By Kevin PowellShareNewsweek is a Trust Project memberMy mother and I have spent many Thanksgivings together, mostly just her, the one parent I have ever really known, and me, her only child. I cannot say there is a Thanksgiving that has stood out to me. It is more the fact that as poor Americans, as working-class Black folks, the day represents a necessary break from work, from school, a pause in life trying to survive month to month. We were grateful—and thankful—for the day, for whatever food we could afford. And we still are.
Growing up, I was not aware of the history of Thanksgiving or, rather, what truly went down between Indigenous people and English settlers, known as Pilgrims. I thought what I was taught in school: It was a beautiful gathering of diverse groups, and it was peaceful. We now know, or at least I do, that ain’t the truth. The saga of Native Americans is one of violent erasure on multiple levels, of being regarded, under terror of twisted Bible interpretations, vicious racism and ugly nationalism, as immoral and dangerous, and not worthy of human respect.
...This is part of the American story, despite some trying to hide or shoo away. We also know, as Thanksgiving is upon us, it did not stop there. It has happened, in similarly oppressive fashion, to my ancestors, enslaved Africans, and to European Jews and Arab Muslims, to Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, to Irish and Italians, to Chinese and Filipinos, and to women and disabled and LGBTQ communities, among others, too.
All this has been on my mind for much of 2025, as we’ve witnessed immigrants, mainly Latinx, hounded, taken away, by hyper-aggressive men in masks, like no big deal. We know, if we really know America, this is what those slave catchers did, this is how the Japanese were forcibly rounded up during World War II.
Meanwhile, because of cruelty paraded as government policies, countless women, especially Black women, have lost jobs, as well as others, coast to coast; there have been severe and cold-hearted cuts to medical care, financial aid in different forms scrapped and legions of programs eliminated; programs created, dare I say it, in bygone times where the best of who we are was unveiled in various pushes for true democracy, like the Civil Rights Movement. To be blunt, my single mother and I were able to even celebrate Thanksgiving, year to year, because of assistance like food stamps.
This is why I cannot walk the streets of my treasured Brooklyn, N.Y., and ignore the homeless multitudes, every age, every identity, sleeping on a littered ground, or a bird-stained bench. Some are outwardly mentally ill; some are simply trying to get a meal or shelter bed for the night; and more than I choose to say aloud are United States military veterans who served—and here they are finger-scratching the streets of America for crumbs.
This is also why the recent essay by Tatiana Schlossberg, granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy, socked me so hard in my soul. In The New Yorker piece, Tatiana, at the tender age of 35, reveals her terminal diagnosis of cancer, that she does not have long to live. But there she is, compelled to not solely write, with great sorrow, of her pending death, but to also speak of health care in America, of the masses affected by the cruel cutbacks, including cancer patients like her. Fact is she was also talking directly to her cousin, Bobby Kennedy Jr., and his leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Trump administration. And her essay appears in this same month that Bobby Kennedy Jr.’s assassinated father—one of my utmost heroes—would have turned 100 years old.
I do not like to speculate much with what ifs, but I do know that the elder Bobby Kennedy, in the final years of his journey, was concerned deeply about Americans, all Americans, as I am. That there is just no way one can travel the U.S. extensively, as he did, as I do, and not feel the pain of your fellow human beings, knowing that all persons, no matter who they are, are your people. That this soil was first occupied by the Indigenous; that Black bodies, because of their forced and free labor, contributed mightily to its construction; and then immigrants after immigrants from then to now, have added to the build.
But democracy gets crumbled to rubble, when compassion is replaced with cruelty, when anyone can be told, in an instant, that their job or college degree doesn’t matter, that it is more important to erect high-rises than make sure everyday people have the basics of life: somewhere to live, food to eat, a job or career they value and access to an education if they desire it. Ruthlessly dropkicking the basics is how we got here, this Thanksgiving, a nation eating itself, a nation shamelessly vomiting upon itself.
Yet, as my wife and I make our way across the Hudson River, to my home state of New Jersey this Thanksgiving week, to dine with my mother, to visit with my aunt, I know we are carrying with us, in spite of how sad I am at this writing, a hopeful modeling of the love and kindness and compassion and empathy we so badly want for this yearning land, once and for all.
Kevin Powell is a Grammy-nominated poet, humanitarian, author of 16 books, filmmaker, public speaker and frequent contributor to Newsweek. He lives in New York City. You can find him on social media platforms by typing poet kevin powell.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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