One year later

Don’t tell anyone this, but I’m a bit of a sucker for nostalgia. I love finding old photos, home videos, my notebooks from seventh grade—and I really love the kitschy “One year ago today…” Facebook feature. I’m the one who watches the “Friend-versay” videos, who delights in her ludicrous middle school posts. But a few days ago, Facebook reminded me of something different: what I had been thinking on Nov. 9, 2016, a day after the election of President Donald Trump. I had written a status.

When Trump was still just one of the many potential Republican candidates, I watched the debates with my 8-year-old sister. After a particularly vitriolic debate, she pointed to Trump, turned to me, and said, "Well, that guy is mean. We can't elect someone who's mean, right?"

I told her that she was right.

Beyond all civic and military duties, a president is a role model. Kids grow up wanting to be the President of the United States. I know I did.

My sister woke up this morning to a president-elect who is mean. That, above all rhetoric and venom, makes me sad.

One year later, and I don’t know if I was entirely truthful—Nov. 8, 2016 made me more than “sad.” It made me hopeless.

When asked the quintessential “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I was the one who emphatically answered, “President!” As I grew up, my response to that question gained a bit more nuance, but the sentiment remained the same—for as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a political actor. The days preceding the 2016 election were unbearable for me—it felt like one long inhale, waiting to watch a female face finally occupy the presidency. 

I remember the afternoon of Nov. 8: I was walking past Perkins with a friend, and in the middle of our conversation, I stopped and turned to her. “We’re going to have a female president by tonight.”

A week later, she called me. She had won.

It was this, the absolute tiniest of victories, that let me begin seeing what I couldn’t see before. In the wake of the election, I had been laying down and giving up…but others were not. There were marches, demonstrations and protests across the country, and these weren’t just transient or symbolic. There were droves of women—young women—signing up for campaign training programs. There was my little sister, weeks after Hillary’s defeat, beating five boys in her fourth grade class elections.

Before Nov. 8, I’d always suspected that many of us didn’t really care about politics—maybe we tuned into the debates or even watched the news every night, but we never had any real control over the decisions of our officials. Even if we felt strongly, we couldn’t do much.

I was wrong. Care breeds action, and action breeds change—the Affordable Care Act demonstrations this summer and the January Women’s March (the largest protest in American history) prove as much. All we need is people to care, and we do. We powerfully, genuinely do.

When I finally started to get up and act myself, it meant something different than before the election—my action wasn’t out of anger, but out of an unswerving belief in what we can do. I needed the 2016 election to confirm that we care, and that our care can change our reality. I needed to lose hope to gain belief. 

Cameron Beach is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs on alternate Mondays.

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