By: Johnna Ossie, News Writer
Many people in my family voted for Donald Trump, and since the election, I haven’t known what to say to them. My aunts and uncles, my cousins, even my dad. I haven’t been able to look at them the same way. I peer at them like I’m looking at someone through a clouded window, trying to make out who’s on the other side, but I can’t quite see.
My mom says, “They still love you, even though your views are different,” and I wish I believed that it’s true. I wonder how it could be, when the person they helped elect into office, and those he’s now selecting for his cabinet, actively seek to take my rights away, the rights of my loved ones, the rights of my peers. His supporters yell racial slurs at and attack People of Color; they spray paint “faggot” on the doors of the LGBTQ community; they chase my friends out of bathrooms yelling slurs; they grab women on the street.
They speak out against against queer people, against People of Color, against all women, against refugees, against immigrants, against Jewish people. It’s not just a difference of opinion anymore (or maybe it never was just that). It’s a difference in moral values. It’s a lack of respect for human life, for our lives, for our rights. Everything is in jeopardy.
But Trump’s win isn’t just on them, it’s on us too. For not organizing, for not calling enough, not having enough hard conversations, not getting to the polls. It’s on all of us, and now it’s on all of us to do everything (everything!) in our power to keep our communities safe, to hold ourselves accountable, to show up, again and again again.
Like many people I know, after the election, I was distraught. I was drinking all the time, I barely slept, and I felt absolutely hopeless. Not numb, more like a slow, bubbling panic. Now I don’t have time to be distraught. I don’t have time to engage in “friendly debate” with acquaintances. There are real lives on the line. These are our real lives. Everyday it seems like we wake up to some new nightmare. The Handmaid’s Tale has never been so close to coming true.
A woman talked with me in the student center on Thursday as I was asking people to fill out postcards for Senator Collins, asking her to take an open stance against Trump’s ban on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries (among many other things). She said she was an immigrant to this country, but she was waiting for her children before she got citizenship. She hasn’t seem them in eleven years. Now she wonders if she will ever see them again. Her children. Her babies. Some students were afraid to sign their names. Some worried for their families, their friends, their own lives.
I felt like weeping for her, for her family, for our country. How far we have strayed from being on the right side of history. How we leave the most vulnerable ones behind. How we can’t seem to learn from our mistakes, again and again and again. 1984 has become a best seller again. It’s happening. It’s here.
But I don’t have time to weep. I have work to do. I have calls to make. I have rallies to attend, I have petitions to create, I have organizations to support, I have friends to comfort, I have miles and miles and miles to get before I sleep.