Everyone is Welcome Here

our song and poem

unlikely yet perfect match

pick-us-ups and fly

How can Cher ask “If I Could Turn Back Time / if I could find a way?”  If?  If!   Watch Cher and the audience trick time at the SNL50 Homecoming Concert.  Look and listen, glory hallelujah—what year is it?  She’s got you, Babe.  “If I could reach the stars, I’d give ’em  all to you.”  We turn time forward—we find a way.           

Poet Wislawa Szymborska accepts “Nothing Twice” in her embrace of each present moment.  Nothing happens twice. We only take this class of life once—no making it up in summer school.  “We arrive here improvised / and leave without the chance to practice.”  Fine.  Now.  A rose then a smile.  A rock then a kiss.

We’re present—together now.

Post a sign.  Ask a question.  Run for office. 

When Sarah Inama started teaching world civilization four years ago at an Idaho middle school, she hung a sign in her classroom featuring hands of different skin tones with hearts in their palms, highlighted by these words scripted in varying colors: “Everyone Is Welcome Here.”  She received nary a complaint until this March when the school district’s “chief academic officer” ordered its removal because it was in violation of “Idaho’s Dignity and Nondiscrimination Public Education Act,” and furthermore any sign must be “content neutral and conducive to a positive learning environment.”  Briefly obeying, Inama returned the sign a few days later.  She continues battling for its stay while winning growing support for her principled stance.  Currently, the educator faces another order to remove the multicolored sign permanently in May—her job depends on her decision.  Unable to satisfy her sixth graders with an explanation, her interview showers the children’s bafflement on us all.

Another teacher, this one a third grader, attended a March 28th Stamford town hall meeting with Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy.  The last attendee coming to the microphone for the evening, Charlotte Paone asked for continuation of the school free lunch program funded by federal money.  “I think they should keep that policy because I don’t want my friends to go hungry or be embarrassed by telling their teacher or the lunch lady,” Paone pleads.  When Charlotte finished speaking, Murphy came down from the stage to meet her: “That was the most beautiful question….  Everybody in this room is gonna work a little bit harder because of you.”

After two terms in the Michigan state senate, Mallory McMorrow announced on April 1st her candidacy for the 2026 U.S. Senate.  “People are paying attention, and they’re engaged, but they’re also terrified,” she states.  So politicians should ask themselves, “What are you doing and why are you not in your community?  Why are you not meeting with people?”  Politics must change for democracy to last.  McMorrow volunteered as a child at a local soup kitchen, started her first job as a twelve-year-old serving coffee at Bingo night, managed a local grocery at sixteen, and graduated from college without job prospects. She slept in her car, figuring it out.  While an industrial designer for Mattel, she googled “how to run for office” in 2016.  McMorrow gave a graphic speech at last year’s Democratic National Convention, and recently released her book titled Hate Won’t Win: Find Your Power and Leave This Place Better Than We Found It.      

The last track on his final album, Bob Marley treats us to this 1980 acoustic performance in Jamaica of his “Redemption Song.”  Accompanied by Wailers guitarist Earl “Wya” Lindo, Marley reggaes the truth.  “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery / None but ourselves can free our minds.”

We’re present—together now.

A marathoner.  A jurist.  All y’all emancipators.    

“Tonight I rise with the intention of getting in some good trouble.”  At 7pm on March 31st, New Jersey’s Cory Booker began an uninterrupted speech on the Senate floor lasting twenty-five hours and five minutes.  He opened and closed by referencing Freedom Rider and Congressman John Lewis.  Colleagues and close friends on Capitol Hill, Booker heard Lewis’s frequent calls for making good trouble.  He answered him by delivering the longest senatorial speech—blowing past the record set by a South Carolina segregationist filibustering futilely against the 1957 Civil Rights Act.  A most resonant admission: “I confess that I have been imperfect.  I confess that I’ve been inadequate to the moment.  I confess that the Democratic Party has made terrible mistakes that gave a lane to this demagogue.  I confess that we must all look in the mirror and say ‘we will do better.’”  The eloquent athlete paused only for colleagues to ask questions, gaining passion and clarity minute to minute into the record book.  He concludes: “This is a moral moment.  It’s not left or right, it’s right or wrong.  Let’s get in good trouble.  My friend, madam president, I yield the floor.”   

Shortly after Senator Booker crossed the finish line, Judge Susan Crawford handily won her election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.  “Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy,” she affirmed in her victory speech.  Yes, Crawford defeated two opponents—the one on the ballot counting on a president’s endorsement, the other on the ground dispensing money to Wisconsin voters.  “As a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin.  And we won.”    

Millions gathered peacefully in over 1300 locations on April 5, 2025.  “Hands Off” protests unified placard-carrying citizens in small towns and big cities, in bright blue and deep red states, in cold rain and hot sun, and in Germany and France.  No destruction.  No arrests.  MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow continues to showcase scenes from  protests on her evening broadcasts—crowds of enthusiasts creating marching signs in their assisted living and gated communities, and more waving their artwork at the Washington Monument: “What Cory Said” and at the Utah State Capitol Building in Salt Lake City: “Don’t Panic – Organize.”  Hands off.  Hands held. 

We’re present—together now.

Like poet Ellen Bass, we endure “Any Common Desolation.”  Despair drops in—hope falls out.  Heartbreak.  But suddenly…whiff of grated ginger…sound of oar rubbing oarlock…feel of warm socks.  Uncoiling your breath, “All you dread, all you can’t bear dissolves / and, like a needle slipped into your vein -” you’re injected into the world.     

Imagine Bob Marley in the studio as pianist and arranger Isata Kanneh-Mason conducts her brother Sheku on cello along with other family musicians.  Four decades later, this instrumental rendition delicately offers us Marley’s “Redemption Song.”  If they asked him, “won’t you help to sing / these songs of freedom,” would he?          

together now watch

Isata’s “I Got Rhythm”

all are welcome here