Progress in a Vulnerable State
As I listened to my American Politics professor Wednesday morning, in what I can honestly only call a state of mourning after a night without showering or changing out of the clothes I had been wearing since canvassing the morning of election day, speaking about bureaucracy, the legacy of Obama, and the legislation he’s left behind through executive orders, I couldn’t help but feel the loss anew. The loss, of all that we are set to see dismantled in a week of Trump’s presidency, and the feeling anew that we had failed. After volunteering for the Hillary campaign, as well as working with Pennsylvania Senate candidate Katie McGinty, Attorney General candidate Josh Shapiro, and Congressman Dwight Evans, over months and months of late nights of phone banking, hours and hours spent weekly registering Philadelphia residents and Penn students alike to vote regardless of partisanship, and mornings spent going door-to-door campaigning in West Philadelphia, I could only process the state of devastation that all had been for nothing, thinking that the white slides of that lecture hall could only further pummel the remaining political hopes I had, and thinking over and over that we had failed.