On a recent flight to one of the many conferences that populate the summer calendar, I watched "One Life," a movie about Sir Nicholas "Nicky" Winton, a young London stockbroker who, in the months leading up to the start of World War II, embarked on a mission to rescue 669 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.
Released in 2023, "One Life" highlights the extraordinary impact that an individual can have on our society. While Winton's heroic story happened decades ago, it could and should be a lesson for us all as our nation approaches an election that finds our electorate more polarized than ever.
As seen in recent years, and even as recently as July 13, lawmakers are fanning the flames and political violence is becoming more commonplace.
"A former president was shot. An American citizen killed while simply exercising his freedom to support the candidate of his choosing," said President Biden during a rare primetime Oval Office address, just 24 hours after a gunman attempted to assassinate former President Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
"There is no place in America for this kind of violence or for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions. We can't allow this violence to be normalized," Biden said.
Whether it's Butler, Pennsylvania, Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2020 or many of the protest and counterprotest scenes, we as a nation could learn a lot from Nicky Winton. Neither his British citizenship nor the British government’s lack of swift action in 1939 stopped him from acting.
Nor did it delay him from seeing his place as a neighbor in a global community. It's time for us as Americans to act accordingly.
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For far too long, we have allowed violent rhetoric to freely enter our political process. Thus, it has sadly become the underbelly of our society. This type of rhetoric and the behavior it begets can no longer be written off as the cost of living in our vibrant democracy.
Rooted deeply in our Constitution is the belief that we are equal and bestowed with inalienable rights. However, those rights also come with the responsibility – not enumerated in the document – to be good neighbors and love one another as we love ourselves and our families.
Rights must come with responsibility. Bringing this country together is a responsibility that belongs to all of us. It will require more than lip service, glittery speeches or a promise to do better. It takes action, starting with a simple step: seeing each other as human and learning from one another's humanity.
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So, what exactly does that mean?
It begins by assuming that we are all operating with good intentions and have some unconscious bias toward those with a different lived experience than our own. While some might perceive this notion as naive, it is and can be a necessary first step to getting our country back on track.
It’s disingenuous to live in a nation shaped by forced and voluntary migration, and not acknowledge that previous and current laws, economic disparities and our slowness to change those two elements have hindered our country’s path forward. The truth should force us all to ask tough questions when lawmakers push out laws, rules and political talking points in contradiction of our constitutional values.
In more stark terms, it means we should talk to as many American women as our neighbors and get their thoughts before passing laws that restrict their access to reproductive health care.
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The same holds on the civil rights front. Before state legislatures throughout the country enact laws that restrict access to the ballot or ban the accurate teaching of American history, lawmakers, and more importantly us as citizens, should be willing to ask those impacted by civil rights protection how they feel and what they think.
Suppose Black American citizens in Georgia feel that their right to vote isn't secure under a new law. In that case, their neighbors should be the first to say that this law is unacceptable because it could harm their fellow neighbors, the community and thus themselves.
And I would be remiss if I didn't say that our duty as neighbors in a civil society requires us to acknowledge that we are in a time of significant change. Young people have boldly thrown off decades-old norms of "not rocking the boat" to tell and live in the truth.
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For some, that truth has come in the form of living openly as part of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered community. They deserve to be treated like good neighbors, worthy of all that’s enshrined in our Constitution.
They deserve to have their partner's picture on their desk at work. They deserve to have books about themselves and their lived experiences in libraries and bookstores. Most importantly, despite their race or ZIP code, they deserve to live free of violence, fear or intimation.
While limited, the aforementioned examples speak to just a few places where Sir Winton's legacy could serve us all well. Instead of "othering" those beautiful Jewish children or saying that their potential death wasn't his problem, he took it upon himself to see their humanity and treat them as neighbors and part of a global community worthy of his kindness and goodwill.
To end the political violence and polarization that has beset our nation, we must do the same. We must lay aside the cemented political identities that misguided lawmakers manipulate and see each other as neighbors, community members and fellow citizens worthy of respect, dignity and equitable treatment.
And that behavior change should start before another violent political act unearths the ugly underbelly that has been accepted as just another day in American political life.
