My Fellow Americans (and foreign friends),

After spending this weekend at the Game in one of the bluest states in the Union, I will be heading to my family’s Thanksgiving celebration in Iowa, where I will be a blue gal in a red state, surrounded by forty members of my extended family. It will be hard to play Cornhole and celebrate the anniversary of a meal hosted by a people whose guests then slaughtered them knowing that so much is on a one way train to shitsville. As bad as that sounds, I’ll be lucky to have a Thanksgiving meal at all.

In this week’s front, Sarah Holder, SY ’17, looks at the Patriot Housing Initiative, a Westchester program dedicated to housing homeless veterans. Holder documents the paths that three formerly homeless men took in the years after they were discharged. With the help of Patriot Housing, they found homes, but thousands of men and women who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces will not be so lucky this holiday season.

Elsewhere in the paper, the Herald contends with other pressing national problems. Will Reid, PC ’19, considers F*cking Decent, and the newly relevant issue of censorship. Isaac Scobey-Thal, CC ’19, rejects performative and ultimately unproductive allyship in the aftermath of the shocking election outcome, and Kat Lin, MC ’18, condemns the lack of diversity in the media.  

It’s been a hard couple weeks, and the next one may not be better. But in the spirit of gratitude, I’m thankful to be on a campus ready, as always, to “push back on that a little.”  Use this November break to rest and recuperate but also to call out Aunt Lucy on her racism.  We’re not done and won’t be for a long time. Happy holidays!

Unhinged, but getting it together,

Emma