Trying to Voice What's Right

In Cache Valley over the last year plus we've seen students cheer to a rainbow flag being cut down from a school's rafters and other vandalize a different school parking lot with swastikas and threats of white supremacy. No one is safe from this divisive political and cultural climate we've found ourselves in, but it was still a shock even for this conservative small valley.

I regularly get asked by people outside of Utah what it's like for me living here as someone who shouldn't 'fit in.' The truth is I don't have a whole lot of negative to say. I've found it very welcoming from people of all walks of life and I think that has to do with my general policy of live and let live and not taking myself too seriously. I'm sure there are people I have rubbed the wrong way with my views and general haphazard approach to being serious, yet I can't complain about calling Logan, Utah my home. Yet the religious and conservative nature of the state provides some frustration and that was on display in these instances.

It makes you sad, angry and upset that people still have chosen to focus the minute differences of people who just want to live their own lives and find their own way. If you truly care you can't sit quiet, nor would I, because it's the right thing to do. With my radio show, and corresponding social media account, I took to being a voice of criticizing those who will not unite to better our country. Thus this poem and subsequent explanation were born and also made into a video.

You Don't Belong

Who you are

Doesn't belong.

What you are

Can't fit.

Your thoughts,

Beliefs,

Standing for

Something so wrong.

There's no room.

All the same,

No evolution.

Ignorant,

Decisive,

Tearing us apart.

Making things worse.

You don't belong.

Focusing on the outside,

But same on the inside.

Separate we are weak,

Together we're strong.

You know hate,

We know love.

Here to stay

We will endure.

If you spread hate,

Attack those

Perceived as different,

You are different.

We're all the same,

Building for better.

Raise us up,

Share love or

You don't belong.

Over the last year we've seen anti Black Lives Matter and anti LGBTQ actions at two local high schools. There are people in this valley that believe people are lesser because of the color of their skin or who they love, they think they're better than people for something they can't control. These are threats, an attempt to scare fellow citizens because of what? Just because they're slightly different?

"All men are created equal..." is what this country was founded on and these vile actions show it's not true. We're all Americans trying to pursue our own version of the American dream. If you focus on these minute differences you display your cowardice and ignorance. How does someone's skin color or who someone loves make a difference in your lives? It doesn't. You choose for it to be a problem for yourself.

The people that did this are cowards and are trying to intimidate people for simply existing. They display their ignorance and hold themselves higher than others, pretending to uphold their distorted view of America while having no understanding of the country they live in. Very simply, they're idiots who chose to limit themselves in their own narrow scope of what they think of people and hold this country back.

America is the great melting pot of the world, people of all colors, creeds, beliefs, sexual orientations and genders working towards a place everyone is equal and in pursuit of their own slice of the American dream. That is the dream that is America and what we should all strive to achieve. Divided we are weak and together we're strong.