By Lulu Stracher ’17
On the night before election day, I stood at Independence Hall in Philadelphia along with 33,000 others waiting for history to be made. We felt exuberant at the possibility of the first woman president, which we were positive we would get. When Hillary took the stage and made her final plea to the crowd, I hugged my friends and cheered so loudly that I woke up with a sore throat the next morning.
If I was an inflated balloon on Tuesday morning, by early Wednesday morning I had popped. I was, and still am, in shock. Hillary Clinton’s loss and Donald Trump’s win pains me to my core, and not just because she was my preferred candidate or because I know she would be an exponentially better president than him.
Her loss hurts me more because I think of the young girls who will grow up not knowing if they are as fierce or smart or capable as the men in their lives. It hurts because it’s the story that so many women know. You can be the most qualified, competent and experienced candidate for the job, and still lose to the incompetent and unqualified man. Hillary Clinton’s loss makes me wonder if I’ll always be seen as second-best.
Although not all Trump supporters are racist and sexist, they all stared racism and sexism in the face and decided they were okay with it. White working class voters who struggled with the current economic system put their trust on a man who has never cared about the little guy, rather than the woman who has spent her career trying to advance the lives of the disenfranchised.
While I’m incredibly lucky to be privileged enough that my life won’t change much under Trump’s policies, people I care about may not be so lucky. Latino Americans fear a ‘mass deportation force,’ as Trump has promised. Gay Americans worry that the progress they’ve fought so hard for will be reversed. In the name of Trump, Muslim Americans report an increase in hate speech. Women wonder if sexual assault will be normalized and accepted. There are already countless instances of hateful rhetoric and even violence against the groups Trump has demonized during his campaign, and I can’t imagine it will halt anytime soon.
I don’t see how I can look forward to things in my future knowing how daunting everything seems in the present. But I know that, eventually, we will move. We must mobilize. We can’t let the threat of a Trump presidency discourage us from fighting for the causes we care about. We must lick our wounds, we must grieve and then we must fight harder than ever. It’s what Hillary wants.
