The Table We’re Fighting For

Foreword

The dichotomy of this country right now will give you whiplash.

In one moment, I see a city like Elgin meeting the moment—neighbors showing up for one another, building something stronger, more inclusive, more whole. In the next, I see a father dragged out of his pickup truck at dawn, arrested simply for existing. And I don’t know how to hold both truths in my chest without it breaking.

Katie’s essay zeroes in on that tension—the two sides of a nation that, I believe, no longer recognizes itself. We spent decades worshiping radical individualism in this country. We made it a virtue. But what did it leave us with?

Loneliness. Division. A hunger for something we can’t name.

What we’re really missing is each other.

Not everyone has forgotten. I see it every day in this city—in the shelter Katie runs, in the volunteers that run the farmer’s market, the people organizing to protect our citizens, in the ones who keep showing up. But I also see the casual cruelty, the institutional indifference, the violence masquerading as policy. And I think we are, finally, facing a national reckoning.

Who are we?
What do we value?
And what kind of country do we want to be?

Read Katie’s words today. Let them stir something. Let them ask something of you. Then sit with the question:

Who are we, really?

-Brian Piñon

I was sitting in DuPage Court when a man walked by and muttered to himself,

“What is this country coming to?”

He wasn’t really talking to me. But the way his words hung in that public courtyard's silence made me realize that I have the same question.

I just don’t know if we’re coming at it from the same angle.

That’s the fight, isn’t it? Not over who we were—but over who we’ll be. A fight over identity, belonging, and power. A fight over the shape of the table and who gets a seat at it.

Here’s the table I want: big and wide, welcoming and unruly, governed not by purity tests or papers, but by the simple values of dignity and respect. I want a table where the only requirement is the willingness to learn how to belong to one another.

But I know there are others who want something very different. They want rules at their table—rigid ones. They want identity checks. They want enforcement. They are willing to arrest, to deport, to kill to preserve their vision of control.

So how do you fight such an enemy without becoming the very thing you oppose?

How do you stand up to violence and hatred without casting those who think differently as inherently evil? Because that’s the tension. I believe their actions are evil. But I also believe that stripping them of all worth—that declaring them monsters with no hope of change—makes us mirrors of the very systems we seek to dismantle.

And still, I must draw the line.

I will draw the line at violence.

I will draw the line at hatred.

I will draw the line at the vitriol being poured out onto my neighbors in the name of law and order.

That’s why I was at the No Kings Rally in Elgin on Saturday, standing on Kimball Street outside the library with hundreds of others who had gathered across the country that day. I was so heartened by the crowd—by the signs, the voices, the children weaving through the legs of adults, the wheelchairs and strollers and fists in the air. I saw people I knew. And people I didn’t. And I felt—maybe for the first time in a long time—that we weren’t just standing up for democracy. We were standing up for each other.

There were counter-protesters too. And they were scary. It felt like they wanted a fight. But no fights broke out. From what I could tell, most of us got home safely.

And then just two days later—there are ICE raids in Elgin. Quiet. Early. Methodical. Terrifying.

And so I ask again: what is this country coming to?

But I also have to ask: What kind of country do I want?

Because earlier this week, at the homeless shelter where I work, I had to weave through a maze of women to get to my office—women learning to be hairdressers and nail techs, volunteering their time to care for our guests and staff. A local barbershop donates different kinds of cuts on other days. A group of massage therapists comes periodically to offer rest to tired bodies. And every single night, volunteers bring a hot meal—365 days a year—offered freely, with no expectation of thanks, to people they may never meet again.

This, too, is what this country is coming to.

This, too, is part of who we are.

And I have to hold both truths at once: the cruelty and the kindness. The violence and the volunteering. The raids and the reaching out. To reconcile the country we have with the country we dream of—we must learn to live in that tension, and still move forward.

There is work to do. It is not easy work. And it is not all-or-nothing. It is the work of writing words and making relationships and getting in the way of cruelty. It is protest and protection. It is mourning what is broken and waking up tomorrow to try again.

I don’t always know what to do.

But I want to live in such a way that when I see injustice, I can say,

Yes. That’s why I do what I do.

Or when I feel grief, I can say,

That’s why I will take a different action tomorrow.

So many hearts are breaking. So many of us are trying.

But if we are building anything worth calling democracy, it must begin with a table that anyone can choose to sit at—so long as they are willing to try. Try to love. Try to respect. Try to listen. Try to learn how to belong to each other.

That’s the table I want. That’s the country I want.

And the next helpful action I take—whatever it is—will be one more chair pulled up to that table.