Maybe four years won't change anything. I pray four years won't change anything. But this moment; this moment changes everything.
As a woman, I can't help feel the slap in the face that the more qualified, more experienced, more intelligent, and more impressive candidate can still not get the job and maybe simply because she is a woman. It's dramatic- yes- but how can you leave it out of the narrative? The man is going on trial for sexual assault, has a campaign built on hatred of people who are different, and offers nothing except.
extremism.
1936 was the first election my grandfather voted in. 1936 was the first time that somebody in my family took democracy into their own hands, took their future, and their children's future, and their grandchildren's future into their own hands. Since then, a world has been created, turned upside down, turned right side up, spun around, and today it
stops. For just a moment maybe, or maybe for one large inhale that we might only be able to exhale four years from now. And while this election is about the millions of people that voted, I cannot help but be selfish and that this election is about our generation, the millennials, and for the generations that follow.
It was dark waking up in London on Wednesday morning. In a way, I have get detached all semester. Galavanting around Europe has proved quite the distraction to the stressful, high-speed, competitive environment I left behind at Penn. But right now, I feel utterly helpless. I want to be there to protest, I want to be there to mourn, I want to be there to rise up. But I'm here and so I wait and watch and hope that the voices of my peers and friends can speak for me where I cannot.
Here's the thing about being the president, you know, that little thing: you're the face of an entire country. Your words carry weight unlike anybody else's and your actions speak even louder than those. How can you explain to young girls that, "yes, it's your body, but no you don't have a say," and bullying is ok if your insults are hurtful enough, and hate is power and power is good, is the face of our country? How can we explain that we are more than a group of people that stand for themselves and not the country? How can we explain that it took 240 years to build this country that strives to have peace, diversity, and love as its foundations, but it only takes one person to watch it all crumble? On November 8th, 2016, we had a long way to go before we could call this country a place of equal opportunity and love for all, but we were moving forward. On November 9th, 2016, we took a giant step back.
You can't cure hate. You can't cure racism or bigotry or sexism. You can't cure a rapist or an idiot. But you can prevent them. So we have to. We have to use the means we have, the platforms we were given, and the voices we so well use in order to make sure the country can continue to move forward. We as a whole are only as great as the sum of our parts. We are still great. We are always stronger together.
