MAKE AMERICA

America is a country built on a history of mistakes, of protests, of constant corrections, and an indefinite ascent toward freedom.

Americans have never been quiet or peaceful; we've never just accepted what we've been handed. The American Experiment has been marked by our inability to sit down and shut the fuck up, even when perhaps it would be better for us to sit down and shut the fuck up.

America is not a flag; it's not an anthem; it's not a war in a foreign land we should have never started. America is not a country. It is a people. Not a group of human beings but humans fighting every day to leave behind something better than ourselves.

And if you have pride in this country, you must have pride in every protest that disrupts your journey to work, every walk out that ends class early, every athlete on bended knee, every water protector in North Dakota, every woman who risked her life so her daughters might have the right to vote, every immigrant who broke his back, in 1776 or 2016, for the promise of the American Dream.

If you have pride in this country, you must look at it with open eyes. Because if you love something, you help it grow. You coach it with compassion, and you don't let it off the hook.

You stay. You do good work. You care for it.

Every messy inch of it.