The American Dream is Worth Protecting

Blog by GLAD Law Executive Director Ricardo Martinez (he/him)

“Was it worth it?”

I posed this question to my mother, who packed up her entire life in Mexico to give my family a shot at the American dream.

I asked because I saw her personal struggles growing up – struggles with assimilating into a new culture and the general conditional acceptance immigrants have faced in this country for decades. But also because, as we approach July 4th and the anniversary of our country, I have been forced to reckon with my place in America as a Mexican-American and as a queer man. At the intersection of two marginalized identities, I have spent my whole life calculating – cautiously measuring how “gay” I could be before letting my guard down with someone and balancing the push and pull of feeling not Mexican enough for my Mexican community but also not American enough for others.

Under this administration, those calculations feel more crucial to my safety, and they have left me reflecting on the promises that brought us here, wrestling with what it means to celebrate America at a moment when democracy and the American dream feel so fragile.

We are living through sustained attacks on marginalized communities. Mass deportations are separating families, leaving them unable to reunite and unable to hold one another. Masked men are tearing breadwinners from their families, leaving children and spouses to spiral into poverty overnight – unable to pay rent, buy groceries, or find their footing. Detention centers are expanding to warehouse human beings for financial gain, stripping people of their dignity and subjecting them to horrific abuses. Children’s ability to learn and grow, our bodies, our voting rights, and our sense of safety in public spaces are all under attack.

It is a pattern we know intimately. The drive by those in power to create a dominant group and a marginalized one drove Jim Crow, drives mass deportations, and drives the laws we are still fighting every day – laws written in neutral language to mask real harm and create generational trauma being done intentionally to keep communities in survival mode for generations. 

In the 250 years our country has existed, the pattern hasn’t changed – strip people of their humanity on paper, scapegoat communities with limited power as the ones to blame for the negligence of those in power, and use that to justify the violence that follows.

In this moment, it has become clear that the dream was never accessible for everyone equally, and this moment is forcing an honest reckoning with that. Freedom, opportunity, and belonging in this country have always come with fine print – conditions attached to race, gender, immigration status, and who you love.

Despite this, my mother answered without missing a beat, “Yes.” Chasing the American Dream was worth it.

Her answer shocked me. It also left me sitting with a harder question I haven’t been able to shake: Would the people being vilified and brutalized by our government today – the father detained at a traffic stop, the family waiting months for word of a deported mother, the child absorbing trauma that will follow them – would they answer, without missing a beat, that it was worth it?

Even in this difficult moment, many people across the country still hold on to the promise of America – a belief that a society where every single person deserves a good life. And what sustains that belief for me is seeing all the people who are willing to fight for that inclusive vision.

In my work at GLAD Law, I see the dream alive in the plaintiffs who put their names on our cases, in the families navigating hostile laws, and in the community members who show up at a Pride event.

I see that dream alive in my immigrant community, too – even as families carry a fear I don’t have adequate words for. My mom’s prayer circle reminds me that protecting the promise of America doesn’t always happen in the courtroom or at a loud protest. Just as importantly, protecting the American dream takes quieter acts of resistance, like people coming together to care for one another, especially when their government has made clear it will not.

The question worth fighting for is not just whether the American dream still exists – because I’ve seen first-hand it does – but who has access to it, and what it would actually take to make it available to all? That is a question worthy of this anniversary. That is a question worthy of the fight.

Holding both the joy and the urgency, the celebration and the fight of this moment – takes real courage. This year, more than most. Let this moment be a reminder of generations of people who refused to accept that freedom, opportunity, and belonging should be reserved for a select few. Every action taken in the service of justice leaves a mark, so now it is our collective responsibility to pick up the fight.