We, The Other People
November 15, 2016 § Leave a comment
The election of Donald Trump to the presidency last week has many people in the United States worried or scared, or both. Anxiety is running rampant across the nation. He was elected with something less than 25% of the vote of the voting age public, which is a problem in and of itself. He lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. These are all things we must keep in mind. Many people are feeling worried about their place in Donald Trump’s America.
Many of us feel like we don’t belong, like the nation held a referendum on our right to exist, and we lost. People of color, immigrants, women, Muslims, LGBTQ people, disabled people and many others find themselves devalued and vulnerable to harassment. Let’s join together to hold the incoming President accountable for the fear, anger and hate he has stirred in our country. Let our voices be heard; we will not allow hatred to hold sway.
We believe that if we speak truth from the heart again and again and again, our words and stories have the power to affect change. We create a record of our dissent. We demand our system of government work for us, not against us. We stand our ground in a way that honors the office of the Presidency and the promises of freedom and justice for all. ’
We, the project organizers, are documentary filmmakers and public historians who are deeply committed to making sure that all people are able contribute to the historical record. We believe that stories matter and that everyone has a right to make their voices heard.
We, The Other People is a project to collect letters from Americans and immigrants who live here. We are all protected by the Constitution of the United States of America.
So why letters? Glad you asked:
Letters to the President of the United States (POTUS) have a long tradition. Revolutionary War veterans wrote to President Washington seeking pensions that were promised but not delivered. Escaped African American slaves petitioned President Lincoln on behalf of their families. Children beseeched President Roosevelt to help them survive the Great Depression and Jewish Americans pleaded with their President to help get their relatives out of Nazi Germany. Japanese Americans wrote to Reagan asking him to remember the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the Cold War raged.
Across centuries, letters to the President have expressed the concerns, hopes, fears and expectations of our nation’s people. They have called on the holder of the seat of power to hear them and to be their leader.
We are collecting them for now on our website. But, come January, we will deliver them to the White House, to deliver our message for an inclusive United States, to the president. This will also ensure that the letters enter the official record and eventually end up officially documented in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
Matthew Barlow 
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