Dear America, I’m Serving Tacos on Your Birthday!

Hello Meltingpot Readers,

If there ever was a year I didn’t feel like celebrating the 4th of July, this would be it. After all, the 4th of July is basically just a big birthday party for our nation, but our nation hasn’t been very good lately and I don’t think she deserves a party. In fact, for the last few months in particular, the USofA has been making me quite angry. And just like I told my moody 16-year-old, a week before his 17th birthday, “I’m not having a party for you because you keep pissing me off.” And America is totally pissing me off.

The way I see it, with the recent Supreme Court decision to uphold #45’s travel ban, the abhorrent numbers of mass shootings and government sanctioned police murders, the cruel and inhumane immigration policies being enacted and the flagrant disregard for the rights of women, Native people, the environment, poor people, sick people, Muslims, gay people, basically humans, I’m just not really that much in a party mood. I mean, what exactly would I be celebrating? Our joyful independence from our British colonizer? Our right to be free? But we’re not really free are we? Not when we have a president and congress who are determined to take away so many of our rights, particularly our right to live free of fear of violence, persecution, global climate change and death by a curable disease that we couldn’t get medicine for because we had no health insurance.

If I’m being honest, which I am, of course, I spend a lot of time trying to decide if I should utilize el esposo‘s EU passport and just pack up and leave this country while it goes through its ugly growing pains, or should I stick around and fight. Right now, while I have one kid on the verge of finishing high school, I know I have to stay at least one more year, which means I have a year where I must do my part. My part means taking this elephant-sized bag of bitter lemons and making something that resembles lemonade and using it to quench the thirst of the most thirsty. My part means using my words and my actions to provide an alternative narrative to the whitewashed, racist, fear-mongering, hateful, one-dimensional version of America that the moronic kumquat in the oval office keeps trying to project with his daily 140 characters of janky popycocks.

So, dear readers, I’m serving tacos on the 4th of July.

Why tacos? Because they’re Mexican! And I want to honor a culture that truly has had a hand in making America great. I’ll probably get a piñata too. And I’m going to keep a tip jar at dinner and all the money earned will go to support reuniting families at the border. That way I’ll be doing my part to help America get her act together again and be the type of country that deserves a birthday party. Just like I told my son, maybe next year, America. Maybe next year.

If you want to serve tacos at your Fourth of July gathering, I think that would be great. Or perhaps you’d like to serve some delectables from the Middle East. The more people who utilize this opportunity to show solidarity with our immigrant roots and to showcase the cultural diversity that makes this country truly great, the more likely my defiant taco dinner resonates. One drop in the ocean can make a lot of ripples. Think about it.

Peace!