When I was three, my family left Colombia, a country divided by civil war, and arrived in a new one that declared itself indivisible. So when my father, Arturo, was recruited to come to America to work in a textile factory, he and my mother, Teresa, like millions of immigrants and refugees before them, made the difficult decision to leave everything behind so that my siblings and I could have a better life.
My most formative memories are not of Medellín, Colombia, but of my new hometown, Central Falls, Rhode Island. One memory is indelible: standing up in second grade to recite words I didn’t fully understand—“indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” I didn’t speak much English then, but it served as an affirmation of why my parents had brought me here.
Growing up working-class, the youngest of ten kids, I became an interpreter for my parents and friends at schools, hospitals, and many government agencies. These experiences set me on a journey to become an attorney focused on issues of poverty, labor, and immigration. As executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, I have spent most of my career trying to help America live up to its promise of liberty and justice for all.
My work has long served to remedy fissures within our democracy that hid just under the surface. Donald Trump exploited those fissures, exposing Americans’ cultural anxieties and economic insecurity by stoking fear of others, especially Black and brown immigrants, as a weapon to tear our country apart. Since that election night, I have thought about the word “indivisible.” It holds new meaning for me. It should hold new meaning for us all. Our strength—and indivisibility—is not handed to us. We all must play a role in creating a country that lives up to its ideals.
This administration wasted no time enacting its xenophobic agenda, immediately issuing a series of executive orders aimed at instilling fear in immigrant communities. The first week was capped by the now-infamous Muslim ban prohibiting people from certain Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. A relentless war against immigrants has been waged.
More than two years later the bonds we share across lines of difference have been tested. Whether by flooding the airports in support of Muslim immigrants, calling on Congress to protect Dreamers, fighting to preserve the Affordable Care Act, or showing up at the polls in November 2018, we have seen what we can do when we are indivisible. Our sacred democratic institutions, like the free press, free and fair elections, and the independence of our judiciary, endure only if we believe we are one nation.
Viewed from the top, American democracy is under aerial bombardment. But there’s also the view from the bottom, where a democratic renewal is under way.
More ordinary Americans have shown up to defend each other and to stand up for American principles than at any other time during my life. America’s better angels have sprung into action, rushed to airports across the country, marched, rallied, volunteered, donated, called their elected officials for the first time, held town halls, elected the most historically diverse House of Representatives, and elected state and local leaders who reflect our values.
And there to channel much of this grassroots power was the Indivisible movement born amid the resistance to Trump. Cofounders Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin created a guide designed to make our representative democracy work for all of us by pointing the energy of millions of Americans toward Congress. When they first reached out to ask for my support of their new endeavor, I knew I was witnessing history in the making and that I had to do my part to help them and their growing membership.
Within weeks there were Indivisible chapters in every congressional district in the country, forcing members of Congress to listen to ordinary people’s concerns. This is Indivisible’s great contribution: they know that the fight for our democracy is not two years away at the voting booth. We must participate every day on the phone with our members of Congress, every week in district offices, and every month at town halls. This requires us not only to resist Trump but to build progressive power to create the America we want.
From the beginning, Indivisible’s cofounders and national team understood that the attacks on immigrants were not actually about an antiquated immigration system that is broken by design. They realized this administration’s anti-immigrant policies are an assault on our democracy and an attempt to wrest political power from the women and communities of color who are increasingly participating in that democracy. They understand the invaluable role of standing in solidarity with impacted communities and in working with grassroots leaders across the nation to take action in Washington, D.C. Immigration is one of the defining issues of our times. We are experiencing an existential crisis about what it means to be an American and who is considered “worthy” of being an American. This is a fight for the soul of our nation.
It’s up to us to build a new America together. This fight can be won only by reckoning with our past. When the Trump administration began separating families at the U.S.-Mexican border, thousands of Americans showed up again, this time for the children ripped away from their parents. A refrain I heard often at rallies was protestors declaring, “This isn’t America.” But as many communities know, this is also America. We must face the America that has failed to live up to its ideals in the past. Family separation was U.S. policy when indigenous children were kidnapped, when Africans were enslaved, when Japanese Americans were interned, and still is today, when parents in poverty have their children taken from them or when children lose their parents to mass incarceration. The suffragette and abolitionist movements are American and so is segregation and the separation of families. Our task now is to expect nothing less than a new America—to demand, every day, that our policies live up to our aspirations.
That’s why I hope every American who cares about democracy reads this book, a field guide, if you will, to restoring our faith in democracy. And I hope that, after finishing it, every American, looking out into our turbulent times, will ask, as Leah and Ezra and thousands of Indivisible members across the country are asking, “What more can I do?”
Marielena Hincapié
BOARD PRESIDENT, Indivisible Project
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, National Immigration Law Center and NILC Immigrant Justice Fund