Mayor Jake Woodford: Tonight’s invocation will be delivered by Alder Fenton.
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6): Good evening. Next Thursday is Thanksgiving in the United States, and however much we believe of the kindergarten pageant version of the origins of the holiday, we should remember that, above all, the Thanksgiving story is an immigrant story. The Pilgrims and Puritans who came from England and other parts of Europe were refugees seeking to start a new life in a land free from religious persecution and hard times. The Mayflower and its passengers landed in Plymouth, uninvited and without legal status on land where people had lived for 12,000 years. The immigrant colonists didn’t assimilate. They did sign a treaty with the Wampanoag tribe in the spring of 1621 as a form of mutual protection after the English had lost half of their number and up to 90% of the native population had been lost to European imported diseases between 1616 and 1619.
The post-harvest dinner shared in the fall of 1621 celebrated a successful harvest and probably had diplomatic overtones. That dinner was not an annual event and was only deemed a Thanksgiving over 100 years later, in a footnote in a publication mentioning it. The alliance collapsed into one of the most horrific colonial Indian wars on record. Nonetheless, Thanksgiving has become a celebration of immigrants seeking a better life and of good hosts who grant refuge.
We celebrate having been the immigrants when we live in a country where each successive wave of new arrivals to our shore brings new stereotypes, slurs and unfounded fears of crime, disease, and fewer jobs for the native born. Each new group is deemed less virtuous than earlier immigrants.
Let’s make this Thanksgiving an opportunity to remember our collective past as refugees and to show gratitude for every person who has sought bravely to find a better life for themselves and their families and for every person who has offered a helping hand.
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