I encourage the bravery, endurance, and power “the Squad” showed in the past six months since you started your jobs in the House of Representatives. The greatest challenge to your political aspirations, Nancy Pelosi, is composing a tougher and more strategic way to make sure Donald Trump never again holds the seat of President of the United States.
Recently, you four women known as “The Squad” — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York, Ilhan Omar, Minnesota, Rashida Tliab, Michigan, and Ayanna S. Presley, Massachusetts — came into the House of Representatives ready to fight and expose the injustices that exist in the United States. The country cannot thank you enough for your efforts, though many of her citizens may not realize it, yet.
The fight you bring not only exposes you to international attention but also to criticism from within your own party, many of who fought these battles for years on the state and national levels with varying degrees of success. The most notable of your critics, besides Donald Trump, is Nancy Pelosi, the most powerfully positioned woman in the government of the United States of America.
In-Fighting, Ununited
The most recent clash came as a result of the $4.6 billion border aid package that you argued failed to adequately protect those currently occupying what many describe as “concentration camps” for undocumented immigrants. Pelosi argued that your squad is too ambitious and has no real power in Congress, an unwarranted comment. After her remarks about you, Pelosi was accused of being lenient towards a white supremacist agenda seeking to reduce the number of immigrants in the United States.
When it comes to governing a country whose Constitution and Bill of Rights were written in an echo chamber of intelligent white men, sometimes working with people who forward a white supremacist agenda is the only option left; it may leave you ready to hurl afterward because you had to argue with people about why children’s lives matter, but those are the people you have to work with. As much as many of us would love to cut off the head of white supremacy, it solidified its place in our past, present, and future long ago. The goal, for many United States citizens, is not to destroy white supremacy, it is to survive it.
Calling for Impeachment
You, The Squad, and more progressive democrats of the United States believe that impeachment proceedings are a way to hold a man accountable for furthering and unshadowing a white supremacist agenda and committing crimes. As much as the President may say he is not a white supremacist, if he walks like a white supremacist and talks like a white supremacist, he is a white supremacist.
Being a white supremacist in this country is not a crime, nor an impeachable offense, but in no way should anyone be silent in the face of or defend his comments and actions that are racist. The President committed the crime of obstruction of justice and helped to orchestrate the current human rights violations on U.S. soil. Those two things are impeachable offenses that are the results of the President’s racism and xenophobia, offenses the President is willing to repeat if he is reelected.
I support you in holding our Commander and Chief accountable for impeachable offenses. However, if the Republicans are unwilling to hold the President accountable for his words against you, their colleagues, it is unlikely they will give you the votes to impeach.
I doubt that all of the Republicans in the House and the Senate agree with the insanity of the private detention facilities; a reminder of a time when Japanese-Americans were treated similarly during wartime in the United States. It does not seem as if it would be hard for moderate Republicans to branch off and either give a lesser-known political party steam or create an entirely new one, but it is that hard. In simple terms, the two-party system is to blame; a system that ultimately divides and instills a fear of opposition.
It is not that I do not agree with you. However, Congress is not Twitter. Many Republicans will shut down the government before they compromise. Remember the last time that happened?
The Nancy Pelosi Game
Pelosi is playing the long game, one the Democrats have a slim chance at winning. She is fighting a war, not a physical war or an information war, but one for the heart and soul of the democracy of the United States. In order to do this, sometimes she has to make those compromises that go against what she believes. Sometimes, she has to put faith in time and in the President’s own ability to make himself look bad without the Democrats lifting a finger; simply sit back, sip some tea, and ride the storm without making any irreversible mistakes.
She is aware that even if Donald Trump is impeached in the next couple of months, a seemingly invisible Mike Pence will simply step up to fill the vacancy and perpetuate the President’s policies. She is counting on a newly elected leader while you count on changing an entire culture with hard-hitting paragraphs and the click of a button. Nancy Pelosi’s way is certainly not perfect, but her way has a better chance than yours.
Change Our Culture
This country needs change that The Squad can bring if we are ever going to see a country where a white supremacist can never again ist in the President’s chair in the Oval Office. You are the change this country needs, but in this political climate screaming into enemy space with no backup does no one any good. I hear you and I see you as powerful women of color who stand for the best of what these United States represent. Your times will come and you will change policy for the better.
Movements in United State’s and world history – The Civil Rights Movements, The Gay Rights Movements, and The Suffragette Movements, which continue on today – prove that these movements took years to blossom and are still blossoming today to create desperately needed change. While you, the Squad, fight for the rights of United States citizens, you also divide your party and the citizens of this country cannot afford to pick sides right now with the President you are up against.
You have to learn to play the long game, the one that requires sacrifice and compromise because no movement was ever won by demanding immediate action. A change in culture is usually achieved by those in the background, the movers and shakers. As much as it pains me to write, until such a time where our government truly reflects the motto “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” compromising with a party who refuses to disavow a racist, xenophobic President may be the only way to change a culture, one agonizingly slow and painful step at a time.
There are many who say that some people cannot afford to wait that long, that lives to depend on the policies that The Squad are trying to implement and change. I agree, but the bureaucracy was set up to be slow, at the expense of those underrepresented groups in our country. It is the system we have to work with until someone can implement a better one.
Until then, Democrats need to focus on beating Donald Trump in 2020, not on in-party conflicts, demands for immediate action, or an impeachment that will probably never occur. Changing culture is sorrowful, tiresome, and extremely hard, but is also too important a thing to mess up. I challenge you, The Squad, to play the long game of changing the culture so what happened over these past three years in the United States never happens again.