Dear Editor:
President Donald J. Trump has been impeached. These words, for me, mean an intentional check on Trump's efforts to corrupt the 2020 election.
Dec. 18 was a reckoning for my ancestors who lived on a farm in Georgia in slavery, Jim Crow and civil-rights efforts of the 1960s. The impeachment is a defense of my mother's and father's efforts to register people to vote throughout Ohio; and their standing up to the police officer who stopped them and flattened the car tires and stabbed the car seats telling them to never be caught in Xenia, Ohio.
It's about my Aunt Florence Blackshear, who, during every election, could be seen at the East High School monitoring voting. The impeachment of Donald J. Trump is the defense of our democracy and our very republic.
As an advocate for justice, I also see this impeachment is for every queer person who knows and understands that the Republican defense of this president is about hatred directed toward LGBTQI persons. The impeachment is about every Black and Brown person who understands the legacy that we live under that is in jeopardy because of racism and white supremacy building and supporting systems of oppression.
The impeachment is about every Latinx family who has been living in fear of ICE for the past three years, and whose only "crime" is wanting to make a better life. This is not about hatred of Donald J. Trump, but about a love for our democracy and for the people who depend on it!
Blessings,
T.J. Williams-Hauger, M.Div