As President Barack Obama landed in Havana yesterday, the first sitting U.S. president in nearly 90 years to visit Cuba, he did so with his work cut out for him.

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My own immigration journey has a happy ending. For the rest of us, however, we spend so much time disproving the image that doesn't represent us -- that of the Central American woman or child -- that we are left with no time to tell our own story.

I am very proud I grew up in the Dominican Republic. Because of this, it's disappointing to see how some loud fellow countrymen are promoting homophobia.

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Society is not the way we would like it to be, but rather the way it is. We all agree that there is plenty of injustice going around, and our rights as human beings are trespassed constantly.

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I know one visit, and one president, cannot erase the decades of history that have left so many Cubans in poverty or exile. But sometimes the most important changes begin with the smallest step.

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Will this trip help push Cuba toward becoming a more open and democratic society? Again, I believe it will. America is always at its best when we lead by our example as the world's most successful democracy.

Cuba has welcomed a sitting president of the United States -- the first such visit in 88 years. Even in a place as sheltered as Cuba, the victim of a decades-long trade embargo with the U.S., the world cannot stay the same forever.

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The situation in Flint is largely about what happened between state and local leaders. And when it comes to the question of government trust, trust has effectively been destroyed there.

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Nearly a year ago, the eyes of the world turned to Baltimore City. People caught a glimpse of how poverty can ravage a community. Baltimore may have brought these struggles to the fore. But no older American city can escape the wrenching effects of inter-generational poverty.

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A lack of support for gifted low-income kids has consequences for their representation in positions of leadership in society as well as lost innovations. For at least the last half-century, we have underserved low-income gifted kids, losing countless minds and corresponding innovations.

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In the U.S. the obvious hindrance is the embargo, which is codified into law and can only be changed by the Congress, which just recently found the courage to begin to act. In Cuba, the slow pace and limited reach of reforms have a similar undermining effect.

I'm the first to say that it's impossible to identify us all by sight since we all come in different shades and styles, but that Latino vibe was missing - especially considering it was hosted in a city that has a vibrant Latino population, accounting for nearly 40 percent.

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Every day, Americans use mental illness as shorthand for bigotry, for stupidity, for violence. For sure, violence can be a part of some mental illness. But for those of us inside mental institutions hoping to get out, we are not given the luxury of being angry like Trump or bigoted like Cruz.

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Unity will come from allowing transpeople of color to open up these conversations without judgment or putting white transpeople on the defensive. Until we stop defending white supremacy, we cannot move forward as a transgender community.

Living at home, staying at home, living near our parents -- these are cultural markers. Respect these cultural markers, as society has respected your need for distance and some semblance of independence as you live in your loft near campus that your parents pay for, while you get a degree that they also pay for, for a career that they will most likely open the doors for you to get into.

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Rubio's exit signals the futility of trying to rebrand the Republican Party. At the same time, it demonstrates the success of the Southern Strategy and the conservative movement to label minorities as "dangerous others."