*views expressed in this post are solely my own*
In the final year of her life, Eleanor Roosevelt declared, “It is today that we must create the world of the future. Tomorrow is now.”
Yesterday, at 10.25 am, I wept in a gas station parking lot in the Missouri Ozarks. Tears of joy and release and hope for what felt like the first time in four years.
74 million Americans voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. More than any Presidential election in history. Beyond politics, beyond legislature this was a referendum on the America we want to be. Not only the America we see within our borders but also the America we project to the world.
So together, the world watched. From India to Ireland. From Edinburgh to Lawrence. The world held its breath. And finally, with a collective sigh of release, the world wept with joy.
Tomorrow is now.
Four years ago, I shed a very different type of tears. I remember it vividly from my flat in Edinburgh, Scotland. At just nineteen, the world seemed open, expansive, broad… until it wasn’t. I screamed. I sobbed. I felt lost, alone, abandoned, and set adrift from my country an ocean away.
I wept into my friends’ arms. I still remember how tightly I hugged Ellie as I cried or held Tuva’s hand as I watched Hillary Rodham Clinton tell the world with impeccable composure and grace to, “Never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it.”
Four years ago, I had to believe Hillary’s ideas could not die with the 2016 election. If they did, then what did that mean for me? A young, ambitious, American woman seeking the best future for herself. What did that mean for my kid sister? Too young to vote to protect her future. What did that mean for our lands and waters and forests and canyons? What did that mean for the American experiment and the dignity and integrity of those hallowed words sent to page: “We the people.”
I could not allow myself to believe that it was over. If I did, what was the use in still fighting for what was right? What was the point?
I had to stay loud. I had to continue to speak, even if my voice shook. Even if I was terrified. I had to believe in something better. I had to still fight to ensure that “We the people” meant all the people.
The dignity of the individual is too great a cost to lose.
So, I marched. I wrote my representatives, I phonebanked, I donated, I signed petitions. I got into what John Lewis would call “good trouble.” Throughout it all, I never forgot the fear and abandonment of November 2016. Those feelings of helplessness terrified me and I vowed to never see more young Americans go through it.
For four years, I did what I could, wherever I was in the world, to ensure my international friends could see that a light of hope still burned in America. I became the America they needed to see. The tolerant America. The loving America. The America I knew and still believed in.
But, it’s always darkest before the dawn, isn’t it? Before the charge of the light brigade, before the bursting of the dam, before Gandalf arrives on the morning of the third day with the Rohirrim to turn the tide at the Battle of Helm’s Deep. Anyway…
Tomorrow is now.
Four years ago, my kid sister couldn’t vote. Yesterday, I got to see the smile on her face as she knew that she contributed to protecting our American democracy.
Tomorrow is now.
Four years ago, Kamala Harris was elected as a Senator from California. She was the first female Black senator since 1999. Yesterday, she accepted her role as Vice President-elect. The first woman. The first Black woman. The first South-Asian woman. The first child of an immigrant in a country built by immigrants.
Tomorrow is now.
Dressed in Suffragette white, the Vice President-elect stood on the shoulders of the women who had come before her. On the 100-year anniversary of the 19th Amendment, women across the country saw yet another glass ceiling shatter into thousands of shimmering, glimmering pieces.
Then, after her, Joe Biden spoke in full, articulate sentences about the need to heal. To protect one another. To value our differences because they make us strong. To respect human dignity. Like a calming wave, I watched as the camera panned over the crowd. Settling on children, adults, and the elderly. Each spark of life, each voice, that stood up to protect our American democracy.
In 2016, I wrote here on the blog:
We have to remember Hillary’s ideas didn’t die with this election.
We have to get up and keep fighting for change. We might have been defeated here but we only fail if we give up. Defeat is what happens when you stop trying. Failure is just a growing pain of progress.
I am beyond saddened by the result, but I know that we need to keep moving forward. We can allow this to knock us down, but we cannot allow this outcome to keep us from getting back up. We cannot dwell in our sadness and regret. We have to channel those emotions into creating the America I know we can be. We have to keep fighting for tolerance and equality.
If I learned anything from my pretentious university degree it was this: History is alive. History sways and adapts and changes, but like a river it is always moving. It builds on itself, reacting to events days, months, sometimes even years before. But, everything is connected. We are here today because of the responsibility and grace and drive for change of those before us. And lest we forget, our own actions will reverb through the generations long after we are gone.
So, with integrity, imagination, courage, and a high heart…
Tomorrow is now.
We are the government. The basic power still lies in the hands of the citizens. But we must use it. That means that in every small unit of government, each individual citizen must feel his responsibility to do the best with his citizenship that he possibly can achieve.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1962)
Ad Caledonia 