8 Opinion writers on what we’re thankful for

To celebrate Thanksgiving, we asked eight members of The Inquirer Opinion team to reflect on what they’re thankful for this year.

I got back from a trip of a lifetime last week after visiting Ghana in West Africa. I spent two weeks talking to people and touring the country. When it was time to go, I wasn’t ready to leave. I wanted to stay and keep exploring Accra. I’m trying now to hang onto the relaxed feeling I had sitting on the beach and thinking about my ancestors for whom this continent was home.

After flying back into Newark Liberty International Airport, I was reminded of just how blessed we are to live in the United States. We take good roads, public transportation, reliable internet, and fresh water for granted. In many parts of West Africa, as well as elsewhere in the world, these essentials are not a given.

Even as I brace myself for another four years of Donald Trump, I am thankful for the many blessings that come with living in this beautiful country of ours and with being an American citizen. I’m grateful for the gift of love from my family and friends and for opportunities like this to share thoughts and ideas with you.

Aside from the only answer that matters — my amazing family and friends, IRL and online — I’m also grateful for the troublemakers, the disrupters, the folks who are looking at everything that’s gone wrong in this crazy mixed-up world and aren’t giving up or giving in. For all the folks who woke up on Nov. 6 and immediately started thinking — How do we get out of this mess? — I am so thankful that you are here to fight for us. Enjoy an extra helping of turkey, steal a look at the football games, and then get back to work!

I am thankful for you who are reading this and for the opportunity to get to do what I do. For the dream of a free press that is responsible in its reporting, accountable to its audience, and shielded from government intrusion. I am thankful that the Opinion section allows for a real exchange of ideas, and that there are writers brave enough to share their thoughts, particularly through op-eds and letters to the editor, and who are willing to engage with others — especially as civility continues to erode and some people’s idea of free speech is limited to only the kind of speech they agree with. Lastly, I am thankful that (on most days) I believe we live in a moral universe and that it is our job to continue to bend its arc toward justice. Happy Thanksgiving.

In the days after the election, I found myself in West Philly with extra evening hours to spare after an early (and delicious) Ethiopian dinner. I texted a friend who is often up to something fun, and she invited me immediately to a Spanish-language dinner that was happening in her neighborhood. Each month, one person in the group hosts a potluck, and everyone speaks Spanish for the evening. We were a mix of native speakers and second-language speakers and those who were just learning to find confidence in stringing words together in another tongue.

The best part? No one talked politics. Embarrassing stories? Absolutely. Our favorite recipes? Done. But the man to soon occupy the Oval Office was, for those precious few hours, out of sight and out of mind. As I felt my shoulders unwind from my ears, I laughed and smiled more easily than I had in days. Walking out of the party, I felt so light that I could almost float down the sidewalk. I am thankful for friendship and spontaneity and many cross-sections of community — and the unique mix of the three that West Philly always seems to have in spades.

I’m thankful for Gov. Josh Shapiro’s decision to flex federal infrastructure funds to SEPTA. Like many families in Philadelphia, my family relies on public transit, even though we also own a car. For so many of our regular trips, taking the train or hopping on a bus is the most convenient way to go.

As a former city kid, I also want my own children to experience the freedom I found when, long before I was eligible for a driver’s license or able to afford car ownership, I could explore the city just by buying a few tokens.

P.S.: Gov. Shapiro, if you need more money to flex to SEPTA, you can use the funds that are set to destroy valuable community recreational facilities in South Philadelphia for an expanded I-95. No one wants that project to happen anyway.

I am grateful for everyone and everything that makes it possible to cope with the scary state of U.S. politics, and the even more tragic state of places I write and care about such as Ukraine and Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.

My gratitude goes especially to friends and family but also to music — fortuitously I live across the street from the Kimmel Center — and to the beauty of Philadelphia’s parks and sidewalk trees that never stop offering comfort as their leaves change color and give way to elegant bare branches. Nature is more important than ever in offering a respite from politics.

As we head into our country’s uncertain future, I am thankful most for the fighters among us: the loud ones and the stoic ones, the oh-no-they-didn’ts and the mess-around-and-find-outs, the ones who can spot even the slightest glimmer of light in the darkest abyss and then chase it with everything they’ve got — because that’s how we’re built, because we tell the full-throated truth, and then we do everything we can to right the wrongs, especially for those with less power and privilege.

Because it’s not over until it’s over — and as bad as things are right now, with millions of our fellow Americans willingly lining up behind the Tangerine Tyrant to hand over their sense and their souls, and democracy as we know it, it is not over yet — not by a long shot.

So I am thankful for you all, the compassionate and courageous, the honest and honorable, the resilient and resolute, who may be sad and angry and even a little afraid of what comes next — but who refuse to live lives led by fear.

And I am ever thankful for this platform to do my part to help lift your voices, your stories, and your strength — because we fighters stick together.

As a person of faith, I take hope and gratitude seriously.

But after an election season marked with faith fails — the too-subdued rejoinders from Catholics when one of our own, the vice president-elect, unrepentantly lied to get attention while stoking hatred against immigrants; the blasphemy of evangelical leaders who lifted an immigrant-bashing president-elect to the pedestal of idols, as a stand-in savior, “anointed by God” — it has been increasingly hard for me to keep faith with faith.

Still, you know, faith is a deep well, and it can surge unexpectedly. The Rev. Jessie Alejandro, vicar of both the Church of the Crucifixion in Bella Vista and the Church of St. Jude and the Nativity in Lafayette Hill, told me recently that her congregations are stunned and scared by the promised persecution of immigrants. “My heart aches for our community. However, we must continue to stand our ground. I will not stop supporting our undocumented community,” she said. “They are my family, and my church will stay open for our refugees who are living in the church.”

In my Thanksgiving prayers this year, I will be giving thanks for Alejandro — for her loving kindness, her encompassing faith, and her gift of hope. May she (and the other Philly faith leaders like her whom I am blessed to know) never falter.