Then his family’s protected status was revoked by the President. Pierre filed for asylum because being deported to Haiti meant re-entering poverty and misery at best, and if refusing to join one of whichever violent gang controlled his home village, kidnapping and slaughter. When Pierre reported as instructed, ICE locked a large GPS monitor on his ankle, telling him he’d be arrested and locked up and deported if he took it off or traveled too far.

From that point on, Pierre could not go anywhere without it, and he was shamed as a criminal. He couldn’t work, he couldn’t attend soccer practice. The JROTC program he joined would not let him wear the uniform he was so proud to wear. He started wearing long, baggy pants in the heat of summer to cover it up to avoid the looks and scorn. Last week he began classes, but he was ridiculed and bullied. “I came to this country to pursue my education, I did not come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone,” he wrote, “yet now walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation I’ve never imagined I’d experience.”

Monday morning Pierre called his dad from his car and said he didn’t feel right, the bullying was too much. His father, who was then dropping off Pierre’s younger brother at school, asked him to come home so they could talk. A few minutes later, Pierre pulled over on the highway, parked his car, and walked in front of an 18-wheel tanker truck, and was killed.

All Pierre wanted was the freedom to become his full potential, to live a life better than what he was born into. It’s a freedom many of us take for granted every day--the right to read and write and speak without fear, to make our own way in this world, and to be left alone. And America, once the land of opportunity, once a “shining city on a hill,” reduced this 20-year-old who voyaged here wanting to work and play soccer and study neuroscience into a shamed, frightened shell of his former self. Our government treated him like livestock with a tracking monitor wrapped around his ankle.

I’m sick of living in a time when someone’s sense of humanity ends at a government-issued document. It is a sign of a failing society that a person always has to possess a valid reason to exist, and if you have the stomach to see the signs, look in any comment section of any news article telling Pierre’s sad story today. Eventually everyone will be appropriately aghast that any of this--mass gestapo patrols, shooting of civilians with no consequences, baldly bigoted epithets dehumanizing brown-skinned and black-skinned immigrants, mass human trafficking for profit--was ever allowed to happen. And no matter how much it feels safer to look away right now, to keep your head down, to not “bring politics” into your polite society, the time to be aghast is now. The time to speak up for people like Pierre is now.

Pierre Damas Bel was not “vermin,” he was not an “animal,” he was not an “alien,” he was not “illegal.” He was all of our sons, he was the best of us, and he embodied what once made America great.

Two days later, his wife, Karolina Alvarez, found the strength to stand before cameras and through tears described him as "a hard worker devoted to our family," someone who "was always happy and his joy was contagious," who "dreamed of a whole lifetime with me" and would tell her, "until we're little old people." And she described what a good father he was, how he came home for his lunch break every day to spend his lunch with their daughter, and took her to the park every free afternoon he had, how "he lived for her," and "Everything he did, he did for us."

And that's Johan's story, as it is with so many countless others who want the best for their family and come to a pretty town like Biddeford to work hard and be a good neighbor and add to its labor force and bring goodness to a community and make their family's lives better. That is--or was--the exceptionalism of the American Dream. And agents of our government murdered him on the streets of that same town. Why? Because he had brown skin and looked like he might be the other brown-skinned immigrant they were supposedly looking for. And because our government's attorneys argued that racial profiling should be allowed for traffic stops, and our Supreme Court gave them license to do it.

This should all shock our collective conscience. But we've spent the past years hearing that Black and brown-skinned immigrants are "vermin" and "poisoning the blood" of our country, that they're "eating the dogs, eating the cats," that they are from "filthy, dirty, and disgusting" countries, or "shithole" countries, and "Why can't we get more people from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark?"

These aren't fringe quotes by online bigots that frequent comment sections, they're statements of our president. It was never about legality, it was always about color. And when non-white immigrants are dehumanized so much for so long, then it has people reacting to this story with "well, was he illegal?" or "what did he do to deserve it?" or "should have come here legally." People who due to no effort or virtue or accomplishment of their own were born here have proven that dehumanization works. No matter how many sit in pews on this very Sunday ignoring the teaching of the Bibles they carry that Johan Guerrero was created in the image of God, that Jesus--who always sided with the powerless against the powerful--taught us to welcome the stranger and care for the vulnerable, the floor of our national humanity is gone, ripped out while millions cheered it.

Our current government leaders are weak, insecure men who whine and complain and benefit from exploiting the weaknesses and fears and anxieties of the people they're supposed to serve. And they talk on and on about American greatness, but Johan Guerrero was a better American than any of them.

Before July 1776 everyone was a subject under the rule of someone else. But Jefferson and Adams and Franklin and 53 other delegates united behind something new in the world: the big idea of representative government formed entirely by the consent of voting citizens. And by no means was that idea realized then, or even after the Constitution or the Bill of Rights or Reconstruction or even today. That’s why I think the most important word in the “self-evident” truths is “pursuit” because it’s ongoing.

After British General Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington at Yorktown, one of the signers of our Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush, wrote, “The American war is over, but this is far from the case with the American revolution.” The revolution was not over then, or when the Constitution was ratified, when only white men could vote. Or when the Bill of Rights was ratified but still didn’t apply to states. Or when the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, or the 14th Amendment made individual states follow the Bill of Rights, or the 15th Amendment gave Black Americans the right to vote, or the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote…

We see in just our lifetimes the revolutions of Jim Crow and segregation and voting rights and desegregation and marriage equality and the recognition—then deprivation—of women’s reproductive freedoms and the hyper-corruption of unlimited money in our political contests and legalized racial profiling and, in just this past week, a current attempt to take away the citizenship rights guaranteed by an 1868 constitutional amendment. So it’s very valid and very human to feel disappointment on this 250th national birthday, or hopelessness and even shame. “Experience has shown that mankind is more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable” might be the most honest sentence in the Declaration of Independence, and the best part of Independence Day for me is seeing the many Americans who refuse to stay silent in the face of sufferable evils.

When you feel like current events have you trapped in quicksand, history always offers a lifeline. Not the binary red state vs blue state “history” our rage-driven social media algorithms push, or a whitewashed nationalistic myth of racist exceptionalism. Because the truer and more complicated our history is, the deeper and more meaningful our story as a nation. Honest history helps us understand that imperfect men with personal contradictions we can never reconcile were able to give us words to live by, words Frederick Douglass said were aspirational, that the promise in those words should be delivered to every American, no matter how many people are fighting against that aspiration still.

The American Revolution is not over, and that gives me optimism and hope, because it’s still up to us. And we still have a lot of work to fulfill the values in the words of the Declaration that we are celebrating today.

Nine years after their arrest, they were finally able to move back home again, where they raised their children until a 1975 car accident in which Mildred lost an eye and Richard was killed. Before she passed in 2008, Mildred avoided the spotlight, saying once in a rare interview, “We just wanted to go home.”

The ruling in Loving v. Virginia struck down not only the Virginia law banning interracial marriage, but also effectively made the same laws in fifteen other states—to include North Carolina—unenforceable. Each of the states passed laws repealing their own similar statutes, and the last to do so was Alabama. In 2000.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Loving was issued on June 12, 1967, fifty-nine years ago today.

Happy Loving Day.

They lost their oldest son to appendicitis at 9. Their surviving sons all worked on the farm until the United States entered the war, when each boy of age enlisted to serve. First was Clyde, into the Marine Corps. Then the eldest, LeRoy, into the Army as a medic. Then Boyd, also into the Army. Then as soon as they turned 18, twins Rolon and Rulon both enlisted in the Army--Rolon into the Army Air Force as a gunner in a bomber and Rulon as an infantryman.

In the spring of 1944, the Borgstrom parents received a Western Union telegram telling them that Clyde, the Marine, had been killed at Guadalcanal. Three months later came a second telegram that their eldest, LeRoy, had been killed in Italy. Next came an Army chaplain to personally deliver the news that Rolon, one of their twins, died when his bomber crashed over England.

The Borgstroms—and members of their community and local elected officials—then reached out to their congressman and senator to request that their two remaining sons in uniform be allowed to return home. Then they received word that Rulon was listed as Missing in Action in France.

At that point, President Roosevelt personally ordered that Boyd be honorably discharged from duty and allowed to return home. Boyd made it home just a couple of weeks after his parents received final word that Rulon had been located wounded but had then died of his injuries. Their youngest, Eldon, then only fifteen, was later exempted from the draft.

Two years earlier in the war, the Sullivan family in Iowa lost five sons when the USS Juneau sank killing all five brothers at once. After that the military disallowed siblings from serving on the same vessel or in the same unit, but the Borgstroms were the only family to lose four sons in separate incidents. The Sullivans and the Borgstroms were our nation’s only five-gold-star and four-gold-star families of World War II.

The remains of the four fallen Borgstrom brothers were returned from overseas by the Graves Registration Service in the summer of 1948. At the massive joint funeral, General Mark Clark, former wartime commander of all U.S. forces in Italy, eulogized them, as did each of their former teachers. They rest side by side in Tremonton Cemetery in Ogden, Utah.

That same year, the Department of Defense issued a Special Separation Policies for Survivorship--the “Sole Survivor Policy”--to protect members of a family from a draft if that family has already lost members to military service.

Wartime correspondent Eric Sevareid once wrote, “A million martyred lives leave an empty place at only one family table.” For the Borgstroms family table, it was four.

Think of each of the four Borgstrom sons, and the last age they ever saw: LeRoy Borgstrom, 30, Clyde Eugene Borgstrom, 28, and twins Rolon and Rulon Borgstrom, both 19.

Have a safe and meaningful Memorial Day 2026.

Lies can spread like wildfire. In 1770, about the “Boston Massacre” and the British soldiers John Adams was defending, the lies spread through the streets and on leaflets and in newspapers. In 2026 they spread faster and wider on 24-hour cable entertainment and podcasts and social media. But twenty-six years of practicing law, both as a prosecutor and defense attorney, has instructed me that no matter the speed or means of lies spreading through society, it’s likely as difficult today as it was in 1770 to either sustain a lie or hide a truth in a courtroom. The confrontational system, the rules of admissibility and authentication, the right of the accused to confront and cross-examine witnesses, the penalty of perjury for sworn testimony, the high bar of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the requirement of unanimity in a jury’s verdict—all give facts weight. Or as a trial judge in my district used to say, “facts have gravity here.” So just as Adams recognized more than 250 years ago, in a courtroom, facts are stubborn and lies fall apart.

So despite the best efforts of this president and his loyalists who have spent the past sixteen months purging our Justice Department of career prosecutors and trying to erase the evidence and records of their work, the records exist. And these records establish clearly what happened at the capitol on January 6, 2021, confirming in greater detail what we all saw with our own eyes in real time.

Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan-appointee who is the longest serving trial judge in the DC federal court, presided over more of the January 6-related jury trials and sentenced more of the defendants than any other single trial judge, summarized the events of the day in a sentencing order:

“So let me set the record straight, based on what I’ve learned presiding over January 6 prosecutions, hearing from dozens of witnesses, watching hundreds of hours of video footage, and reading thousands of pages of evidence. On January 6, 2021, a mob of people invaded and occupied the United States Capitol, using force to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power mandated by the Constitution and our republican heritage. This was not a protest that got out of hand. It was a riot.”

And following this riot that invaded our Capitol and attempted to stop the peaceful transfer of executive power, law enforcement investigated. 1,570 people were arrested. Every single one got an attorney, was afforded the full protection of due process, was given access to all the evidence against them, time to compile a defense, a full hearing on the record, a right to challenge the authenticity of every piece of evidence, the right to confront and cross examine every witness against them, and the right to present evidence and call witnesses for their defense.

Of the 1,570 people arrested, more than 1,000 decided to plead guilty--327 to felonies. 172 of them admitted under oath on the record to assaulting law enforcement—69 of them admitted doing so with a dangerous or deadly weapon. 140 separate law enforcement officers were injured. 260 defendants were convicted by juries after trial. In all, 1,270 people were convicted, and more than 200 were still awaiting trial or sentencing when they were pardoned by this president. The convictions included assaults on law enforcement officers, seditious conspiracy, destruction of public property, destruction of private property, criminal trespass, entering restricted area with a firearm, obstruction of law enforcement, disorderly conduct, and disruptive activity.

The president’s revisionism began soon after, and his characterization of the prosecutors as “animals” and his convicted criminal supporters as “political prisoners” and “hostages” who were “treated very unfairly.” His lies spread on cable “news” and were echoed by his supporters on podcasts and social media, where lunacy and vitriol spread with greater speed and attention than the proven facts. Judge Lamberth was so dismayed by the lies being told about cases he had personally presided over that he included the summary of the day’s event I shared above in one of his orders. He wrote that in his four decades of handling cases, he could not “recall a time when such meritless justification of criminal activity have gone mainstream” and was “dismayed to see distortions and outright falsehoods seep into the public consciousness.” He said he feared “that such destructive, misguided rhetoric could presage further danger to our country.”

As soon as he took office, President Trump signed pardons for every January 6 convict and arrestee, and commuted the sentences of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers serving prison time for seditious conspiracy. This week, he announced that more than $1.7 billion of our taxpayer dollars are up for grabs by whomever his hand-picked board of supporters say deserve it, making it clear the intended recipients are those convicted January 6th criminals he decided to pardon. This is, of course, on top of the $1 billion he wants to build his ballroom, or the money he wants to build a golden arch to himself in front of Arlington National Cemetery, or the money given to his hand-picked contractor to turn our capitol’s reflecting pool into a trashy-blue swimming pool, or the funds necessary to add his face to our passports and his name on our currency and to mint coins with his face on them.

One might think there is a breaking point for his supporters. But looking for that is a fool’s errand. In just my own Facebook/Instagram feed, the same people who initially said the rioters were Antifa and then last year said the rioters were paid FBI informants now say the same rioters should be paid damages because they were unfairly treated Trump supporters.

Like the reality-TV charlatan whose face and name they wave on flags from homes in places he would never stoop to visit, they will continue to lie with all the confidence of people who have never been burdened by the truth.

Facts are stubborn things. These were not “political prisoners” or “hostages,” they were convicted criminals. And we are not being governed, we are being looted.

Notes:

David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001)

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2025/01/20/donald-trump-pardons-jan-6-defendants/77490839007/

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.230440/gov.uscourts.dcd.230440.73.0.pdf

I personally used to know very little about it—I was never taught about it in history class, and really only saw passing reference to it in “great disasters” documentaries. It was not until my first visit to San Francisco in 2012 that I learned the earthquake was followed by a three-day firestorm that destroyed more than 28,000 homes, schools, churches, and businesses on 500 city blocks covering 5 square miles, killed an estimated 3,000 people, and left more than a quarter million men, women, and children homeless.

How? Why? The deaths were the equivalent of 9/11, and the destruction was even worse, but was this just some fluke of nature? How did so many people die? Why was so much burned? I wanted to find the answers and thought they were out there. So it was then that I began a decade-long journey of learning everything I could about the disaster. I started with books, but each one seemed to focus on a single part—the firefighting, the science of earthquakes, the human stories—and none answered my most pressing question of how exactly could shaking ground cause a firestorm and destroy so much and kill so many?

So I dug into archives. I went through letters and diaries and photographs and reports of firefighters and first responders and public records of gas, water, and electricity and decisions of The City’s Board of Supervisors and its zoning laws and building codes and newspaper reports of which developers built which tenements or offices or homes, tens of thousands of documents in archives of the San Francisco Public Library, the California Historical Society, the National Archives San Francisco in San Bruno, the Chinese Historical Society, and the Bancroft Library at Cal. And I found sources never consulted before, like the verbatim transcripts of sworn testimony of hundreds of eyewitnesses and city officials from insurance litigation following the disaster. And I took walking tours of the locations with geologists and engineers and interviewed SFFD firefighters and emergency services personnel and architects and local historians and descendants of survivors and victims.

I ended up using all I compiled to write a book about the disaster: The Longest Minute, published by Macmillan St. Martin’s Press in 2023. The book didn’t sell much, but if you’re curious for the details, they’re all in there. I won’t repeat them here, and even though researching this event and trying to tell the story of the people who endured it took up much of a decade of my life, I don’t often revisit it. There is, however, a lesson I found in the ashes of that disaster that I think still goes unheeded today. And I think this anniversary of the event is worth a note here to remind people…

The only natural part of the 1906 disaster that struck was the earthquake. Everything that followed—buildings sinking into fill-land, firestorms, little to no water pressure, 3,000+ deaths, quarter million homeless—was caused by poor city planning, political corruption, racist anti-Chinese zoning laws, deadly building codes bribed into being by wealthy developers and landlords, and naked greed. It was preventable, unnatural devastation sparked by a natural event that every elected official had been repeatedly warned was inevitable.

It was in every way a man-made disaster, and it reminds me of what John Steinbeck wrote in Grapes of Wrath about a later man-made disaster, the Dustbowl of the 1930s:

No matter what we or our public officials say, life in our nation is not “priceless” as long as greed endures. In an America where everything is commodified, because profit is our highest virtue, there will always be a point where we just decide that safety costs too much. We’ve seen it every year since 1906, in night club fires and amusement park decapitations and apartment collapses. And we will continue to see it. It doesn’t have to be this way, but it’s a lesson we’ll probably never learn.

Same today as it ever was, with “courage” and “sacrifice” being deployed and debased by men who order Americans into harm’s way while promoting war like a movie or a video game and use images of the fallen as fundraising props. This war, like the war Hemingway experienced and wrote about, is about people.

These are six of those people. Six Americans, aged 28 to 38, hailing from five different states. They were sons and daughters and fathers and mothers. They worked for us all in the U.S. Air Force, and they were killed two days ago when their refueling plane crashed on the far side of our world during operations in the skies over Iran.

Think of these six we all lost and think especially of their families and loved ones today.

Ariana G. Savino, 31, of Covington, Washington, joined the Air Force in 2017 through ROTC at Central Washington University. This was her 2^nd deployment. Her friends and fellow airmen described her as a proud Latina and great leader who “pushed people because she believed in them.” Ariana was also a proud mom to her dogs Zoey and Piper who were her whole world.

John “Alex” Klinner, 33, of Auburn, Alabama was the operations flight commander. Alex entered the Air Force in 2017 through ROTC at Auburn University. This was his 4^th deployment. Alex leaves behind his wife, Libby, a 2-year-old son, and 7-month-old twins. They had just moved into a new home in Brimingham before his deployment. His wife, Libby, wrote that their three children “won’t get to see how goofy and funny he was. They won’t witness his selflessness, the way he thought about everyone else before himself. They won’t get to feel the deep love he had for them.”

Ashley B. Pruitt, 34, of Bardstown, Kentucky, enlisted in the USAF in 2017 and was a boom operator and with more than 800 combat hours in three prior deployments, was an air crew instructor in air refueling operations. Ashley leaves behind her husband, Greg, 3-year-old daughter Emilia, and stepson Oliver.

Tyler H. Simmons, 28, of Columbus, Ohio enlisted in the Air Force in 2017 and worked as a boom operator. This was his 3^rd deployment. His mom in an interview said Tyler always wanted to be a pilot, but enjoyed being a refueling boom operator because “once he got in the back of that airplane, that was it.” She said Tyler had plans to retire from that job and become a commercial pilot one day.

Seth R. Koval, 38, of Mooresville, Indiana, first enlisted as a machinist in 2006 in the Indiana Air National Guard, and after graduating from Purdue, he earned his commission in 2018 as a pilot. This was his 5^th deployment. Seth was described as a devoted husband and father and Christian, “a fixer of all things” and “exceptional in everything he did.” Seth leaves behind his wife, Heather, and a son.

Curtis J. Angst, 30, of Wilmington, Ohio, enlisted in the Ohio Air National Guard in 2015 as vehicle maintenance technician, and after earning his pilot’s license and graduating from the University of Cincinnati with a degree in Aerospace Engineering, earned his commission as a pilot in 2021. This was his 2^nd deployment. Curtis leaves behind his wife, Mary, herself a commercial pilot.

Here are links to fundraisers for the families of three of the fallen via GoFundMe:

Seth Koval: https://gofund.me/2a2f595da

Ashley Pruitt: https://gofund.me/e27ea743c

Alex Klinner: https://gofund.me/76e839370

It’s not possible to cover here the breadth of Marshall’s greatness, his humility, his integrity, his life of service, and his genius in strategy and logistics and leadership selections through our nation’s two largest military buildups and deployments onto the world stage. One cannot find a single individual more responsible for our nation’s—and Allied—operational success through both world wars. General Pershing called Marshall his best planner in World War I, and Winston Churchill called him the architect of Allied Victory in World War II.

In 1945, after more than 40 years of service in uniform, Marshall could have retired. But instead he continued to serve us as Secretary of State, and instead of punishing the defeated as had been done after the First World War, Marshall called for a coordinated European effort to recover from WWII to address hunger, lack of shelter, and to rebuild infrastructure to secure Europe’s future. Many nations joined, and through the Marshall Plan, Americans and Europeans together contributed to the revival of Europe and charted the future development of a democratic Europe.

Marshall also took the lead in reorganizing the War Department into the Department of Defense, and after leaving the State Department he served as Defense Secretary. And he threw his weight and leadership into the organization of NATO to resist Soviet aggression, prevent the revival of militarism and guarantee international cooperation across the ocean, a defensive military alliance that today includes 32 countries and which has stabilized the world for 75 years. Because Marshall knew best what was necessary to never see the world at war again.

For his life’s work, he became the first—and still the only—soldier awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

I don’t know how we got here, friends. How we arrived in a place where the nation that once helped make other nations safer for democracy and rebuilt the infrastructure of destroyed cities and fed the refugees of invaded nations has turned into the world’s bully, belittling the sovereignty of our neighboring countries, calling friends and partners weak and irrelevant, and threatening the people of peaceful nations with takeover and destroying friendships with dozens of good nations—friendships that have stood strong through countless presidents and prime ministers and chairmen and chancellors. Maybe it’s because we’ve neglected the important lessons of our own history, being far too enamored by the war itself and how it was won without learning how the world was fixed afterward.

George Marshall was a serious leader in deeply serious times. He served his country, never himself, and his judgment directed the successful operations of mankind's two largest wars--operations larger than anything our generation has ever known because the postwar rebuilding he led and alliances he helped build have made such operations never again necessary. Our world is safer because of men like him. Marshall knew better than you or I, and far better than any of the grifting social media influencers or deeply unserious podcasters now fueling the misinformation campaign funded by their own greed and worship of multinational billionaires who profit from letting the world’s strongest nation die by suicide.

And he unashamedly brought the wide-eyed joy of the 80s kid inside him to everything he did, from Disney parks to travel to enjoying a coffee in a local park--and he did not sell merch and early on he stopped taking Patreon and didn’t ask viewers to like and subscribe--he just did what he did every day because he loved it. And it brought so much happiness to my own days and the days of his growing audience of devoted subscribers, an escape from work or stress or anxiety that confronts all of us.

Three days before Christmas, Adam died in his sleep of natural causes. It was sudden and unexpected and devastating news, and I can’t imagine the grief his parents and sister and his friends who knew him have been dealing with this holiday season. It was so heartbreaking to see his last video on his last day, proudly showing his Christmas decorations and driving around his town with a neighbor dressed as the Grinch. How he apparently then visited with friends and discussed his usual subjects, like his favorite attraction at Disney or “Die Hard” being a Christmas movie. Then he went home and texted with another YouTuber about their plants to film together at Disney the next day. And then he went to sleep and never woke up.

Since then, I’ve considered how we can feel grief for the loss of someone we’ve never met, because grief comes from emotional bonds, not just physical presence. I’ve thought of how that bond for me these past dozen years was a very healthy one—how he was a good influence on my own days, a source of positivity and smiles and laughter. And how he never said a cussword in any of his videos, how he never spoke badly of anyone, how he never criticized and never complained, just brought a joyful curiosity to the smallest of things in the most random of places on the most mundane of days where many of us might never take a second look or thought.

And it made me remember a video he did a few years ago about death, after finding out one of his fans had passed away, how much that loss of someone he never met affected him, and how it prompted him to consider death, and ask himself what if this was his last vlog. I went back and found it, and now on rewatching it, his words from beyond the grave are so compelling. And I can’t think of better words than his as we all face a new year:

“I want to encourage you just like I’m encouraging myself to put positivity in the world. Whatever you do, whatever you create, whatever you say to someone, make sure it is positive . . . try to influence someone for something good, put good into the world and just see what happens . . . Life is good, make the best of it. You never know when this could be your last day, it could be my last day, it could be your last day, you never really know what the future holds for any of us . . . Please take these words to heart, make the best of every single day.”

Rest in peace, Adam. And thank you.

But that is happening in cities and towns in America today to people solely because they have brown skin or a Latino accent. Because our government has decided, to quote their own policy from their own attorneys’ filings in federal court, that anyone with a certain “apparent race or ethnicity” or anyone heard “speaking English with an accent” is subject to being seized by the government and required to show proof of citizenship. This includes naturalized citizens, this includes lawful residents, this includes lawful visitors to our country, and this includes veterans. And it’s being unleashed at the ends of armed weapons in workplaces and school pick-up lines and daycares and churches---yes, churches---and even courthouses where individuals are attending court dates they were given for the hearings they are entitled to under the very federal they are being arrested for.

But notice—always notice—we do not and will not see them going into the offices of business owners or the board rooms of the companies who exploit cheap immigrant labor and lure workers from other countries (then turn a blind eye when those same workers are hauled away to privately-owned, for-profit prison camps).

It’s incredible that I have spent most of my life hearing warnings about “the government,” “the feds,” and how I should be fearful of a “tyrannical government.” I have heard it in churches, in private schools, in courtrooms, on political commercials, and especially in mailers and newsletters from the NRA when I was a member. And the people warning me always looked like me, most were guys like me, and today their warnings have turned into celebrations. “ICE ICE baby!” and “No need to worry if you’re not an illegal.” Or any other thoughtless, heartless variation on the same theme.

They mean there is no need to worry if you’re white. Or if you don’t speak with an unacceptable accent. But there is worry and fear and terror for those who don’t look like me or those who don’t talk with the same accent as me, because they no longer have the same 4^th Amendment protections I have. And that should matter to all of us. The 4^th Amendment—of that Constitution so many of the loudest flag wavers love mentioning, the one that includes articles and sections and amendments far beyond its “We the People” calligraphy I see on the backs of trucks so often. The same 4^th Amendment which even the government’s attorneys have admitted still protects EVERY person in America.

I look forward to the day this inhumanity ends and a time when there are gaps on a bunch of unemployed men’s resumes hiding the shame of ever participating in this.

Notes:

Complaint: vasquez_perdomo_v_noem_-_first_amended_petition_and_complaint.pdf

US District Court TRO: https://www.aclusocal.org/sites/default/files/vasquez-perdomo-v-noem-tro-granting.pdf

US Supreme Court Order (J. Kavanaugh, concurring): 25A169 Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo (09/08/2025)

Social media is filled today with the iconography of our nation’s Revolution, “We the People” calligraphy and coiled snake flags and Hancock’s signature and quotes from the Declaration. And so many of these appear in the same spaces where I have seen laughter about immigrants being ziptied and taken from their workplaces and families, where LGBTQ+ friends and coworkers have been called “filth,” where jokes have been made about Black Americans being smothered to death, where people who don’t worship the same way or don’t pray to the same God, or who dare—in a country founded on religious liberty—to practice no religion, have been called un-American, where people who were born elsewhere are called “vermin” and told to leave and “go back” where they came from, and where Americans living in poverty are belittled as lazy or moochers, and where cutting their food assistance and healthcare coverage to even further protect the obscene wealth of the richest among us—and the CEOs who have exploited the toiling labor of immigrants from poor countries who are demonized--is applauded. They are spaces filled with the noise of people who order us to “respect the flag” but not our fellow Americans.

These orchestrated attempts to dehumanize large segments of our country’s population are draped in the flag, weaponizing the stars and strips to antagonize people some have decided are not American enough, like an endless birther campaign deciding who is a true American and who is an “enemy of the state.” It’s not a celebration of democracy for all but a protection of power for a few. And unlike the enduring principles of human rights and self-government in the Declaration this day is meant to celebrate, dollar store patriotism and oversized flags are hollow words and insincere gestures.

I don’t know when so much of the nation became so small and so mean, or where it turned popular to demonize vulnerable people who have done no harm to anyone. If the self-evident truths of the document this holiday commemorates teach us anything, they should remind us that the flag belongs to all of us.

So this Independence Day keeps reminding me of the line of poetry my 7^th grade history teacher posted on the bulletin board of our classroom: “To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards out of men.”

Our teacher ascribed that quote to Abraham Lincoln, and for many years I thought those were his words. 7th grade for me was, after all, in the 1980s, before the internet could allow us to quickly look up such things. It was not until recent years that I saw that quote again and discovered it was the first line of an eloquent poem called “Protest,” and it was written fifty years after Lincoln’s death by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, an American poet from Wisconsin.

Wilcox wrote “Protest” as an anthem against silence at the peak of the Women’s Suffrage movement, in a time when more and more states were passing Jim Crow laws, and war was erupting in Europe.

111 years later, her timeless message resonates because of undying resistance to the very human rights and self-government we are meant to celebrate today. I can’t find better words for our nation in 2025 than Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s words from 1914:

“To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men. The human race
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised
Against injustice, ignorance, and lust,
The inquisition yet would serve the law,
And guillotines decide our least disputes.
The few who dare, must speak and speak again
To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God,
No vested power in this great day and land
Can gag or throttle. Press and voice may cry
Loud disapproval of existing ills;
May criticize oppression and condemn
The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws
That let the children and child bearers toil
To purchase ease for idle millionaires.

Therefore I do protest against the boast
Of independence in this mighty land.
Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link.
Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave.
Until the manacled slim wrists of babes
Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee,
Until the mother bears no burden, save
The precious one beneath her heart, until
God’s soil is rescued from the clutch of greed
And given back to labor, let no man
Call this the land of freedom.”

Happy Independence Day to all.

In college I checked out a copy from the library and read it through for the first time entirely, and it reached me like few books have. It was not the simple plot—a wealthy bachelor tries to reprise his first love and gets murdered. It was not Gatsby’s money or the clothes or the lavish parties. And it was not the mystery of Gatsby’s past, how he made his money or where he was even from. It was the emotions Fitzgerald managed to tap—overwhelming feelings of longing and love and loneliness—with prose that captured what my 20-year-old self could feel but not articulate.

Jay Gatsby’s central motivating force was set as a young soldier from what we are to surmise are humble and possibly poor means, when he fell for the “excitingly desirable” Daisy, a girl of a higher social stratum who attracted many of the men in her gleaming orbit. In his uniform he could hide the social class he knew she would not accept, and he managed to steal a dreamy month of love and romance with her falling “deeper in love every minute,” and after spending his final day of freedom holding her by the fireplace in her parents’ parlor, he realized “he had committed himself to the following of a grail.”

The part of Gatsby that had fallen for Daisy, that “forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath” when he first kissed her, was an idea of himself he had still not achieved without the cloak of his uniform, and one he did not want to lose. So his quest was not halted when the letter reached him overseas that Daisy had accepted the proposal of a man of her social stratum, Tom Buchanan. Gatsby returned to her hometown on “a miserable but irresistible journey” to walk the streets they had walked and revisit “the spot that she had made lovely for him,” worrying as he left “that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.”

But none of this is revealed until more than 80% into the book. The journey until then, as told by the Midwestern narrator, Nick Carraway, Daisy’s cousin, is the story of Gatsby’s quest. It is the story of Gatsby’s limitless wealth less than four years after the war (not how he achieved his wealth, just that he has). And that he has a sprawling mansion on the shore of Long Island Sound, and how he throws lavish, glamorous, all-night parties where “girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” And how he reunites with Daisy, and tries to convince her to leave her adulterous, abusive husband Tom.

As an adult I have read much more into the layers of the narrative. And in recent years, I have realized that as much of the details and customs of The Great Gatsby are timebound in the Roaring Twenties of a century ago, the tale is a timeless one for the Twenties we are now passing through. How the obscenely wealthy hoard resources, sitting in mansions “safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor,” the same poor who lionize them still today. How Tom Buchanan, a bully and a cheat, embodies the unassailable privilege of inherited wealth, granting him immunity from consequences and giving him a social standing even Gatsby’s new wealth cannot buy. How Tom and his casual racism (“Civilization’s going to pieces . . . if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged”) would be at home on much of today’s social media. And how class and wealth were used as both a weapon and a shield by the “careless” Tom and Daisy, who together “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money.”

Some of these touch on the themes I have learned we are all supposed to see in Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, themes of money and social class and connections. These deeper meanings have been read into the enigmatic Jay Gatsby in high school and college classes for generations, and many are being repeated for the centenary of its publication. It is again being hailed as the quintessential Jazz Age novel, “the great novel of the country’s entwined glory and heartbreak” (The Economist), “the hidden underbelly of the American dream” (The Conversation), how it explores “the theme of corrupted idealism” (Wall Street Journal), and how it “tells us the American dream may be a mirage” (NPR).

But every aspiration of Jay Gatsby for wealth was to be worthy, in his own right, of Daisy’s hand. Of all the places in the world his new wealth could buy him, he chose a mansion on the water where he could see the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He threw the lavish parties, one after another, in the hope she would wander into one. He befriended Nick Carraway to arrange a reunion with her. But after the initial magic of their reunion, she withers under the glare of Gatsby’s idealism and “tumbled short of his dreams.” The grail of Daisy had become not only unattainable but an illusion, something he had thrown his whole self into, “adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way.” By then, neither Daisy nor any woman could match what Gatsby or any man could “store up in his ghostly heart.”

Just as Fitzgerald turned wealth and morals into opposites, with no common ground between them, he did the same with dreams and reality. And at its core, The Great Gatsby is a book about loneliness. After all the illusion melted away and the dream died, Gatsby was left with an empty house and a handful of paid employees. When he is murdered, Nick cannot find anyone beyond Gatsby’s estranged father to attend the funeral. Not a neighbor, not a colleague, not any of the thousands who attended his parties, not even Daisy.

For all the romanticism and emotional depth I’ve always assigned to Jay Gatsby’s character, only recently have I paused to consider how little of that is told by Gatsby himself. The words are Nick Carraway’s, telling the story of Gatsby posthumously, and possibly assigning his own lonely sentiments to a man who might have been incapable of the same depth of thoughtful emotion. When Nick takes a brief detour from telling Gatsby’s story to telling of his own experience that summer, he describes working in the city and lunching impersonally with coworkers and dining alone and studying in the library alone. And how he would pick out women in the 5^th Avenue crowds and imagine entering their lives, and that he “felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others.” And of course it is Nick who, in the closing passages of the book, eulogizes the spirit of Jay Gatsby with some of the most transportive, tragic, and lonely passages in the American canon.

The Great Gatsby still haunts and inspires new readers every day. As it has for the past century and will for centuries to come. Because there are no limits to humanity’s capacity for wonder, and no end to loneliness.

Ten years ago, that first paragraph would have been unbelievable, so shocking as to be hyperbolic fiction. But after a decade of insults and bullying and dehumanization of immigrants and racist attacks and sexist insults and celebration of political violence and demeaning impersonations of disabled people and labeling of people who oppose him as “vermin” and “enemies of the state,” the person twice elected president has debased our political speech so alarmingly, there is no line left for him to cross or bottom to his cruelty. He is who we teach our children not to be, even if 49% of participating voters chose him to “lead” our executive branch for a second time.

This follows weeks of the president taking aim—in speeches, memoranda, and executive orders—at private attorneys and private law firms for being “very dishonest people.” That means, of course, the attorneys are representing individuals the president does not like, like the inspectors general he wrongly fired, or former special prosecutors he has decided to personally target, or are doing pro bono work for immigrants and LGBTQ individuals. He has revoked security clearances for four different law firms, ordered their federal contracts be terminated, and ordered they be denied access to federal buildings (which includes courthouses).

In emergency hearings Friday, two separate federal judges blocked the president’s unprecedented orders. One judge ruled the order violating the private firm’s First Amendment rights, “chills speech and legal advocacy,” “qualifies as constitutional harm,” and is “threatening plaintiffs’ very existence.” The other judge ruled a separate order by the president was viewpoint discrimination, retaliation against protected speech, and that the language used by the president trying to punish the firm for pro bono work for causes the president disagrees with was “disturbing” and “troubling.” Both judges were nominated by President George W. Bush, not that it should matter.

The president’s orders violate free speech, due process, and choice of counsel. But beyond their blatant unconstitutionality, their purpose—like the purpose of his threats to the judges who ruled to stop his illegal restrictions on specific attorneys, or against his administration’s illegal invocation of the alien enemies act, or illegal withholding of federal funds appropriated to states, or illegal deportation of individuals without due process—is to intimidate those who represent plaintiffs targeted by the president, or advocate for points of view that differ from the president’s.

The escalating attack on the courts brought responses from the legal community, beyond the courts that have ruled them a violation of our Constitution. “Lawyers must be free to represent clients and perform their ethical duty without fear of retribution,” American Bar Association President William Bay said. “We will not stay silent in the face of efforts to remake the legal profession into something that rewards those who agree with the government and punishes those who do not.” And the president’s repeated call for individual judges to be “impeached” prompted a rare response by Chief Justice John Roberts: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement with a judicial decision.”

Our nation’s founders wrote and approved a constitution of seven articles, and the first three formed our three branches of government. They still do. But presently, our Article I representatives and senators have forfeited their positions to bow in fealty to our Article II president who is intimidating them to not get in his way while threatening the last remaining branch standing, our Article III judiciary, to bend to his will.

It's embarrassing what our president is doing to our reputation around the world. We are no longer a light for freedom or beacon of hope and opportunity, we are an international bully, threatening friends and neighbors, turning allies into enemies, abandoning democracies we once protected, and aligning our flag with dictators. But here at home, it is alarming and dangerous. He is an authoritarian. He demands personal loyalty. He has abandoned his oath and is attacking us. Not me personally yet, and maybe not you personally yet, but certainly those who don’t look like me or worship like you or love like us, and those who were born in a different place than we were. If we don’t defend them now, it will be us soon. And by then, there might not be anyone left to defend the rights we take for granted.

As an attorney, I took an oath 25 years ago before my family and a packed courtroom in Lillington, North Carolina to support the Constitution of the United States and be faithful and bear true allegiance to the North Carolina Constitution. So it is my sworn obligation to repeat this warning as long as I have the right and ability to do so. I urge you to do the same. For the sake of younger generations so they can inherit the freedoms we inherited.

In times like this, there is no dignity in silence. Authoritarians are not stopped by silence, they are stopped by dissent. Do not be silent.

For the next three days, Marines fought yard by yard, with grenades and flamethrowers, while they were picked off one by one by hidden enemy snipers or diced up dozens at a time by shrapnel from mortar and artillery explosions from the hilltops. And they knew they could not capture the island without conquering its most dominating high ground, Mount Suribachi. As a Marine commander said, "The success of our entire assault depends upon the early capture of that grim, smoking rock."

On the fourth morning, as 28-year-old Lieutenant Harold Schrier prepared to lead his 40-man platoon up the side of the mountain, a staff officer handed him a folded American flag and said, "If you get to the top, put it up." American artillery kept the top of the mountain under artillery fire, helping Schrier and his men make it up in two hours. At the top, the Marines found an old iron water pipe, tied the flag to it, and raised it. A photographer from Leatherneck magazine was with them and took a few photos after it was raised along with eight of the men who raised it. They came under fire from Japanese fighters who were emerging from their bunkers after the U.S. artillery fire had ceased, but the Marines quickly located and killed them.

In a bloody battle where topography was fate, the American flag atop the island's highest point drew cheers from Marines on low ground. But the battalion commander worried that the flag might be taken as a souvenir, and he sent a group up with a replacement flag to secure the original for the unit. Sergeant Michael Strank took three men from his squad along with a larger flag taken from a landing ship up to the top of the mountain and reached the peak around noon. Coming up behind them were Joe Rosenthal, a photographer from the AP, along with Sergeant Bill Genaust, a Marine photographer. As the first flag was replaced by the second, Sergeant Genaust filmed the scene in color while Rosenthal, caught off guard, rushed to snap a photograph, aiming his camera blindly and almost missing the moment.

Rosenthal sent his negative to Guam to be processed and developed, and the printed photograph was transmitted via wireless radio facsimile to the A.P.'s office in New York City, where it was published in the next morning's Sunday papers just seventeen-and-a-half hours after it was taken.

Back on Iwo Jima, 32 more days of vicious combat followed, and the island was taken at the cost of 6,140 Americans killed—including 3 of the 6 men in Rosenthal’s photograph and the Marine sergeant who captured it on video—and 19,217 wounded. Nearly 70,000 Marines fought in the battle, and one in every three became a casualty.

On the home front, Rosenthal's photograph was already going the 1945 version of viral: it made its way onto the front pages of newspaper and magazines, was the centerpiece of the next war bond poster, appeared on a postage stamp, won the Pulitzer Prize for photography, and later was the model for the Marine Corps Memorial in Arlington. It took two more years for photographs of the first flag raising to be published, leading to confusion of which men were in each and misguided accusations of Rosenthal’s picture being staged. The truth is neither was staged, both were real, and now all eight men in the first flag raising and six men in the second have been positively identified.

Today many across our country will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the photograph, hopefully not as an empty prop for nationalism but rather a jolting reminder of a time when our flag was raised above a battlefield by troops fighting for freedom against imperialism. It was one more costly hill our grandfathers fought to secure on the path to defeating Imperial Japan, a nation that had used lies to justify invading its neighbors and murdering millions. Just as on the far side of the world, our troops were fighting for freedom against fascism, on a bloody path through northern Europe to secure victory over Germany, another nation that had used lies to justify invading its neighbors and murdering millions.

The six figures in Rosenthal’s famous photograph each had a name, a hometown, and hopes for the future. Three of them did not survive the battle. One did not survive the trauma of the war. Only one had children, and only one lived to see old age. All fought for the freedom of people far from their own homes, and for our own. Think of each of them today.

The raising of our flag over Iwo Jima was cheered by the free world in 1945. Today, 80 years later, with freedom again under attack by a nation that used lies to justify invading its neighbor and murdering thousands (so far), on what side of that struggle is our flag today, and what does it mean to the people of the free world?

It’s not accidental that my sons share music with me, and it’s very satisfying given my own background. I am Gen-X, born in 1974 and raised in the 70s and 80s in the music of the 50s and 60s, because it’s all my parents allowed. The contemporary music of my own youth—new wave and punk and metal and alternative and grunge and especially rap—were all dismissed by mom and dad as less-than, the artists as “untalented,” none as good as their generation’s music. So I hid my music from them. I was grateful for friends who let me dub their tapes (this was the cassette era, after all) onto blank TDKs and Sonys (unlabeled so my parents would not know what was on them). And I was glad for the privacy of my Walkman’s headphones, and later the privacy of my own car speakers. I’d never listen aloud at home or around my parents for fear of hearing more cutting comments about artists I had come to appreciate (I remember mom dismissing the Cure’s Robert Smith—the songwriter whose poetic words get me through the loneliest times in 7th and 8th grades—as a cross-dressing weirdo).

I have never wanted my own sons to feel they had to hide something that should be positive—especially an appreciation for music—from me. So while my wife and I have brought up our boys on our music, just as my parents brought me up on their music, we listen to their music, we embrace their love of their favorite artists, and we keep an open mind and ear for what they share.

I’ll admit to not loving some of the music my sons recommend. But I always listen, and I love that they continue to share it with me. I do really like a good bit of what I’ve been exposed to through them—Tame Impala, Hers, The Weeknd, Travis Scott, Mac Miller, Tyler the Creator, Kendrick Lamar. Even with some of the music that is subjectively not my own taste, I can think of a million worse ways to be greeted after work by my 10th grader than, “Dad! You’ve got to hear the new JPEGMAFIA album that just dropped!”

So there I was last night, perhaps knowing as much about the Kendrick/Drake beef as most Gen-Xers, but probably knowing slightly more about Kendrick Lamar and his music than the average 50-year-old. My 16-year-old could not have cared less about the game, it was the halftime show he was waiting for. And he unwittingly built my anticipation, sharing conversations with his classmates of which songs Kendrick might perform, and collab rumors from YouTubers he follows.

Then it was halftime. And there was Samuel L. Jackson dressed as Uncle Sam yelling “Salutations!” and welcoming us to “the great American game.” And then the camera switched to Kendrick on the Buick Grand National, kneeling.

“Dad, he’s on the GNX!” my 16-year-old exclaimed. And then as dancers began piling out of the car door, I mentioned it’s set up like a clown car, and my son said what he had said much of the night about Kendrick’s music and art: he doesn’t do anything without a purpose.

The next 12 minutes proved him right, a carefully choreographed, brilliantly written, and expertly performed artistic statement reaching much deeper than the beef with Drake that has monopolized much of the public’s attention.

I did not pick up every word or line of Kendrick’s lyrics, but it landed clear as day when he proclaimed himself less a messiah than a musician: “The revolution’s bout to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong guy.” Dancers in red and white danced in formation around him as he performed “Squabble Up,” halted by Samuel L. Jackson (as Uncle Sam) declaring it “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto!” Scorning Kendrick to “play the game” and “tighten up!”

The camera returned to find Kendrick standing in the center of a flag formed by his dancers now in patriotic red, white, and blue. While their arms pumped fists in synchronized dance as if the flag was waving, Kendrick sang “Humble.” And as his dancers began marching away in unison, he stopped them each step with “Sit down!” and “Be humble!” It was, in the words of The Atlantic’s Spencer Kornhaber, “a vision of American pride from a group often locked out of the American dream.”

As Kendrick led his dancers through street scenes, taunted intermittently by “Uncle Sam” Jackson for bringing his “homeboys” with him and deducting lives for the “culture cheat code,” the symbolism of a Black Uncle Sam imploring a young hip hop artist not to upset people was clear. And the performance was an unmistakable statement of protest from symbols of the powerless in the streets up to the most powerful in the stands, including the president who called NFL players kneeling over Black victims of police violence “sons of bitches” who should be fired.

And the response has been predictable. Especially from voices employed by or beholden to the billionaire class and our country’s current white-dominated power structure. But on a local level, I have read one negative social media post after another by parents in my community, filled with negativity and the predictable: they don’t know the words, don’t like hip hop, it was boring, and halftime shows should be for everyone, etc. And in many posts they hurled unreasoned vitriol, condemning the halftime show as “the worst” and “unAmerican,” proving themselves unwilling to explore any art that might challenge them while embodying the very satire of Mr. Jackson’s patronizing “Uncle Sam.”

No matter how cloaked or nuanced many try to make their critiques of Kendrick Lamar’s performance, their words say more about them than him. But even if rap or hip hop are not your chosen genre, remember your kids will hear your words. And they will remember.

Although part of a “wolfpack” with two other submarines, the loss of the Barbel was only realized when she failed to respond to messages. After searches turned up nothing and no further messages were received, the Naval Department sent telegrams each to each of the 81 sailors’ next of kin, reporting their son or husband or brother was “Missing in Action.” After the war, the US Navy officially declared them all “presumed dead.” None of their remains were ever recovered, and to this day, the wreckage of the Barbel has never been found.

Submariner service was the deadliest job in World War II. 16,000 sailors served in U.S. Navy submarines during the war, and more than 3,500 were killed in action. Their casualty rate of 22% is the highest of any American force through the course of the war. The USS Barbel was one of 52 American subs lost during the war, one of 30 lost “with all hands.”

But numbers do no justice to sacrifice. Like the thousands of other submariners lost before and after, the 81 men aboard the USS Barbel on its final day of its final mission each had a story. The youngest was 18 and the oldest was 45, and they represented 41 of the 48 states. Today, all their spouses and siblings have passed, and only a few of their children survive, though none old enough to clearly remember their father. It is likely that all who knew them in life are now gone. But we know their names. Their birthdays. Their hometowns. We can see pictures taken of them and read what they wrote and what was written about them.

It is likely you have never heard of the Barbel or of the 81 men who died aboard while doing their jobs 80 years ago today. Here are the faces and stories of just a few of them.

Thurgood grew up in Baltimore, both his parents descendants of slaves. He graduated Lincoln University then went to law school at Howard University because his first choice, the University of Maryland, was segregated. He graduated first in his class, and in his second year of practice, represented a black applicant to the University of Maryland who was denied admission because of his race. He won the case effectively ending segregation in higher education in the state of Maryland.

Thurgood established the NAACP Legal and Education Fund, which allowed indigent individuals to gain adequate legal representation, and as head of the Fund, he successfully argued many cases before the Supreme Court, brilliantly forcing high courts to enforce equal protection in states where voters rejected it. He won the voting rights case of Smith v. Allwright, got racially restrictive housing covenants struck down in Shelley v. Kraemer, and most famously, won school integration in Brown v. Board of Education. Thurgood won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court.

In 1961, President Kennedy nominated Marshall to be a judge on the 2nd Circuit, but after his confirmation was held up, President Johnson appointed him to be Solicitor General, the highest-ranking black government official to that point in American history.

In 1967, Marshall was confirmed as our nation's first Black Supreme Court Justice. As a justice, Marshall continued not only his fundamental belief in human rights but revealed his vast brilliance beyond civil rights issues, authoring precedent-setting opinions from securities law and income tax to 7th Amendment contract labor disputes.

Marshall rarely gave speeches, but in the spring of 1978, he gave the commencement address to the graduating class of the University of Virginia. His advice to the graduates: “Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.”

Justice Marshall retired due to failing health in 1991, and he passed in 1993. He is buried in Arlington, where I have visited his grave a few times. His was a life committed to justice and fairness, and he spoke with the highest moral authority. No advocate, no elected official, no lawyer, no protestor, no leader, no individual was more central or more important to the cause of civil rights over that critical half-century than Thurgood Marshall.

Now some 32 years after his passing, we see open hostility to the concept of civil rights in a way we haven’t since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. And a proud embrace of racism emboldened by a president who openly declares his bigotry. Every federal legal protection against racial discrimination in employment and voting and housing and education is being gutted, reversed by executive order, or not enforced by a Department of Justice now acting as an arm of the White House—all made possible by a congressional majority that has abandoned their duty as a check on a rogue executive branch.

Our only hope might lie in the Court where Marshall once served, which I as a lawyer will say is sadly a dim hope. So for today, tomorrow, next week, and next year, there is no better guide for the rest of us Americans who want to stop these injustices than the words of the Justice himself: “Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.”

February 1, 1960, four Black students at NC A&T decided to sit at the "whites only" lunch counter at Woolworth's in Greensboro, NC and asked for coffee. They were denied service but sat there anyway. They were asked to leave but still sat. The next day they returned, and were joined by more friends. And they were harassed. But still they came back the next day. And their silent inner strength in the face of overwhelming hate inspired others to do the same. By the fifth day, three hundred students showed up to join the protest at Woolworths, shutting the lunch counter down. And this “sit-in” movement spread to other states with segregated dining facilities.

Woolworth's finally desegregated its counters that summer. Other stores and restaurants followed. And within a few years laws changed. There had been sit-ins before the "Greensboro Four," but theirs began a wave of change that could not be stopped.

The four students who started what became a national movement were Joseph McNeil, David Richmond, Franklin McCain, and Ezell Blair.

The sit-in at Woolworth's inspired others to do the same in other segregated public places, and the pictures show their silent strength in the face of anger and hate.

Within two months of the Greensboro Four’s silent act of protest at Woolworths, “sit-ins” at segregated counters spread to fifty-five cities across thirteen states, and by that summer, most dining facilities across the South were integrated, and four years later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law, outlawing segregation in restaurants, hotels, and other public accommodations.

The student organizations formed in the wake of the Greensboro Four’s sit-in helped organize the Freedom Rides through the South the next year, and the Civil Rights March on Washington in 1963.

Tragedies used to bring us together. They still can if we decide on our own to act like adults and ignore the noise of a person who has to make even this about himself, and blaming easy targets with no basis, and fanning flames of paranoia and anger and racism when there are first responders and investigators working in freezing water to recover remains and serious professionals who are working to find what went wrong and solve the problem.

Accidents happen. Then professionals with experience investigate and make recommendations to try and make sure they don't happen again. The ATC is staffed by talented people who are overworked and underpaid, and I still marvel at what they do. The NTSB and the FAA have done this time and again, and have managed to keep our airspace free of commercial disasters like this for many years. And hopefully many more years to come.

These are the faces of just 16 of the victims, but think today of all of them. They had way too much promising life ahead of them for this to be anything other than unbearably sad.

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