I’m sitting here, eyes watering from smoke inside my home due to the air quality outside. Don’t worry, I’m not too close. Just about 65 miles away. We’ve been an ash covered mess since Tuesday, because much to my surprise, turns out there’s a hecka lot of fires going on Cali. Brilliant, 2020.
But 1 year ago today, there was a momentous occasion. For me, at least.
This was the culmination of something I started a while back and frankly, I wouldn’t have been able to do without you guys here at Balloon Juice, so thank you. It sucked a bit, being there by myself while surrounded by so many happy families, but I like to think I wasn’t actually alone, I had the Juicitariat with me. A year later. How do I feel…? Truth is, I’m as ambivalent as when I started. At least about staying in a country that has done it’s best to demonstrate it does not want me. It only eased things for me by a modicum and the poor choices my fellow citizens made in 2016 is making me incredibly anxious as my most recent contract closes out this month with a pandemic and record setting numbers of unemployed competing with me for whatever jobs are out there. Thanks a lot, asshats of America. But my ethics and plain old comprehension of what an incredibly dangerous situation it would be for America to be the fascist powerhouse the current administration would make it still tells me my choice was the right one – if not for me, then for the good of humanity. I know, some are going to mock such a statement. My one little vote, little voice affecting humanity. Too many messages of individual powerlessness have been fed to Americans. We are very powerful as individuals and as a united team. I believe in that intensely. I believed in that enough to bypass escaping a place I felt held no love and no security for me to make sure that I did some level of work to set this Trumpian mess right. The right thing is always worth doing over the comfortable thing. … Damn, I wish I was less ethical.
There was a lot of excitement I really didn’t feel that day. And I couldn’t stand a single moment of the pomp, plus, I think Trump spoke, I don’t know, I probably blocked it. For me, it was the start of truly understanding the sort of ambivalence Frederick Douglass probably felt when he wrote, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?“. The one friend who managed to meet up after to celebrate probably found me taciturn and surly. Just a lot of feels that day. But one thing gave me great joy and continues to.
I registered 15 minutes after I was sworn in. I got my first “I voted” sticker this spring and this fall – I will vote for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and every Dem on the ballot. I have to read up on the propositions – thanks Ballotpedia & League of Women Voters! – but I get to have my say in who runs this overgrown asylum this fall of 2020. I have to design some postcards and get geared up with Postcards to Voters, not to mention sign up to text GOTV, so things are going to get busier as we close onto the election. The fact that I can do this, that pulls me into the happy column. This was the most important thing and I am proud to be here and do this. This country deserves better than Donald Trump and his administration. I may just be one person, one little voice, but I am determined to use all my power as one person and do the work of pulling this nation back on course to be what it’s ideals claim it wants to be. And if we do it, then do it a few more election cycles, well, New Zealand will still be there for a visit.
The kidlets did not care about my personal triumph, of course. Ah well. Open thread to celebrate your achievements or whatever, I’m not the boss of you.
TaMara (HFG)
And we are all better for it.
Thanks for not giving up on us.
Villago Delenda Est
We need more citizens like you. Many more.
HumboldtBlue
We need you, best part of an all-purpose blog is everybody blowing a horn.
Another Scott
Happy Anniversary! Truly.
Things will get better, and get better faster with us pulling together.
Thank you.
Cheers,
Scott.
Fair Economist
Happy anniversary! And glad to be a citizen of the same country as you.
oldster
Wonderful post.
All of us must fight our hardest to make America good, to make it the place that people like you feel compelled to come join.
We shall overcome the stain of trumpism.
mrmoshpotato
🥳🥳🥳🤗🤗🤗♥️♥️♥️
Glad you’re with us to fight the good fight! Thank you for believing in this country enough to join us and make your voice heard at the ballot box!
HumboldtBlue
@oldster: ‘
We fucking better,
SiubhanDuinne
I’m so glad you’re a fellow citizen! We’re better for having you here, participating — which is what citizens do. Happy anniversary, American!
Betty Cracker
A year already? Glad to have you here with us in the fight. The MAGA choads should leave — they’re the ones who suck. We need the good people to stay.
I was watching Biden’s speech earlier, and our internet went out. It’s still out. Oh well. His speech was going very well up until the moment the screen froze. He more than rose to the occasion in the part I saw, and from what I gather on the twitters, he finished strong too.
Excellent. That’ll make us voters’ jobs easier. Let’s kick that orange carbuncle and his vile enablers to the curb, then let’s have a big old party for several days.
rikyrah
Glad that you are on our side👏👏
randal m sexton
Country gets a seemingly small but very significant amount better .
Jackie
I remember the stress, worries and fears you went through: Filling out the paperwork, delays after delays… beating Trump before he managed to prevent you from becoming a citizen of the United States of America. You won. We won. And Trump will be defeated by you, and others like you!♥️
frosty
Congratulations, and thanks for joining us!
Lyrebird
@Villago Delenda Est:
Hear, hear!
One of my favorite recent Biden quotes is this one from an interview with a woman who is an Egyptian immigrant in one of those Covid-struck communities, meatpacking town I think:
Same applies to you!
CaseyL
Happy anniversary!
I’m glad you decided to stay, because you’re wicked smaht, very funny, just a terrific person; and the more people like you decide to throw your lot in with us, the more the US is worth saving.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
I was having a similar reaction. Many of us have observed, in other contexts, how stretchy and weird time has become. Part of me can hardly believe it’s been a year already; but if Ruemara had said she was observing five years as a US citizen, I might have been slightly surprised but wouldn’t have questioned the number.
Sister Golden Bear
Congratulations or condolences, whichever is more appropriate.
But seriously, we’re a better country for having people like you here.
sfinny
Congratulations on your anniversary. I worked as an election inspector for the June primary in New York, and it was a grueling day. But the best part was helping first time voters, who just qualified by age or by becoming citizens. We had a pretty confusing ballot, and many of the first timers needed some help on understanding how to complete it. And they were always so nice, and patient, and happy when the scanning machine indicated that their ballot had been cast successfully.
Mary G
People like you are the reason the good parts of America exist. We’re lucky to have you and I appreciate the bravery it took for you to buy in. I hope we live up to it, but I join you in lending my feeble efforts. If there are enough of us, we’ll be fine.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
Happy anniversary, my wife will have her 30th next February(I think).
Yutsano
I’m so damn proud of this little corner of the Internet. We have welcomed two new citizens with open arms. I hope we succeed this fall. I want you both to experience the promise this country has.
Eljai
Congratulations! We are all better off because of you. Together, we’ll make this country a welcoming, equitable place that finally lives up to its ideals. Also, couch kittehs are adorable!
trollhattan
Will be thinking of you joining my kid this November, each casting your first presidential vote. You’ll share knowing what it’s like peering in at a process in which you cannot participate, but are still affected by the result. We’re bettered by your presence.
West of the Rockies
We’re honored to have you!
Mary G
Still feisty from beyond the grave!
Seriously, Republicans are so tone deaf. This pardon had to have been Jared’s idea.
pacem appellant
Every election for the past few cycles I’ve posted a lengthy review of the every CAbCA proposition on FB. Few people comment, but one year I was going to not do it because it’s such a big effort and I thought nobody read it, but everyone called and texted me IRL because they thought I’d forgotten or that they’d missed it. So in short, if you friend me on FB, you can get jackal-themed prop research from me as well.
smike
That was very nice, ruemara. Thank you.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Happy anniversary, Ruemara!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Just saw some news that states were applying for FEMA unemployment assistance from Trump’s executive orders. I thought this was illegal?
Anne Laurie
Thank you, RueMara — for this post, and for joining us!
sgrAstar
It is SO good to have you with us, Rue. Feeling slightly more hopeful because you made this choice.
🌑
West of the Rockies
@Mary G:
I’m surprised–no, really–that Trump didn’t say, “Susan B. Anthony, or Susan as I like to call her, was a suff… Suffra… She wanted to vote, okay? Not a lot of people know that. But she’s doing great things and deserves a pardon.”
scribbler
Glad you’re here. And voting! You’re one of my favorites, Ruemara.
eclare
Congratulations! Now we make our voices heard in Nov…
HumboldtBlue
Play the horns.
Ruckus
We like you.
It takes all kinds to make a democracy. Some of them get it wrong. Some of them get it so wrong it’s unbelievable. And some work hard to make it worse than just wrong.
But that’s the thing about a democracy, it takes work, it takes everyone having a bit of responsibility. The last 50 or so years not everyone has accepted the need to have that bit of responsibility and this democracy has suffered greatly for it. There is/was a small majority that was willing the last go round but it wasn’t enough. We have to do whatever each of us can do, to make that majority, overwhelming. And then we have to make sure that those that we elect to work for us, do that.
LeftCoastYankee
Immigration is probably the only thing which makes this country exceptional. It is too easy for we humans to become complacent and resistant to change (aka passage of time).
Having great people come in and say “I want to be here, and here’s what I know from before” is an immeasurable treasure for our country, even if we draw pointless lines in the sand each generation and say, “this is where we stay”.
Thanks for your honesty and strength. Very inspiring to me.
Viva BrisVegas
Then just about every developed country is exceptional.
Here in Australia 28.5% of residents were born overseas. In the USA it’s about 13.5%. In Germany it’s 14.8% and in New Zealand it’s 22.9%.
Kent
My wife is an immigrant from Chile.
I remember her citizenship ceremony. Would have been around 2004 in San Antonio TX in the auditorium on the campus of Trinity University. I remember being struck by how truly global the crowd was. From literally every corner of the planet. I was assuming it was going to be mostly Hispanic, being San Antonio, and it wasn’t.
And everyone was registering to vote right then and there too. Seemed like a more hopeful time, somehow, even though the Iraq war was raging and Bush was president. But it didn’t seem as hateful and overtly racist and xenophobic as today.
I remember my wife being somewhat pissed that the citizenship interview went so quickly and easily for her. She had studied up and was barely asked any questions and felt cheated. She was on a marriage visa and the immigration officer said the two kids in tow and joint mortgage were all the evidence he needed that it wasn’t a sham marriage. She was like “no…wait. We aren’t done. You need to ask me about the Supreme Court, the 14th Amendment, and House of Representatives!”
oldster
@Viva BrisVegas:
Okay, how about:
“Thinking that immigration is probably the only thing that makes this country exceptional is probably the only thing that makes this country exceptional”?
That, and surprise: immigration, self-deception, and surprise, are the three…I’ll come in again.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
Oh my gawd, girl. I love you. I welcome you. I’m SO GLAD you’re one of us. You are the best of us. I was weepy with happiness for all of us (our gain!) and joy for you when you became a citizen.
But please, please, for the love of G-d and Obama and all that is right in this country: stop with the “Cali.” We don’t say that. We don’t call it that. It makes our teeth itch. Staaaahhp.
Thank you. We love you.
Kent
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
Yeah. The only time it is correct to say that is when you are in Colombia.
opiejeanne
Congratulations. I’m so glad you’re with us now.
Julia
Happy one year anniversary, Ruemara! You are one of my favorite jackals. And your kitties are so darn cute!
Aleta
🍵 🥮
LeftCoastYankee
@Viva BrisVegas:
Yup.
I don’t have a very high opinion of our exceptionalism.
Yutsano
@Viva BrisVegas: This is fair, and yes pretty much every developed country has immigration. But I will take our 44 million over your 7.5 million every day*.
*Based upon current population and percentages given.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Even the liberal Wall Street Journal …. (Front Page)
Viva BrisVegas
@Yutsano: You can, but remember that is Trump arithmetic.
If you actually want to see how a real melting pot works, come see Australia.
Morzer
There are many things that could be better in this world, but there is at least one point of shining light named ruemara.
Aleta
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: @Kent:
My born-in-CA friend uses Cali ; b/c of the story of Queen Califia / Calafia used by the MexiCali Biennial (and artists and writers). “Calafia: Manifesting the Terrestrial Paradise takes its name from the mythical Black Amazonian warrior queen Calafia, who ruled over the exotic island of California in the 16th-century novel Las Sergas de Esplandian (The Adventures of Esplandian) by Spanish author Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. This story serves as a jumping-off point for artists to explore issues of feminism, colonialism, and indigenous rights in the historic and contemporary border-straddling place called California.”
I don’t know much more about Qu. Califia, but FWIW, I found these ideas about CA’s name:
“The name ‘California’ came from a knightly romance book that was published in 1510. It was about an island paradise near the Indies where beautiful Queen Califia ruled over a country of beautiful black Amazons with lots of pearls and gold. … Cortez’s men thought they found the island in 1535, because they found pearls. Later, Francisco de Ulloa found that the island was really a peninsula.
While there is some consensus that the area was named for the fictional island, scholars have also suggested that the name comes from the Catalan words calor (“hot”) and forn (“oven”) or from a Native America phrase, kali forno (“high hill”).”
From wiki:
“California historian Lynn Townsend White, Jr wrote that (Spanish explorers) considered the as-yet undiscovered California ‘a land of Orient with fantastic attributes’. The novel about Esplandián and Calafia’s domain had a strong influence on the searching Conquistadors, who believed they might find a nation of women and riches somewhere at the edge of the known world.“
Sab
Late to the thread. Thank you Ruemara for committing to be American and for continuing to be a BJ jackal. We need you.
WereBear
Congratulations, ruemara! You picked a fine year to look back on and survive, no?
Together, we do have the will to drag the nation back to sanity. And that’s a fine start.
Antonius
Welcome! Thanks for taking a chance on us!
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
Congratulations! I am glad you decided to stay and so happy your voice is part of Balloon Juice.
Searcher
@Viva BrisVegas: Incidentally when looking at the top N most populous countries and asking, “Which of these have their shit together?”, net per capita migration correlates pretty well.
Eric NNY
So glad you’re with us RueMara! Don’t let the assholes get you down.
Searcher
@oldster:
The thing that makes America unique and special is our ability to construct narratives about how special America is and pretend that these narratives are both unique to America and date back to the Founding, the earliest immigration, or even occasionally to the indigenous culture.
Cheryl Rofer
Happy Anniversary! Glad you are sticking with us!
H.E.Wolf
Honored to have you here, and to have your back.
The USA improved when you were sworn in!
dnfree
Congratulations! Whenever I hear most people say “proud to be an American”, I think “Why? You were born here—it’s not something you accomplished.” But for you, it IS something you accomplished. And you can be proud that you’re here to try to make it a better place.
West of the Cascades
Congratulations! Your story is so inspiring, and it’s so critical to remind everyone that every single vote matters. Thank you for that. I would warrant that a substantial majority of this country DOES want you, just not the angry white supremacist minority that has the upper hand at the moment. Thank you for trusting in this country – it sparks hope that they can be defeated in November and eventually consigned to the scrap heap of history.
TomatoQueen
I’ve had the enormous privilege to work in places where immigrants have come in for education and help and sustenance and acceptance and at last citizenship. Oh the battles to help them stay in the face of danger in their countries of origin. Oh the heartbreak on searching the file cabinets for the original green card record, now marked “Revoked”–seeing it was the worst thing in the world. But the best thing in the world is at the end of the ceremony, when we do the voter registration, and we smile at each other, because we share the great secret, the reward for all that hard work and the years of patience: the vote. It is the most precious gift America gives, and every new citizen knows it.
Starfish
I am delighted that you are handing voters some of the best resources to learn more about candidates. Congratulations on your one year anniversary.
WaterGirl
You’re an important voice here, ruemara. You don’t post on the front page all that often, but when you do, there’s kind of a hush where everybody stops and listens to what you have to say.
💕
J R in WV
Congratulations on the swell anniversary, and thanks for joining the rest of us in the madhouse!!
I have another internet friend who mentioned in an email not long ago that she had received her approval and become a citizen, IIRC she is Brazilian, a mineral specimen dealer. Was thrilled to have an opportunity to vote against someone we won’t mention in such an uplifting thread.
Hoping for the best as you look for work as your current contract runs out. I worked under a contract some years ago, and was always glad back then for my wife’s career which kept my temporary employment from being stressful.
Best wishes, and all the good luck! |:-)
Mel
Thanks for this. Thanks for always saying it like it is. Thanks for your grace, your patience, and your courage and willingness to stick it out and fight to make things better even during this horrifically shitty time. This world, and especially this country, are both better because you’re here.
AJ
This was beautiful and inspiring
I hope to follow you in that process one day when I trust this government again
Happy anniversary and thank you for fighting for all of us