DEAR AMERICA: AN OPEN LETTER FOR THOSE WHO LOVE DEMOCRACY

“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” ~ Maya Angelou

Hi Everyone, This piece was first published on Substack in October, 2024, which seems like a hundred years ago. Lately, there are many more subscribers and followers to The New Now. Thank you to all you new readers. As you can see, if you’ve been here even for a short while, I post a wide variety of writings and readings. Including writings that reflect this historical moment we’re all experiencing and living through.

Democracy Diverted / 2018 / Collage on paper / Russell C. Smith

Dear America, It’s time for heaping plates full of truth, justice, and liberty for all. And it’s beyond time to feel like we are connected, alive, and glad in our hearts.

Dear America, Ask not what you can do, just start doing it. Pick a day, time, hour to begin, and don’t stop until you’ve changed history in wonderful and amazing ways.

Oh, constant and deep divisions and discords roiling throughout our land, how did we reach this place, in this exact time and space? Dear Home of the Free, my country ‘tis of thee, what the hell happened to you?

Political violence is wrong, in every regard and on every level. Now is a good time to speak up about removing weapons of war from our culture.

Dear America, For so long, you were known across the globe as the Land of Opportunity. Now, you’re known for struggle, disinformation, strife, mass shootings. What do we need to do to turn it around?

Dear America, Project 2025 wants to remake America into an authoritarian nation, by enacting a total ban on abortions regardless of viability or health of the mother, banning all contraceptives, eliminating Social Security and Medicare, gutting clean energy programs, eliminating the Department of Education, mandating military exams for public school kids, and eliminating all climate protections.

Dear America, After a horrific and shocking attempted coup/insurrection with the whole event broadcast on TV. Preserving a historical record of the U.S. Capitol being violently stormed by insurrectionists, on a day when multiple people lost their lives. It’s obscene how the truth of what happened that day has been spun. This happened, it’s a part of American history. When even something so clear and so shocking is considered to be open for debate by extremist politicians, and supreme court justices, something’s incredibly wrong with our nation.

Dear America, Tell the truth, and continue calling out lies. When the act of telling the truth based on facts is called “wrong” because it’s not what they call the “truth” it’s time to keep telling the truth about factual, reported, accepted, and experienced reality.

In this historic moment, on this Hinge of History – we know it’s up to us to stand up, speak up, vote in massive numbers, and change our history for the better. It’s time to finally fully get rid of the things holding us back from being more evolved and caring versions of ourselves – horrific culturally embedded norms that’ve made our culture less than we could be for far too long – things like the gun violence epidemic, systemic racism, women-hating, and homophobia.

During the Second World War, American citizens came together to fight against the global threats of Fascism and Nazism. In the beforetime, pre-pandemic, our country was known for always coming together in times of crisis. During the Covid-19 pandemic years, not so much. Where are Lincoln’s better angels, Rosie’s Riveters, and Ginsberg’s angel-headed hipsters?

Dear America, Defunding libraries and banning books is stupid. Books are mind food.

Dear America, it’s time to think deeper, think again, think in new ways, think about what it means to be human, and think about creating a smarter and more caring world. You’ve helped to create some of the best artists, scientists, explorers, and visionaries in the past – and you can do it again.

Dear America, never forget, you are the land of Martin Luther King, Walt Whitman, Benjamin Franklin, Susan B. Anthony, Susan Sontag, Susie Bright, Rosa Parks, Alexander Hamilton, Miles Davis, Georgia O’Keefe, Woody Guthrie, Jackie Robinson, Charles Bukowski, Dinah Washington, Questlove, Frank Capra, Cher, Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou, Link Wray, Abbie Hoffman, Frank Zappa, Duke Ellington, Wyatt Earp, Bob Dylan, Jonas Salk, Muddy Waters, Angela Davis, Helen Keller, Emmylou Harris, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Muhammad Ali, Sonia Sanchez, Annie Sprinkle, Annie Oakley, Prince, Lenny Bruce, Edward R. Murrow, Tuli Kupferberg, Tom Waits, John Coltrane, Willie Nelson, Jane Fonda, Brad Pitt, Anthony Fauci, Diane di Prima, Gil Scott Heron, John Trudell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Rauschenberg, Nina Simone, Harriet Tubman, Allen Ginsberg, Tina Turner, The Smothers Brothers, Oprah Winfrey, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dolly Madison, Dolly Parton, Taylor Swift, Iggy Pop, Janis Joplin, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Jimmy Smith, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Michael Moore, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Emily Dickinson, Angie Dickinson, Lord Buckley, Buddy Holly, Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Cash, John Lee Hooker, Billie Holiday, Joan Didion, Henry David Thoreau, Hank Williams, Langston Hughes, William S. Burroughs, Ansel Adams, Frank O’Hara, Jack Kerouac, Alice Notley, Dexter Gordon, JFK, Diane Arbus, Beyoncé, Stevie Van Zandt, Steve Allen, James Baldwin, Patti Smith, Pete Seeger, George Carlin, Patsy Cline, Bruce Springsteen, Joan Didion, Joan Mitchell, Barney Rosset, Orson Welles, Stacey Abrams, Gore Vidal, Al Gore, Calamity Jane, and Thelonious Monk.

Dear America, one person can indeed change everything for worse and for better. We’ve learned it’s essential to choose wisely. Currently, it’s essentially a matter of life and death. Choosing the path of living under an autocracy, or expanding freedoms and preserving our Democracy.

Dear America, once upon a time everyone in the world wanted to come here. We were the cool kids on the block, the bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas. We were a welcoming place during those times. We even placed a Welcome to America message to people everywhere on the planet – and put it in New York Harbor. “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free…” We were the melting pot of the whole world. And never doubt it – we were made better for it.

Dear America, rising up and wising up must happen at the same time. And the time is now. Enough is enough. Stop holding yourself back. Quit hiding your better nature. Do you still believe in yourself?

Oh, beautiful places spaces faces of a land so lovely – and expansive and uplifting. You are in so many ways ready to expand into full bloom like no other moment in our history. We’ve got to stand up and be here for Democracy, Justice, and personal and cultural Freedoms as never before.

Dear America, at your best, with your guiding and welcoming spirit, you’ve offered a safe haven for countless refugees escaping murdering torturous governments, wars, famines – and often certain death – and somehow millions made it to our shores, were granted asylum from war torn lands, and America was what they thought it was before they arrived. It was a land where they could become anything they wanted to be. You see, you’ve got to believe in yourself like the whole world used to believe in us. Many of those people, whose lives were saved, transformed, made whole by what we offered – have told family history tales to their kids, and these stories continue to be passed down through the generations.

Dear America, diversity has been a part of us from the beginning. It’s built into the past, present, and future of our cultural legacy. Feeling threatened by diversity is like feeling threatened by today turning into tomorrow.

Dear America, Here we all are, with pictures of a brighter future in our minds, and world-changing visions in our hearts.

Dear America, it’ll take stepping up, speaking up, and voting as if our lives depend upon it. Because they do.

Dear America, Just as in previous generations, it’s our turn to save Democracy. This time, we’re facing threats from within as well as from outside our borders. Each day we’re stepping up to stop those who wish to destroy America. Corruption isn’t acceptable. Gaslighting as a stand-in for Truth isn’t cutting it. Lies repeated over and over on a tape loop don’t make them True. We each have our part to do in this historical moment. Stand up with words, voices, money, and time – to get the message out there – ringing loud and clear, in this moment. Because there’s no time to waste. There’s no time like the present. There’s no time like now.