This article was written by Isaac Chamberlain, class of 2019.
When Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, I thought I was living in some garish nightmare. Then I looked at the clock and I thought it was pretty ironic that he won around 2:30 a.m., given his long history of explosive late night/early morning tweets. Seven days earlier, he tweeted, “Crooked Hillary should not be allowed to run for president. She deleted 33,000 e-mails AFTER getting a subpoena from U.S. Congress. RIGGED!” In my opinion, Trump lost his right to call Hillary Clinton a criminal the day he mixed up the election date with the date of his Trump University fraud trial. After I imagined this entire election was just another tweet, I wondered how Obama felt when he congratulated Trump – the very man who claimed our first African American president wasn’t born in the U.S. for five years, before finally admitting he was wrong this past October.
I am scared. Not only am I terrified of our president-elect and his running mate, but I am terrified of the 59,611,678 American citizens who woke up on Nov. 8, waited in line, and voted Trump into office. I am scared that nearly half the country wants a reality TV show host who brags about sexually assaulting women to lead our country. I worry for the minorities. I worry for the millions of citizens who will lose their health insurance if Trump repeals Obamacare. But I worry most of all for our future and for the long term effects Trump may have on our economy along with the effects he has already had on America’s youth. As Trump has increased in popularity, the rise of blatant racism and sexism in schools has steadily followed. This phenomena, “The Trump Effect,” has dramatically increased harassment towards groups targeted by Trump, such as Muslims and immigrants according to many respectable sources including Psychology Today and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
However, I will not allow my fear to paralyze me, but rather empower me. I spent the day following the election angry, fragile and anxious. It is now time to rise. My mother taught me to always stand by what I believe in and never back down. I refuse to hide, or worse, change out of fear. Instead, I will make myself visible and make my voice heard, and I urge you to do the same. Now is not the time to give up on our country. We must now fight harder than we ever have before for equal rights. We must not only fight for ourselves, but for Black Lives Matter, for the minorities Trump targets and for equal pay. We must fight against homophobia, against rape culture and for a brighter future inclusive of all regardless of creed, gender, sexuality, race or social class. In the 1950’s, Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos wrote “What didn’t you do to bury me/ But you forgot that I was a seed.” Now is not the time to back down. Instead, now is the time to grow taller than ever.
