OHSHITSON

“I covered a lot of Trump rallies as a journalist. I didn’t feel any hatred. People were more curious than anything. I was never assaulted. I felt like most people were just supporting him because he wasn’t part of the establishment. Or because they were tired of politics. But it was confusing. Because even though I didn’t feel like they hated me, these people were supporting someone who said I should be banned from the country. Even the father of one of my best friends supports Trump. This man had me over to his house. I went to Thanksgiving with him. My friend asked him: ‘Dad, how can you support that man? Our friend Zahra is a Muslim.’ He told her: ‘Don’t worry. He won’t do everything that he says.’ Today has been difficult. These last few weeks, it was mostly speculation. There was suspicion that most Americans supported him but I could hope that it was wrong. But now that hope is gone. And I have to feel differently. I have to feel like maybe most Americans don’t want me here. And I feel like no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be part of the community. And even if they’re friendly to me, or if they invite me to Thanksgiving, deep down they believe that America is a country that belongs to white people.”

“I first ran for Congress in 1999, and I got beat. I just got whooped. I had been in the state legislature for a long time, I was in the minority party, I wasn’t getting a lot done, and I was away from my family and putting a lot of strain on Michelle. Then for me to run and lose that bad, I was thinking maybe this isn’t what I was cut out to do. I was forty years old, and I’d invested a lot of time and effort into something that didn’t seem to be working. But the thing that got me through that moment, and any other time that I’ve felt stuck, is to remind myself that it’s about the work. Because if you’re worrying about yourself—if you’re thinking: ‘Am I succeeding? Am I in the right position? Am I being appreciated?’ – then you’re going to end up feeling frustrated and stuck. But if you can keep it about the work, you’ll always have a path. There’s always something to be done.”

“I grew up in the suburbs. I used to think that I could write a prescription for a poor man: ‘Get a job, save your money, pull yourself up by the bootstraps.’ I don’t believe that anymore. I was ignorant to the experiences of poor people. I’d invite anyone to come and meet the people who live in this neighborhood. Right now we are surrounded by working poor people. These are the people who sell your tools at Sears, and fix your roofs, and take care of your parents, and mow your lawns, and serve your meals. They’re not getting a living wage. There’s no money left to save. There’s nothing left if they get sick. Nothing left if their car breaks down. And God forbid they make a mistake, because there’s nothing left to pay fines or fees. When you’re down here, the system will continue to kick dirt in your face. You can’t pull yourself up when there’s nothing to grab onto. We aren’t paying our brothers and sisters enough to live. We want them to serve us, but we aren’t serving them.”

“For the last eight years I’ve been the head of communications for the UN Refugee Agency. My job is to make people care about the sixty million displaced people in the world. I wish I could tell every single one of their stories. Because if people knew their stories, I don’t think there would be so many walls. And there wouldn’t be so many people drowning in the seas. But I don’t think I anticipated how difficult it would be to make people care. It’s not that people are selfish. I just think that people have a hard time caring when they feel insecure. When the world is unstable, people feel vulnerable. And vulnerable people focus on protecting what they have. They focus on their own families. They focus on their own communities. It can be very hard to welcome strangers when you’re made to feel threatened. Even if those strangers are more vulnerable than you.” —————————- This is my friend Melissa Fleming, who I think is one of the most important people in the world, and who was so instrumental in helping organize the HONY refugee series. Tomorrow at 7pm we will be in conversation at the Union Square Barnes and Noble, to celebrate the launch of her new book: A Hope More Powerful Than The Sea, which tells the powerful story of a young woman who survived a shipwreck while fleeing the war in Syria. If you can’t make the signing, you can get the book here: http://amzn.to/2kb9Ga8

Today in microfashion… (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

“I got a message from God the other day about how to solve the world’s problems. We’ve got to send all the world leaders to play on one of Trump’s golf courses. Then while they’re gone, we replace them with grandmas. Because nobody ever got invaded by a grandma.”