Immigrants Are ‘Regular Folks Pressured to Flee Their Nations’

Seventy Miles within the Darién Hole

As a Colombian American, I used to be deeply moved by “Seventy Miles within the Darién Hole.” Thanks, Caitlin Dickerson, to your braveness. I had the deep fortune of migrating to america legally with my mother and father within the Nineteen Nineties, so I didn’t expertise the Darién Hole personally. Lately, I’ve been serving to a Colombian refugee who traveled by means of the Darién Hole. He started to inform me of his experiences there, and I used to be astounded by his story. He’s understandably nonetheless processing what he witnessed, and I’m letting him go at his personal tempo. Dickerson’s reporting provided a outstanding window onto a harrowing journey undertaken by essentially the most determined of individuals. Thanks for investing in such strong journalistic work. Now I’m going to go hug my canines and spouse.

Carlos Enrique Gomez
Union Metropolis, Calif.

As a citizen of america and an avid client of its information, I’m saddened that almost all mainstream-media protection of our immigration woes focuses on controlling our borders and never the underlying causes individuals danger, and even lose, their lives of their makes an attempt to immigrate right here.

For many who solely hearken to sound bites, the phrase immigrant conjures scary notions—outsiders on a quest to thwart our border safety and take a few of what we contemplate to be ours. In Donald Trump’s view, they’re murderers, criminals, and rapists.

Caitlin Dickerson’s article reveals that these are principally simply regular individuals compelled to flee their international locations resulting from circumstances past their management. I can’t think about how dire circumstances must be for me to depart my residence! It’s telling and unhappy to see that U.S. coverage to discourage immigration has had the impact of accelerating loss of life charges amongst those that are already so helpless. To not point out driving new income for drug cartels.

I hope we are able to have extra protection centered on the foundation causes of immigration. In any case, U.S. coverage created lots of the issues that plague international locations in Latin America.

Peter Brown
Lyman, Maine

I educate high-school English in Columbus, Ohio. Final yr, certainly one of my college students wrote an essay about his expertise touring by means of the Darién Hole. It was the primary time I had ever heard of it. This scholar was hardworking and sort, and I used to be amazed by his story. When he wrote it, he had been in america for simply over a yr. It’s 288 phrases, with minimal punctuation and no paragraph breaks.

He left his residence nation in South America together with his mother and sisters. After passing by means of the Darién Hole, they hung out in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico, earlier than finally ending up in Ohio.

He concluded his essay with this: “It impacts me in what? I acquired lots of despair and stress and I gained’t do one thing like that once more.” I really feel fortunate to have taught this scholar, and I respect that The Atlantic coated this matter.

Chase Montana
Columbus, Ohio

‘Lord, Assist Us Make America Nice Once more’

Within the September 2024 situation, McKay Coppins thought-about essentially the most revealing second of a Donald Trump rally.

McKay Coppins’s shut studying of Trump-rally prayers was unsettling, even scary. I used to be involved much less by the apocalyptic concern and unusual theology that the prayers mobilized, and extra by the unnerving similarity I noticed to the rhetoric marshaled in opposition to Trump and Republicans by their adversaries.

I confess to seeing in Trump’s opponents—and I depend myself amongst them—the identical tendency towards exaggeration (Trump is a contemporary Hitler, Trump is an existential risk to democracy). Conservatives have been fast to argue that many progressives behave with a quasi-religious zeal: Fashionable slogans echo liturgy; cancel tradition exists as a penalty for heresy.

I’d prefer to suppose that there are variations between Trump and his critics that I’m not discerning. Might The Atlantic do an identical form of evaluation of the weirder expressions by Democrats and progressives?

Gary Gaffield
Fort Myers, Fla.

My Mom the Revolutionary

For the September 2024 situation, Xochitl Gonzalez thought-about what occurs when fomenting socialist revolution conflicts with elevating a household.

As a mom of younger youngsters and a dedicated socialist organizer, I discovered that Xochitl Gonzalez’s current article offered an unrealistic and at occasions weird portrait of the lives of individuals like me. The majority of the article is a slippery mixture of reminiscence, feeling, and reality—comprehensible if its function was to discover the bitter strategy of reconciliation between an absent mum or dad and her baby, however unsatisfying if it goals to offer an correct political evaluation.

What moved me to remark was the unusual selection, 6,000 phrases into an almost-7,000-word essay, to pivot to a dialogue of the presidential marketing campaign of Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia, who’re operating on the ticket of the Celebration for Socialism and Liberation. Though the creator performed an interview with the candidates, the one remnant of that interplay was a bodily description of them (They’re—“not that it issues—lovely”) and a hasty discount of their political platform (Burn all of it down. Begin from scratch). What a disgrace to silence these girls and conflate their candidacy with the aberrant private experiences of the creator.

Polls present that an increasing number of younger adults like me have optimistic attitudes towards socialism. We see the failures of capitalism throughout us, and we’re eagerly dedicating ourselves to constructing a socialist future. Though the article depicts socialist activism as a type of private obliteration, a subordination of our particular person selves to the menacing whims of “the celebration,” the truth, in my expertise, couldn’t be farther from the reality.

I proudly assist Claudia and Karina, not simply because their politics provide the one viable path out of poverty, imperialist wars, and ecological disaster, but in addition as a result of they’re working moms like me. Once they talk about inflation on the grocery retailer, it’s from expertise. Once they communicate in regards to the astronomical value of kid care, it’s from expertise. Once they talk about combating for a world that actually nurtures our youngsters, it’s proof that our identities as moms are an asset, not a legal responsibility, on this battle.

Moira Casados Cassidy
Denver, Colo.

Behind the Cowl

In “Washington’s Nightmare,” Tom Nichols revisits the lifetime of George Washington, whose bravery and self-command established a really perfect that every one future presidents would, with various levels of success, try and emulate. All, that’s, save Donald Trump, a person who shares none of Washington’s qualities and displays the type of base motives that the primary president noticed as a risk to the republic. For the quilt, we turned to Gilbert Stuart’s The Athenaeum Portrait. The unfinished nature of the work suggests the continued American experiment, but in addition the existential hazard {that a} second Trump time period poses.

— Elizabeth Hart, Artwork Director

Correction

“You Suppose You’re So Heterodox” (October) misstated the place Joe Rogan’s house is positioned. It’s west of Austin, not east of Austin.

This text seems within the November 2024 print version with the headline “The Commons.”