Dear America,

We will be holding on Tuesday, November 5th. We elect our 47th president To lead you, our great nation. I don’t know what the future will bring, but I write to you as someone who sees both your brilliance and your fragility. Most importantly, I am writing to you as someone who still believes in you.

It was a great fortune for me to be born an American. I have been blessed with a life that has taken me from the tough streets of Chicago’s South Side where I have served people in the highest offices in the country. I have seen equalities, inequalities, love, hate, peace, violence, the city, the pastoral, and through it all I have never lost a single piece of faith: I still believe in you, America.

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From CEO offices in the sky to one of my former gang members landing his first construction job, I’ve seen the best of you, how you act. award merithow you value resilience, how you value individualism, and the way your employees, who are often strangers, step up by lending a helping hand.

It is this last feature of yours that warms my heart the most. While the former gang member I just mentioned was trying to survive and put food on the table for his children, he told me that he would not accept the construction job I was helping him with. I looked at him “Why not?” The man told me there was racism out there and people wanted him to fail. He would go back to his old ways. The next morning I took him to work and watched him walk through the door. Today, that same man now has friends all over Chicago, attends company dinners religiously, and has been promoted ever since. That’s why I still believe in you, America.

I love you your freedom. Sometimes freedom can be unbearably cruel. The sheer weight of being accountable and making sure your name is worth its weight in gold can be overwhelming at times. Only when we progress as individuals, when we dare to be someone instead of nobody, then and only then will others come to us. We all know the harshness of freedom, but we all know the rewards of progress, and there is no better friend than those who thrive in freedom.

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I’ve seen your worst on the streets of Chicago and other cities. I saw corpses in dystopian streets, red and green lights chasing each other in the cold of the night and no one was coming to claim them. I’ve seen dead eyes in too many kids who didn’t even consider pulling the trigger. I have seen children staring endlessly at soul-sucking screens. I have seen murderers walking the streets without consequences. I have seen too many dreams postponed and too many hopes shattered. I saw too much for my soul to bear, and sometimes I thought – no, I dreamed of abandoning it all.

But through this darkness there always comes a light, a miracle, a joy that illuminates my heart. More than 18 years ago, a sweet baby girl was born smiling. drug addict mother who was killed a few months later. I held that baby in my arms and wondered why this child was born to a cruel fate. No one wanted him except a distant cousin, and even he was questionable; He was in and out of jail, abusing drugs, and homeless most of the time. But she took the baby into her life and the two of them grew up together. Now that baby is going to college and still smiling, and his cousin lives in the suburbs and works for a company. I still believe in you, America.

I love you for welcoming second chances. You are the land where mistakes and tragedies can be stepping stones, where the fallen are allowed to rise again. There is no greater freedom than this and what a gift you have given us.

I have traveled far and abroad and always return with gratitude in my heart for your timeless and eternal principles. They belong to humanity, but no nation has made them as sacred as you. The belief that all men are created equal is a belief I evoke every day, like when I told a young girl from a poor and broken home that her talent, inner strength and talent are equal to everyone, despite their zip code.

What greater gift can there be than to grant people from all walks of life the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Sometimes I just sit there with the phrase “in pursuit of happiness.” What a wonderful thing for you to make possible for those who desire to make something of themselves. I still believe in you, America.

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Yet my love for you, America, is not blind. I see cracks in its foundation. I see communities being overlooked rather than invested in. I see politicians making plans for themselves rather than representing their constituents. I see taxes collected from hard-working people going into the wrong pockets. I see people embracing ideologies of division and tribalism. I hear rumors that we are on the verge of another civil war. And I must admit that most of us have forgotten that we are actually one people, one nation under God.

American flag wrapped around a judge’s gavel block and the United States Constitution for use as a symbol of law, liberty, and separation of governmental powers. (iStock)

Then I remember the great reforms you gave us. You were a country where people from all over the world sought religious freedom. Your men and women fought in the bloodiest Civil War to end slavery and preserve the Union. Countless immigrants came from Ellis Island. Then came the Voting Rights movement. The war that ended Nazismand then the great Civil Rights movement. If we are to remain the shining city on the hill, we must confront the divisions of today, and I believe we will do so because deep down we know that a world without your principles is a dark world. I still believe in you, America, and with great hope.

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Above all, America, I still believe in your dream. There are many who do not, and this is the belief of the privileged, those who have never fought or suffered for their dreams. I was born a poor child of a single mother in a small Tennessee town and grew up in rural Indiana. Those who didn’t believe in your dream told me I couldn’t achieve it, that good old American racism would stop me, or that the system was so fixed that I shouldn’t bother trying. But your principles and the dreams that came with them kept me going. I told myself that I had to keep going to see with my own eyes whether this American Dream was a lie or not.

After much darkness and doubt, I achieved this and today I am living my dream of inspiring countless children. Chicago’s South Side dreaming their own American Dream. That’s why I still believe in you, America, and always have. I love you!

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