America, I love your mountains and your rivers and your cobblestone streets. I love the way morning light glows on the leaves of your big oak trees. And most of all, I love your people. Hurt people, all of them. But hurt people hurt people, or at least this is what we have been taught.
I was 13 in 2016 when I first feared for America. For some, this is late; for others, far too soon. I don’t remember those years with a lot of clarity. I only remember a new fear gnawing, and anger spreading like a disease. I remember it being the first time that I couldn’t speak openly at my grandparents’ dinner table. And as I walked the middle school hallways, Macklemore’s song, “Wednesday Morning,” played on repeat in my wired headphones.
I remember the division – the image I had of a united nation fractured – which left behind the growing sense that strangers might not always be friends.
I should thank Donald Trump, as it was his rhetoric that exposed my innocence to a harsh reality. Rhetoric that labels migrants as the “enemy within” and viciously reduces women; that incites violence and normalizes racism, ableism and practically all other -isms. My youth unfolded under his reign, and the shock of his mere existence was fuel enough to send me down what has since been a path of seeking truth, justice and humanity.
It was that shock that drove me to become a storyteller. The saying goes that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. This is why I believe stories are the most vital thing we have. But it is also a selfish mission: I need stories to remind me of the complexity of human nature, that people cannot be partitioned by simply good or bad, wise or foolish.
As history would have it, true storytelling is facing its strongest opposition when it is most vital. Journalism is under attack; and the First Amendment, the cornerstone of our democracy, is under increasing pressure. Shortly after former President Trump assumed office in 2017, he took to Twitter (now X), calling journalists “the enemy of the American people.” The laundry list of derogatories is long, and his threats have since increased, with some even insinuating violence against members of the media. In a second term, press freedom hangs in the balance.
My graduation date is quickly approaching, and I am soon to inherit these circumstances without the safety of the four walls of academia. I have been preparing for a shrinking job market, where journalism jobs seemingly evaporate into thin air and longer hours are expected for lesser pay. But I never anticipated my post-grad planning would be made even more difficult by threats on free speech and a nation with its back turned on “fake news.”
At this time, I can only think short term. Like most others since Wednesday morning, I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out what this means for me, my community and the nation. The morning after, my professor and newspaper adviser opened up an honest conversation for the dejected student-journalists who had spent the previous night live-reporting the election.
I will never forget the sight of their faces crinkling, holding back a torrent of tears that drew all the way back to 2016, Trump’s first election. And to my right, I listened as my brave professor told us the story I had heard before, but this time the heart of it rang in a new way. An immigrant in this country escaping dictatorship, she recounted that same gnawing fear that pushed her family to flee the Philippines at the same age I was when I first feared for America.
But fear is defeated by faith, and at that moment, I felt insurmountable faith in the people sitting around me – a union of students who have unwavering confidence in the power of stories, and the bravery to trust in the humanity of people, even when they’ve seen the worst.
Division was what brought us to this point, and division cannot be how we move forward. I am choosing to reclaim that innocent faith I once had. I have toughened, but I refuse to be hardened. When we consider what we have lost and what we very well may lose, we must also consider what we have, and what we could have. For all its broken people and its broken systems, there still exists something in this nation that unites us.
For America to survive, we must love it fiercely.
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