Today, I grieve for the beautiful dream my country has decided to pull apart. I grieve for the legacy of a wonderful president. Today, I mourn the hatred and anger that seems to have swamped us like a tide. I worry for my children, my children's children, and what kind of future we can give them. I worry that democracy doesn't work when half of us did not want this outcome. I grieve for black people, brown people, LGBT people, native people, and people who are not Christians, who must wonder if they still have a place in our nation. I grieve that half the country has decided not to honor diversity, not to honor the rights of women, not to honor our environment.
At the edges of my grief is an unbridled angry. It is not that I didn't get the result I wanted. I could live with that, I often have. It is that this result is so utterly repugnant. This result is terrible in all ways.
To those who voted for this man, I've tried hard to understand your dismay, but at the end of the day, I can't. I'm middle class and white. I do not have a lot of money, I can't afford many of the things I'd like. But get this, my life is blessed. I have a home, good food, a car. I have a family and friends that I love. This country has been good to me, the immigrant daughter of immigrant parents. So I have a hard time understanding your idea of hard times.
You want to make America great again. To bring it back to the hazy, nostalgic wonder days of your childhood. You are looking through rose colored glasses. The past is the past, we cannot go backward. We can only move forward. And, if you were to take those glasses off and truly look, would you find a the past wasn't all that great. Certainly not for women who were harassed in the workplace and who were limited by the very fact they were born female. Certainly not for people of color, who had to endure and fight endless indignities in the time of Jim Crowe. Certainly not for any immigrant group who came to this land poor and uneducated and struggled to find work in a nation that did not always welcome them. Certainly not for gay people, who had to hide their very natures for fear of reprisal. Certainly not for those who went to war and came back wounded and betrayed.
Half of my country has cast away votes on a fantasy, and put faith in a megalomaniac who promises that he alone can turn back the clock.. This is not a change for the good. This is an ill wind that will chill us all to the bone. Make no mistake, it will not go any better for you than it will for me.
But half of us have chosen something else. We wanted something kinder, something that repairs the system we have, that builds on our progress. We grieve now, but we will be heard.
I accept what has happened, but I do not stand by it. For this is my belief: our love is stronger than our hate, our kindness is a far, far better thing than our divisiveness. I stand now and will continue to stand for what I believe in. I live in hope that, in the end, those better things will prevail.
At the edges of my grief is an unbridled angry. It is not that I didn't get the result I wanted. I could live with that, I often have. It is that this result is so utterly repugnant. This result is terrible in all ways.
To those who voted for this man, I've tried hard to understand your dismay, but at the end of the day, I can't. I'm middle class and white. I do not have a lot of money, I can't afford many of the things I'd like. But get this, my life is blessed. I have a home, good food, a car. I have a family and friends that I love. This country has been good to me, the immigrant daughter of immigrant parents. So I have a hard time understanding your idea of hard times.
You want to make America great again. To bring it back to the hazy, nostalgic wonder days of your childhood. You are looking through rose colored glasses. The past is the past, we cannot go backward. We can only move forward. And, if you were to take those glasses off and truly look, would you find a the past wasn't all that great. Certainly not for women who were harassed in the workplace and who were limited by the very fact they were born female. Certainly not for people of color, who had to endure and fight endless indignities in the time of Jim Crowe. Certainly not for any immigrant group who came to this land poor and uneducated and struggled to find work in a nation that did not always welcome them. Certainly not for gay people, who had to hide their very natures for fear of reprisal. Certainly not for those who went to war and came back wounded and betrayed.
Half of my country has cast away votes on a fantasy, and put faith in a megalomaniac who promises that he alone can turn back the clock.. This is not a change for the good. This is an ill wind that will chill us all to the bone. Make no mistake, it will not go any better for you than it will for me.
But half of us have chosen something else. We wanted something kinder, something that repairs the system we have, that builds on our progress. We grieve now, but we will be heard.
I accept what has happened, but I do not stand by it. For this is my belief: our love is stronger than our hate, our kindness is a far, far better thing than our divisiveness. I stand now and will continue to stand for what I believe in. I live in hope that, in the end, those better things will prevail.
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