#NotMyPresident
Berkeley High Walkout
#NotMyPresident
As a poll worker, I knew I shouldn’t have done it, but there were no voters in the room. I stepped outside to look at the results of the race. The results were bad. Very, very, very bad. Donald Trump was trouncing Hillary in a race that everyone assumed would be a possible landslide in her favor. Then my friend started texting me about the unthinkable – Donald Trump was about to become our country’s future president.
My heart sank, and I felt sick to my stomach. I thought about my children and their future. What would happen to them?
Both are disabled. I recalled the sight of our future president shaking his hands in front of him, mocking a disabled reporter. I saw a person with no compassion. He doesn’t represent the disabled.
I thought of my son, born in this country to a Mexican woman. Will our future president send my son south of our border and build a wall to block him from coming home? The next president will not protect him.
I thought of my daughter who was born with a penis. Will our future president deny her the right to be who she is or will he try to grab her crotch? A misogynistic president will treat her with respect.
I thought about my children’s two mothers. Would our future president recognize them as a couple? An anti-LGBTQ president will rescind their right to marry.
After the polls had closed in California, I went out for a drink with a friend to commiserate. We were not alone, having been met with expressions of disbelief as we walked into the bar and saw the tally of the election results. It was a nightmare that didn’t go away when I woke up the next morning.
Community
My wife and I went out to breakfast and discussed how we would be able to find a positive outcome of having a man in the White House who, for so many months, had filled our ears with bigotry against African Americans and Muslims. How would he be able to entertain any foreign dignitaries? How will he balance the country’s budget when he gloats that he profits by writing off losses. Would our future president be able to care about the welfare of our children?
We went to the grocery story, still disillusioned with the future of our country. At the register, we overheard a Mexican man dare Trump to build a wall – and pay for it himself. He was almost in tears. The cashier was an African American woman who started to cry. She couldn’t stop. And then I began to cry, too. The tears were contagious as I heard a young East Indian woman behind us start to cry. We turned around to see her clutching her daughter, saying, “What’s going to be my daughter’s future now?
Protesting
That same morning, there was a peaceful walkout of 1500 students from Berkeley High School protesting the election of Donald Trump. There was no vandalism or violence. The student body is made up of White, African-American, Multi-Racial, Hispanic/Latino, Asian-American, Pacific Islander, and Native American students. They tweeted #NotMyPresident, chanted “Si, se puede (Yes, we can), and pledged to unify. It was the first time the school ever had a walkout. They, too, were concerned about their future.
Strangely, I felt comforted knowing that I share the same concern about our future president with people I have never met, people who don’t judge their neighbor by where they were born, their age, religion, gender, the color of their skin, ethnicity, lifestyle or what language they speak. In my diverse piece of the world, I hope that a future president will come from this community.
This article can also be found on Medium.