Dear Congressman…
Could a Congressional District Cultural Exchange Help Heal America’s Great Divide?
Yesterday, I posted my immediate thoughts in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election. In that post, I asked how we make compassion a priority — in our personal lives and in our culture.
Then I wrote the following letter to my Congressman, Jim Himes of Connecticut’s Fourth District. If you like the idea of a Congressional District Cultural Exchange, please feel free to copy whatever parts of my letter are relevant and send to your representative as well. (If you’re not sure how to reach your rep, start by entering your ZIP Code here. Then follow links to the rep’s “contact me” page.)
Dear Representative Himes,
I am, like so many of your constituents and so many Americans, still reeling from the shock of this week’s Presidential elections. Watching the returns come in, one thing was abundantly clear: We live in two Americas — one America like the district you represent in Fairfield County and another America that’s both rural and post industrial and has been left behind by the progressive movement of the last 40 years.
Many people like me are asking, “What now?” We are afraid, confused. But it occurred to me that the best thing we could do for our country and ourselves is get to know the “other.”
When I was in high school in New Jersey in the 1980s, for example, we did a “domestic exchange” with a high school in Tennessee. When Greenwich High School went to the “We the People” Finals in Washington, DC the year before last, they partnered with a team from South Dakota.
Too rarely do we really have the opportunity to understand how others live. Many of us on the east coast have the global perspective that comes from living in a cosmopolitan (or at the very least, a major metropolitan) area. I wonder whether as our representative, you could arrange a kind of “cultural exchange” between our district and one that voted for Trump this year — maybe a rural district in Wisconsin or Michigan.
I am trying to practice compassion, to understand how deeply hurt and disenfranchised so many Americans must feel for them to come out in droves to elect a mouthpiece of fear, bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia and misogyny. Until we understand each other, we will not heal as a country and find a way forward.
I hope you take my idea of a cultural exchange between opposing districts seriously. I’d be happy to work with you on this, either in terms of logistics or media/publicity.
Thank you for your time. I so value what you do for us.
Sincerely,
Jennie Baird
