Caffeinated Politics

This holiday weekend, with Easter and Passover being celebrated and observed, I suspect most people are in an uplifting mood. In line with that thinking, a Chicago Tribune story caught my attention.

After Assyrian families in Skokie, Niles, Morton Grove and Lincolnwood spent nearly a decade advocating for an Assyrian language program at Niles Township High School District 219, the program, the first of its kind in the nation, is enjoying robust enrollment and has received a regional award.

The effort to create an Assyrian language curriculum in District 219 initially started in 2015, when members of an Assyrian parent group in the district called Suraye started asking for the language to be offered in schools.

Most of the parents were immigrants who began arriving in the north suburbs in large numbers in the 1980s and ’90s after being displaced in the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War.

The parent group collected around 700 signatures in a petition to show student interest in taking classes during the school year.

A couple of hours later, my newsfeed had a troubling update from the Trump White House. The unanchored, unmoored, and truly troubled Trump posted, “If you import the Third World, you become the Third World!” he posted. “AND THAT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AS LONG AS I AM PRESIDENT.”

What a dreadful white nationalist message at any time of the year, but it falls so low this weekend when hearts are turned in a direction far from racism and hate. But the story of District 219’s Assyrian language program is the perfect antithesis to Trump’s bloviating.

Think about it.

Immigrant parents, many of whom were driven from their homes by wars, spent years organizing, petitioning, and persuading their school district to recognize their children’s heritage. They weren’t asking for special treatment. They were asking for visibility, dignity, and the chance for their kids to learn the language their families carried through war, displacement, and rebuilding. With that language comes awareness of heritage, culture, and history.

Their work paid off. A public school district embraced the language, and as a result, a community saw itself reflected in the curriculum within the country they now call home. That is the America I recognize and applaud.

As people read this uplifting story, they likely also heard rhetoric declaring that “If you import the Third World, you become the Third World,” a message that treats immigrants not as neighbors or contributors but as contaminants. That harsh conservative worldview seeks to erase the humanity of the very families who built that Assyrian curriculum through patience, persistence, and civic engagement.

The contrast is jarring. Truly pathetic. On one side: parents who fled war, rebuilt their lives, and strengthened their schools. On the other hand, is the language from Trump that reduces entire peoples to a threat.

I utterly and completely reject the idea that only a certain prescribed type of person is worthy of being embraced as newcomers in our nation. The Assyrian families clearly showed what immigrant communities achieve. Let’s see, Donald. They build, they contribute, they enrich. Your racism, whether it is shouted at a rally, childishly capitalized in a tweet, or coded in political messaging, cannot erase that reality.

The program was honored in February as the 2026 recipient of the Languages for All award by the Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. The award honors educators who support student engagement and cultural understanding through less commonly taught languages.

For Samuel, Sargool, and Yousif, the recognition speaks to the years of persistence and hard work that went into forming the program in order to help students feel more valued in their language and culture.

“What I hope for students to leave with is empowerment,” Samuel said. “I would like for them to leave with an empowered identity where they can be themselves and see their value and what their culture can contribute to society.”

Trump’s words are so offensive because he continues to desire such language to be normalized. Sowing prejudice and giving legitimacy to discriminatory attitudes has always been his aim. He cares not that such language targets and stereotypes groups of people, and from that, social divisions grow. He seems not to know he is at the end of the losing fight by white nationalists to stop diversity from totally enriching our nation.

Meanwhile, real America, the vast majority, applauds the Assyrian families in Skokie, Niles, Morton Grove, and Lincolnwood.