Commentary: Reflecting On the Worst Election of My Life 

Wednesday morning I woke up numb. After reporting for hours the previous day, from Mankato and Saint Paul, I made it into bed close to 3am. My alarm was set for a few hours later — I had to teach a morning workshop.

But the numbness did not last long. I spoke with co-workers about our social justice and mutual aid work. I pitched some election follow-up stories to Minnesota Women’s Press. 

I decided that I wasn’t going to back down from the fight that is to come. So many people in my life are hurting, and will hurt, but I have the energy and the capacity to fight for them, and myself, in the meantime. 

I teach social justice for an Arizona-based college. I also teach workshops throughout the Twin Cities, mostly about community journalism,. I’ve been a community organizer for many years, working primarily in media justice, food justice, and immigrant justice. I’ve been a community journalist covering organizing and legislative policy-making. 

 

This has been a scary election. I voted for Harris, although I was not excited, and I worried that hate would be aimed at Arab and Arab-American communities if she were to lose. I worried that Arab-Americans — like my parents, aunts, and uncles — were falling for Trump’s hateful rhetoric because he wasn’t the one in power during a genocide supported by the United States. (They did.) 

On Tuesday, my students and alumni from around the country texted me all day about their organizing work. I was nervous to go home to my parents, knowing how difficult it would be to look my family in the eye, knowing they voted against the best interests of my BIPOC and immigrant students. 

One of my students was a poll worker in North Carolina. Students and alumni across the country have been fighting to get-out-the-vote. Our world has been burning for so many years and students like mine are the ones who are stepping up to the front line. 

Tuesday, as I drove from St. Paul to Mankato, I was not struck by the number of Trump signs, but I was struck that I saw maybe only one or two Harris signs. In comparison to the Twin Cities, this was startling. But even in Apple Valley where I live, I have not seen the same kind of excitement for Harris that I saw in past elections for other candidates. Lawn signs do not vote, but they do tell us *something.*

On Wednesday I spent the day organizing, trying to figure out what my next steps can be, as an individual and as a collective. 

I am terrified. I am thinking about food safety, threats to education — including the program I teach — and more. What do we need to know to survive and organize in this new world? 

I am not trying to fear monger, but I am thinking long and hard about what I need to learn and be prepared for. 

Yesterday and this week I am focused primarily on my students. I am also thinking about what we need to know. I am thinking about learning how to can food,  about food safety, about reconnecting to organizing in the Twin Cities, about the stories I can tell as a journalist, and about how I can show up for people.

What capacities and resources can I bring to the table working for justice? What can I bring to our mutual responsibility for each other? 

 

Related reading from another MWP writer, Amy Gage