“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
The Declaration of Independence
For those who stay up to date with social justice, reform, current events, global events, and dun dun dunnn...U.S. politics, last year was exhausting. If you buried yourself under a rock over the last 365 days congratulations on your mental and emotional health. It's surely in a better state than all of ours.
Most people who know my line of work can surmise where I stand politically and why one candidate's election outraged, frustrated, scared, and rattled me.
Generally, our moral ideals and values align with our political stance. But morals and politics spent the past year overlapping and intertwining in a way many of us have never experienced before. As decisions flooded from the White House at an overwhelming rate, it began to feel personal.
I am honored to work for the nation’s leading victim assistance organization, Safe Horizon. Our mission is to provide support, prevent violence, and promote justice for victims of crime and abuse, their families and communities. Our clients are sexual assault survivors, immigrants, domestic violence survivors, women, minorities, victims of gun violence, LGBTQ, and homeless. As a nonprofit, we are also structurally affected by tax reform and federal budget cuts. The people who seek our services are people just like you and me - whose stories I have come to know and internalize. They are people I respect and fight for every single day.
And those are just the White House decisions that felt personal to me. There was also the pipeline, the blatant denial of scientific evidence regarding the environment, healthcare, the attack on media, and more. So as you can see person-living-under-the-rock-for-the-past-year: exhausting.
The other exhausting piece was the anger, confusion, frustration and blame I placed on those who voted him into office. As I look back, I was in a state of shock and disbelief. I was also grieving. I know better now.
And now that I know better, I will do better.
I know that I can't control what the administration does, but I can control my contributions to society and the way I stand for justice.
I know that no one has become more enlightened by being shamed about how much they do or do not know about the political sphere.
I know that hate is exhausting while love is energizing.
I know that I can stand my ground while remaining compassionate and open.
I know that what someone believes is fiercely personal - regardless of how foreign or wrong that belief may seem to another person.
I know that I can't stop the hate that is spewed, but I can raise up the loving voices to make them louder.
I know that if we are focused on ripping apart another person for the way they express their feminism we aren't moving forward.
I know that if we are constantly judging and criticizing one another on how we should or should not express our views we are not moving forward.
I know it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand those with views who oppose ours - but I also know we must try.
We must try, for the sake of forward movement.
Because I know that if we are constantly looking across the aisle and detesting, blaming, and hating those who voted for someone we don't morally align with or politically agree with we will never move forward.
We will stay stuck, in an ugly, fearful, hateful hole with no hope of getting out.
Evil hates forgiveness, hates love, hates compassion, understanding, openness and kindness. Evil cannot survive the culmination of these things. So if we want less evil in this world we must be these things. We must be forgiveness. We must embody compassion. We must practice openness. We must summon the strength to love. We must move forward.
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
*Articles and sources linked to this page are for educational purposes and are isolated examples, they do not resemble the whole of impact by the administration in 2017. Any counter-arguments to a link posted are kindly requested to be carefully and compassionately thought out after a period of seeking to understand.