"On this historic day in our democracy..."

Growing up I didn’t dream of wearing princess gowns or white doctor’s coats like many of the girls around me did. I dreamed of the day I could don a pantsuit. I dreamed of a pantsuit because on TV that’s what I saw Nancy Pelosi and other women elected officials wearing when they strode into the Capitol to make laws and change lives. At least that’s what wide-eyed 10-year old me, unjaded by reality, thought was happening in those hallowed halls. I didn’t grasp the messiness of politics — I was too busy being mesmerized by my history and civic textbooks. The idea that citizens elected fellow citizens to make decisions on behalf the collective, that voters would entrust certain people with the power and pen to impact their livelihoods, that people even dared to conceive such an experiment captivated me.

At age 10, It didn’t give me pause that this 70-year old white woman in Nancy Pelosi or those white men in the Founding Fathers and I had little in my common and shared one big difference. In my dream, I would wear the pantsuit with a hijab. I didn’t need someone else to do the same, to pave the way, to do it first, to think that was possible. Ambition and aspiration usually mean believing in the possibility of something despite all evidence to the contrary. And 10-year old me believed in America enough.

Since then, my dreams have of course evolved and my wide eyes have narrowed as I encountered the painful paradoxes of the American story. Reading American history and watching the news now often does more to temper my idealism than inspire it. Still the hope that someday someone would live this dream mostly remained. But in just these last few years, as prejudice and hatred seemed to occupy the highest offices in the land and the hearts of countless fellow Americans, my hopes have flickered. “Evidence to the contrary” mounted to a point to where I wondered if that original hope was a childhood fantasy.

And then today arrives. 2 years after this president has the audacity to sign a Muslim ban, two Muslim women will be taking the oath of office with their palms on a Quran — and yes, one will be wearing a pantsuit and hijab. 2 centuries after this country's elected representatives wrest away their land and condemns their people to lives of squalor, two Native American women will take their place.

Progress in America is not inevitable. In fact, there are many days where it feels rather improbable, but then there are days like these to show us, it is never impossible. The journey toward a more perfect union can only continue if we remember, to quote Washington, “the power of the Constitution will always be with the people.” Today, as Ilhan Omar and others pledge to protect and defend that sacred document, we enlarge our definition of who those “people” are, who they are allowed to be. And 10-year olds across the country get to watch us write this next chapter of America, believing that one day with their votes and voice, they too will author their own.