| "I Pledge Allegiance" by Toni Thrasher This year's Patriots In The Park High School Essay Winner Toni will read her essay during this year's 4th of July Celebration, Wonderful Job Toni! |
| Every morning, after the 7:30 bell rings, we stop what we are doing, face the American flag hanging in front of the classroom, place our right hands over our hearts, and recite the same words that we have recited every morning for years. Very few people do it out of a true sense of patriotism; most stand up and pledge allegiance because it has become a meaningless habit to them. What is allegiance, an abstraction? What are we pledging our allegiance to every morning and what does it mean? Are we pledging our allegiance to President Bush or the war in Iraq ? Are we remembering the people who were murdered on September 11? Are we thanking our young soldiers for putting their lives on hold so that we may have freedom? Or is it something more? To what are we pledging ourselves and our lives? Some pledge allegiance to President Bush or the war in Iraq or even the soldiers who fight the war, but I believe America is more than President Bush and our soldiers and a war in some distant country. America is two hundred and eighty million lives all intertwined as one. We laugh, we cry, we marry the people we love, we move here from other countries, we work hard to raise our children and give them the opportunities that we never had, we look at ourselves and at the world and want to do something better. I pledge allegiance to all people in this country who strive to live their lives because those people, not Iraq or Afghanistan , not President Bush, and not the events of September 11, are the real America . I pledge allegiance to my ancestors who sailed to this country from Ireland and Scotland , who gave up their homes and left their families to pursue a better life for themselves and their children. I can only imagine how frightening it must have been for them to leave everything they knew—their friends, their neighbors, their memories—to live here. How disappointing it must have been for them to see that the streets of America were not “paved with gold”. No one in their newly adopted country knew their names, few even cared if those newcomers had a house or enough food to eat or warm clothing to wear in the winter. Yet they survived. They survived, and they flourished. I pledge allegiance to the little girl who walked into her second-grade classroom for the first time wearing her brand-new glasses, and who proudly stood in front of her classmates and teacher and exclaimed: “I am MORE than the glasses on my face!” I pledge allegiance to her, for even at her young age, she had a sense of her own value as a human being. I pledge allegiance to the single teenage mother who dropped out of high school to raise her babies. She wakes up at 5:30 every morning and takes her daughters to daycare before taking a two-hour –long bus ride to Burger King. After a ten hour day, she takes the bus back to the daycare, picks her daughters up, and takes them home. She cooks dinner for the three of them, gives them a bath, and tucks them into bed every night. The next morning, she does it all over again. She has no time for school or the prom or to be a kid. But one day her children will grow up, look at her and how she struggled to raise them, and decide they want more from life than struggles and lost childhoods. I pledge allegiance to her determination and her perseverance. I pledge allegiance to the high school senior who was kicked out of the prom and called a clown because he decided to wear a kilt. I pledge allegiance to the girl working behind the counter at McDonald’s and the waitress pouring coffee every morning at the Waffle House. I pledge allegiance to everyone who dares to be different, regardless of what other people may think. I pledge allegiance to these people, these everyday Americans, for they are the republic we speak of every morning. They are our one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. |