Give Me “You’re Fired!” Your Four (More), Your Befuddled Asses . . . The Abetted News of Your Scheming Bores”

It’s excruciatingly ironic that the very metropolis that spawned our reelected “commander in chief,” who is scapegoating roughly half of our nation’s 45 million immigrants, is also home to the Statue of Liberty. How many immigrants live in Parma, Parma Heights, and Seven Hills? A lot!

For those, and others, I write.

Inside the pedestal of America’s most iconic beacon of hope, promise, and sanctuary to so many, Lady Liberty’s poem reads:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Titled “The New Colossus,” it was scribed by Emma Lazarus in 1883. She did it to help raise funds for Lady Liberty's pedestal. Of Sephardic Jewish heritage, Lazarus was moved to write these world-famous lines after working with refugees and immigrants.

I, too, have felt deepy sad about the plight of refugees, asylum-seekers, and am compelled to volunteer my skills. What drives the knife in deeper is that Lady Liberty’s tablet – the symbolic book of the rule of law in America – has been made a mockery by the Orange Jesus. In case any of the voters who’ve turned our country into an unapologetic idiocracy didn’t know, other symbols for the Statue of Liberty are as follows: The torch in her right hand stands for enlightenment. Something I take very personally. Lucy means light in all languages and lands, and as in Lady Liberty’s torch that illuminates the path to freedom. In Arabic, Lucy is “Noor.” In Spanish, it’s “Lucia.”

And for those who voted for their White Savior, and/or because they couldn’t bring themselves to consider a woman competent or trustworthy enough to run this county, the broken chain and shackle under Lady Liberty’s left foot symbolizes the end to slavery after the Civil War.

This previous point is complicated. It involves demographics of voters who proclaimed, “We are not a monolith,” and "I can't vote for someone [like Harris] I don't know anything about," while knowing everything they need to know about him. For people like me it's even worse: navigating the searing betrayal by other women so steeped in outdated thinking about the roles of men and women in society that they actually voted for the enemy.

Lastly, Liberty’s crown is covered with spikes to represent the rays of the sun beaming out, not just to new arrivals, but to the rest of the world.

So if we can’t see what’s ahead, it's because we've gouged out our own eyes.

But I still have mine. And I just hope I’m not walking down the beach someday, only to find Lady Liberty buried in sand up to her bedraggled shoulders.

“Damn, dirty . . . hellscape.“