While our government is building a grand ballroom, we the people are struggling to afford food, watching immigrants get brutalized and not talking to half our friends and family.
What a fine time for Thanksgiving.
A holiday first celebrated by immigrants, built on abundance and dependent on tolerance just seems counter to what America has become.
Our food banks are being depleted. Our government works to deny retroactive food benefits to hungry citizens while it continues to round up people of color, subsequently starving whole communities who are so fearful they can’t leave their homes to go to work or seek assistance.
Yet, the lucky among us will gather around our tables on the last Thursday of the month in honor of gratitude, which honestly, seems either hypocritical or even pointless.
What are we grateful for — that we’re not among those being mistreated, that we’re edging ever closer to losing affordable health care, that we’re shamed and admonished on a daily basis by a government bent on hurting as many humans as it can?
For too many, this year’s turkey and cranberries are only daylong symbols of an American dream that is disappearing.
The very first Thanksgiving, according to historyofmassachusetts.org/the-first-thanksgiving, took place in autumn 1621, when “immigrant” Pilgrims, grateful to the Wampanoag natives who helped them assimilate into their new land, threw a feast.
Led by Chief Massasoit, the Wampanoag showed the Pilgrims incredible compassion by teaching them essential survival skills that led to a successful harvest. Half of the Pilgrim community had perished the previous winter as the newcomers struggled to adapt to their new environment. Naturally, they were grateful for the assistance and marked that gratitude with a celebration.
If you know anything about American history, you know what happened next. No doubt, Chief Massasoit came to regret a few things.
Gratitude, it seems, is short-lived. I’m not sure if that’s a human flaw, or a simply an American trait that has become emboldened and ingrained in our nation’s fabric. Either way, the turncoat mentality continues to this day.
We’re grateful for the low-paying labor of immigrants that enable us to have high-yielding farms, an abundance of fresh produce, ethnic restaurants and affordable hotel stays. And, yet, many insist these vulnerable workers are the very cause of whatever is currently not going well in their lives.
And so not only does our current government vow to brutally run them out, it develops a way to profit on the expulsion.
Of course, the targeted pay an enormous price. But so do the rest of us.
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Are we really OK knowing other members of our community are being rounded up, separated from their families, possibly tortured and deported to who knows where to live as who knows what? Are we really able to celebrate our own abundance knowing people who have been helpful, even kind, to us are now suffering?
Many years ago, a taxi driver in Paris rescued my husband and I from a wayward journey and safely delivered us back to our hotel.
Along the way, he lectured us on how abusive Americans can be. He went on and on about how Americans always have a scapegoat, they insist someone else is always to blame for their troubles, whether those troubles are political, social or even health-related.
“Americans always point a finger,” he’d said in that beautiful French accent. “Because it’s easier to blame someone else than to focus on a solution.”
We exited the taxi feeling a bit bruised, but his words have stayed with me these past 12 years. I don’t consider taxi drivers to be experts on human nature but they do have a unique perspective and a lot of time to mull things over.
Since then, every time I have been tempted to blame someone else for my troubles, his words resurface. It’s not the cashier’s fault that the line is long; the driver in front of me is not to blame for the traffic jam; and poor people seeking assistance are not the reason billionaires repeatedly take advantage of us.
Perhaps this Thanksgiving, before we dig into that steaming bowl of stuffing or that creamy green bean casserole, before we say our prayers of gratitude, before we indulge in an assortment of desserts, we might pause and at least acknowledge the pain and suffering that is going on outside our door.
Perhaps we might even vow to help the vulnerable, the less lucky, the people who don’t share in our abundance or our opportunity or even our hope.
Because there is enough to go around. If the billionaires pulled their weight, there’d more than enough to go around. And because there truly is no better time than Thanksgiving to reconnect with our hearts and actually act thankful.
Donna Vickroy is an award-winning reporter, editor and columnist who worked for the Daily Southtown for 38 years. She can be reached at [email protected].