2020 - The Year of "Wokeness"

 

Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum, an artist born in Idaho from Danish immigrant parents, chose the faces of presidents on Mount Rushmore based on which presidents he thought helped our country progress forward. The project was concluded in 1941. Since then, WWII ended and the US has come a long way with progressive human rights, as well as financial prosperity. Yet, no additions have been made to Mount Rushmore. I am here to ask you all to do what is right and change that. We don't need to knock down history, because history can be a lesson we consume to lower the chances of repeat. With that out the way, here are some serious reasons on why, President Barack Obama, the 44th president of our progressive United States of Amerca, the coolest president to ever live, should be on Mount Rushmore.

 

PROGRESSIVE USA

• [The Elephant In The Room]  He was the first non-white president in this diverse country of ours. 
• He appointed 2 women for the US supreme court in his first two years as a president, including Sonia Satomayor, the first Supreme Court Justice of Hispanic descent. There has been 4 women supreme court justices in the 231 years history of our Supreme Court. 
• He was the first sitting U.S. president to publicly affirm his personal support of legalization of same-sex marriage, and to call for full equality and rights of the LGBT community. This ultimately led to the 2013 supreme court ruling for same-sex marriage to be a fundamental right.
• As a chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee, he sponsored and led a unanimous, bipartisan passage of legislation to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained, and legislation making Illinois the first state to mandate videotaping of homicide interrogations.
• He was the first major-party presidential candidate to turn down public financing in the general election since the system was created in 1976.

 

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS | PEACE

• He was the the first US president to address both houses of the UK Parliament in Westminster Hall, London.
• He was the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima, Japan, 71 years after the U.S. atomic bombing in WWII.
• He was the first sitting president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge in 1928.
• He was the first sitting president to speak in front of the African Union on July 29, 2015.
• He was the first US president ever to visit Kenya, the homeland of his father.

 

PERSONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT

• He was the only US president and first black person to head the Harvard Law Review. 
• Born in Hawaii, he was the first US president that was not born in contiguous US.
• He would probably beat every other president on basketball. Just imagine Barack balling against GW or Abe Lincoln :) .

 

Gutzon Borglum, a son of an immigrant, is the reason why we have Mount Rushmore. Let's use this time to update this iconic representation of our country to replicate how far we have come as a country since then. I personally can't think of a better representation of change than Obama. 

 

Sincerely Yours,

Beede Ake

#Love #Peace #Change #OTR