Thank you so much for your recent article on Sundus and Josh and the local impact of the new president's policies. I won't pretend to be an impartial newsreader-I know Josh, Nancy and the rest of the family well. Nonetheless, I was inspired by your article, not because my old friend was featured, but because it so sensitively humanizes an issue which rural communities like my hometown are often too quick to dismiss. I have met too many, in Brainerd and other communities, who are far too eager to reduce any politically complex issue to a de-humanizing caricature when those affected by it are different, distant, or otherwise easy to dismiss because they seem unrelated to the day-to-day life one sees before them. As your story makes clear, one does not need to travel very far to become an affected player in the issues of our time-a quick drive to the nearest Big Ten school will do. Maybe even a brief thought experiment would suffice. The threats to human rights which loom pregnant in our air are not immigrant issues, minority issues, gay issues, or any such nonsense-these are human issues, and if American means anything worth defending (as my exceptional teachers at Brainerd Senior High taught me it does), they are American issues, too. And that means all of us.
Sam Walker
Chicago
