, a voice of peace and reason in a time of turmoil and anger. In the wake of Charlottesville, and at time when many of us are feeling the vertigo-inducing sway and roll of turbulent social, political, and moral undercurrents, Beatrice's immigrant perspective is important and welcome. I first read this on Facebook, and Beatrice was kind enough to allow me to share it here.  JM

"I’m posting this in the hopes of more of you becoming involved and speaking out. Because I never thought I’d be on the streets protesting the death of a young woman by American Nazis.

I’m an immigrant. My Jewish mother spent much of her French childhood on the run from Nazis. My paternal grandfather was a German fighter pilot shot down over Libya. His son - my father - was a young child in the Hitler youth. Growing up I often asked my German Grandmother and her sisters what happened in our country, how could this happen? These beautiful women, who I loved very dearly, always replied they did not know then what was happening, that they had no idea. This even though their own father secretly gave money to his Jewish friends to help them leave the country.

It’s all so complicated, isn’t it? People do what they can to survive. My German grandmother and her two sisters - two of them young widows with 5 children between them - lived in one house and grew vegetables in the garden to feed their families, kept their heads down and just tried to keep their starving families safe. All while many miles away my maternal Jewish grandmother watched her husband get taken away to Auschwitz, and hid her child on farms in quiet villages, belongings hastily packed into just a pillowcase. Both grandfathers died, but the women and children made it through the war.

I wasn’t alive then, but for the longest time I carried tremendous guilt about what my people did during the war. I mean it really haunted me, and honestly still does. And years later seeing the Auschwitz intake form with my Grandfather’s name between that of a seamstress and a young child - all destined to be killed - was one of the saddest days of my life. I just do not understand that kind of pure, evil hatred.

So now we have so-called NeoNazis marching in the streets, carrying swastikas and shields and weapons, and spewing hatred at Jews and anyone not white. It’s happened before, you say, and you're right, it has ... but here’s what’s different this time: WE HAVE A PRESIDENT WHO OPENLY SUPPORTS AND ENCOURAGES THIS HATE. This is the current leader of our country. This isn’t who we are, we are bigger and better than this, but don’t think it can’t happen here. It’s happening now. PLEASE TAKE A SIDE AND SPEAK OUT, LOUDLY. And please let it be the side of equality, love and inclusion."    Beatrice Moritz

Why I Write What I Write

When I sit down to write my Huffington columns or this blog, I try to imagine what it must be like to be truly vulnerable, alone, old, fearful, disabled, socially awkward or rejected, homeless, sick and poor, blind, hurting inside, hungry, taunted, bullied, unloved, depressed to the point of hopelessness, cast aside, heartbroken.

And all the while there is this beautiful country in which people not-like-me seem to have it all...and still complain. And I wonder how that could be...how could such a place pass me by...not see me in its headlong pursuit of wealth and madness. And I start writing to see if anyone out there cares about people like me...the little guy in the shadows of everybody else's success.

I write for those who can't speak. I write for those who don't believe they will ever be heard. I write for those who are afraid they will be heard and punished for their words.

I write to let them know that at least one old guy gets them and wants to give their lives meaning in this beautiful country that is being led by people who have forgotten how to care for, cherish, celebrate and share the gifts meant for all of us.

A Truth Trump Refuses To See Or Say

When I was a freshman in a parochial school in Louisiana in the early 1960s, Father Elsner, my English teacher, assigned the first paper of the new term. I have long since forgotten the topic, but the paper itself was only about 300-400 words, and was, of course, typed on that ancient mechanical device, the typewriter. Not only was clarity of thought required, but, so, too, was clarity of presentation. My paper had to be compelling and visually neat. 

I worked hard on the assignment, making sure my thoughts were reasonable, accurately supported, and well-presented as a finished product. I was new to that school, and I wanted to make a good first impression.

On the day Fr. Elsner passed the papers back to the class, I looked at mine, and at the 99 at the top of it. There were no other marks on the paper. No errors noted, no margin notes, nothing circled. Just 99. Somewhat confused, I asked Fr. Elsner where I went wrong. “Moore,” he said, fixing me with his kind but uncompromising gaze, “It is only in the next world that we will achieve perfection.” 

The obvious point—that we are fallible, we are imperfect, because we are mortal—took some time to sink into my teenage brain, but that simply stated truth eventually became one of my guiding tenets over the intervening 55 years, and remains so today.

That truth does not rule out the need or desire to strive for perfection; it only tells us that in our efforts to excel, we are sometimes bound to fall short of our highest personal expectations and national aspirations. And when we do fail to achieve our goal, we need not take the failure to heart; we need to take our vision of success, and our effort toward the goal, to heart and redouble our striving at the next challenge.

There is an American goal predicated on a uniquely American challenge. It is stated in the Preamble to the Constitution:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Fifty-two words, written on parchment, have endured two-and-a-half centuries of terrible tests of our national will to hold fast to the Founders’ vision. There is not one word out of place in the Preamble. It is succinct, active voice, unambiguous in its meaning for the generation of its time and the generations to follow. I would give it a 99. 

Because, in light of Charleston, or Selma, or Watts, or Money, Mississippi (see Emmett Till), or Montgomery, or New Orleans (see Ruby Bridges), or the Trail of Tears, or Manzanar, or Charlottesville—or a hundred other places and events which we must never forget—we are still imperfect, still a work in progress, still frustrated that we cannot see that 100-percent on our paper about our destiny. We must not let that frustration dishearten us, or dissuade us from staying our Constitutional course.

President Trump does not understand why that is; he is incapable of understanding the simple truth of our frailties despite our good intentions. He won’t accept the imperative of the Office of the President to bind the wounds as Lincoln tried so hard to do, as many presidents of the modern era have tried to do. He cannot, will not, utter the one truth that all Americans need to hear from the Oval Office: There is just one truth, and it remains the best defense against ignorance and lies.

Our system of laws and government, of rights and freedoms, depends on the assurance that the truth will prevail in all cases, that your truth and my truth are one and the same. The truth is that there is no place for hatred in the United States, and that the purveyors of white supremacist hatred have no place in the United States.

What happened in Charlottesville was not some dystopic video game or even a random moronic movement. I grew up in a town where lynchings happened within 50 miles of my home, and white supremacists were local small business owners, politicians, cops, and teachers. There was nothing moronic about it then...it was frightening and socially disabling. We should have moved so far beyond that that the phrase "white supremacy" would by now have been relegated to the back shelves of an ancient library. 

The Washington Post editorial on Sunday proposed the speech President Trump should have given. Here an excerpt:

“The violence Friday and Saturday in Charlottesville, Va., is a tragedy and an unacceptable, impermissible assault on American values. It is an assault, specifically, on the ideals we cherish most in a pluralistic democracy — tolerance, peaceable coexistence and diversity.

“The events were triggered by individuals who embrace and extol hatred. Racists, neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members and their sympathizers — these are the extremists who fomented the violence in Charlottesville, and whose views all Americans must condemn and reject.

“To wink at racism or to condone it through silence, or false moral equivalence, or elision, as some do, is no better and no more acceptable than racism itself. Just as we can justly identify radical Islamic terrorism when we see it, and call it out, so can we all see the racists in Charlottesville, and understand that they are anathema in our society, which depends so centrally on mutual respect.”

I would just add that our nation—fractured but not yet broken--depends on our mutual reliance on a shared truth: that Union, Justice, Tranquility, common defence, general Welfare, and the Blessings of Liberty will always be the most worthy goals of any free society, and that there will never be room here for those who will not strive with us to achieve those goals.