My family has been here for a century and a half – papa claimed we were the first Gottliebs in the Brooklyn phone book. Parts of my wife’s family have been here almost since the beginning of British colonization of the US – though this area was colonized even earlier by the Dutch. Though we have traveled, we have strong roots, and this country is very dear to us.
It’s been about thirty-five years since we had an exchange student live with us for the year. She came to us from Yugoslavia. She grew up windsurfing on the Adriatic and skiing in the mountains, with friends of every background all over her country. I remember her being anxious for us to come see how beautiful it was there. And while here she became a very dear part of our family.
But while she was here her beloved country was coming apart. Provincial differences reflected in religious and ethnic battles tore Yugoslavia into separate countries – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia – all separate now. I remember how it tore her up.
She came back to the US, got her graduate engineering degree, had a baby after marrying back in Serbia, and worked for a major American car company before returning and settling in Serbia. My wife and I miss her dearly. Unfortunately, our bodies don’t travel as well as they used to. When we last saw her, her parents still had a place on the Adriatic and we visited her both there and in Belgrade, though crossing the necessary borders had become a problem. It was a glorious, unforgettable visit.
Now I feel as if my country is the one that is being torn apart by the same ancient prejudices. We have family, friends and classmates in all parts of the country. We’ve lived in eight of the states, visited or traveled in almost all. We want, we need America to stay together.
While I was writing this, the radio was playing a funeral march that I remember being played the day President Kennedy was killed. We happened to have a workman at the house who realized the memory had me in tears, and challenged me to say if I felt the same way when King was killed. Absolutely, I responded – I was at the March, worked for the legal staff of the NAACP, and shared the dream of a better, kinder, less prejudiced America.
But the Court leads the charge to re-arm this country, arms used to shoot into crowds at schools, concerts, churches, synagogues, mosques and stores with Black clienteles. There are six traitors on that Court and many more on the outside. And the behavior of some of the states is very much like their behavior before the Civil War, trying to block any mention of what they don’t like – any condemnation of slavery then, any sympathy for minorities, immigrants and people born with non-standard gender orientation now.
God help us. But voting matters to keep America together and out of the control of those who would rip it apart with their weapons and prejudices.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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