Today I woke up and i mourned for the minorities of my country.
Not only are they not represented by their government, they are now openly discriminated against by their government.
I mourned the loss of actual policy.
I mourned the hope of economic equality.
I mourned for everyone, even those who celebrated last night.
I open my eyes to see 130 of my classmates sobbing.
and then i look down at my fingers,
The same fingers that I used to vote for the first time yesterday.
I did what I could do, and I still feel like I failed.
I feel helpless.
Then my eyes trace their way up my arm, and now I'm looking down at my body.
Warm tears leak down my face.
I look down and say to myself "this body, my body, its not mine."
My breasts, my hips, my intimate places, they are legislated.
I've known this all along but suddenly it's hitting me full force.
I'm having a literal out of body experience, but then I realize all politics from my perspective are an out of body experience.
No matter what rights I fight for, I will always cheated out of the most basic right to one's body
A feeling that will never be experienced by the majority of people in power.
Today I have been taught that if a man is powerful enough, he can grab me by my pussy and get away with it.
He can get Oval Office far away from it.
I know that as powerless as I feel, today I am extra aware my white skin is still a shield that people of color are not afforded.
and that makes me mad.
All these thoughts, they are the layers of my sadness.
For each one there are one hundred more.
But beneath this sadness, I can sense there is something invigorating beneath all the rubble.
It's hard to see now, but I know for certain that it's there.
A power that is strong. That wants to take to the streets, that wants to start a movement, that wants to go beyond a Facebook status.
A power that when united with other flames could match the anti cultures and movements that I grew up seeing in my textbooks
The suffrage movement, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam protests.
I look at those sobbing classmates as I too sob.
Now I know, this is it, we are the future
But I know that flame can't and shouldn't be lit yet
Today we should sit in our layers of grief.
We can be fatalist.
We can be dramatic.
We can walk with tears in our eyes through the streets we thought we knew.
We can worry for the loved ones who have paid and will continue to pay the greatest price for this man's success.
We can let that anxiety we've spent so many hours trying to get in check run free.
Because we deserve to.
Then once we've grasped the ungraspable
these anxieties, this disgust, this oppression will be our kindling wood
We'll let this movement, this fool, be a lesson.
this is our calling.
this is our "never again"