Here is an excerpt from a letter to the editor printed in the Star Tribune on Monday, July 22. Thank you, Peter, for joining us. We are proud of our diversity and welcome all!
Our son and 4-year-old grandson invited us to attend Sunday service at the Church of the Ascension, a Catholic congregation not far from their neighborhood. I witnessed a parish of ethnic and racial diversity the likes of which I have rarely seen. Alongside us older white worshipers were former African refugees, black Americans, Hispanic Americans, as well as veterans and the disabled. They were praying together, sharing stories, gulping down coffee and cookies, and, most important, finding common ground.
This is the America I want my grandchildren to grow up in. If this is what it means to “go back home where you came from,” then may we all someday be so fortunate to go there together. It will be a better America.
Peter N. Francis, Tucson, Ariz.