A Letter from a Lifelong Democrat, 1:38 am, 6 November 2024

We always knew it would be close. Those of us who’ve watched the pendulum of history swing understand that anger, fear, resentment, and hatred are the forces behind colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and nationalism—rising whenever too many are ignored or oppressed by the status quo.

We who seek to center hope, love, compassion, and community over violent rhetoric are not naive. We are not deluded, nor are we "snowflakes." We knew the fight would be hard. And yet, we chose—time and again—to envision a nation that could surprise us, one that might, for the first time in its history, vote to protect the vulnerable without a struggle to demand that protection.

Like many of you, I am scared. Scared of an elected leader who plans to put a man in charge of public health who denies the efficacy of vaccines, and a judge he controls in charge of the Department of Justice. Scared of a party determined to resurrect some of the most abusive policies of the past.

I’m scared that this political movement could end with internment camps—children torn from their families and sent to other countries to die simply because their skin is too dark or their parents were born elsewhere. As a queer person, I’m scared for myself—but I’m more afraid for my chosen family, my friends, and all those who face an incoming administration that has vowed to make their very existence illegal.

I am scared. But I am reminded that within those same letters lies another word: sacred. Resistance is sacred.

In this moment, we lean into the sacred words of Martin Luther King, Jr. who wrote from Birmingham Jail instead of surrendering to life under Jim Crow. We lean into the sacred life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who stood firm even when the Nazis took everything from him. We lean into the sacred witness of Leonard Peltier who resisted even when branded a criminal and locked in a cell for fifty-plus years. We lean into the sacred rebellion of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, who threw bricks at a bar in defiance of a system that sought to erase them. We lean into the countless ancestors who have walked a sacred path, undeterred by fear.

Resistance is not just our duty; it is our inheritance.

There are those who will frame this election as a contest between two individuals. They will urge us to avoid blaming those who voted for the other candidate, to focus on what unites us, and claim that we are more alike than different. But there is one fundamental truth our ancestors—who walked the long, painful arc toward justice—knew: that call for connection only works when neither candidate is building a platform to strip rights away from others. In the end, the myth of the benevolent master is still just a myth to the one who is enslaved by systemic injustices.

If you support leaders who enact policies that deny my humanness, I cannot feel safe in your presence. Choices have consequences. I don’t know what our relationship looks like if the things I fear most come to pass, as the newly elected president has promised they will. What I do know is that safety and survival cannot be sacrificed on the claim of relationship. The fight for freedom is far from over. We stand on the edge of a precipice, but we must not let despair paralyze us. The future is not guaranteed, and the forces against us are relentless. Yet we resist—not out of blind hope, but out of necessity.

Every system that profits from injustice aims to divide and conquer. It tells us that individual struggles are separate, that our battles for racial justice, gender equality, environmental sustainability, and economic equity are isolated. But this is a lie. Our fight is one.

To challenge the systems that oppress us, we must first see them for what they are: not inevitable, not natural, but constructed. These systems are the result of deliberate choices made by those in power. And just as they were built, they can be dismantled.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the scale of the task ahead. But despair is a luxury we cannot afford. This struggle isn’t just about us; it’s about the future we will leave behind. It’s about building a world where justice isn’t a fight, but a reality. The truth is, it will not be okay. The goal is not to be okay, but to make it survivable for as many as we can, and to fight for change so that this moment remains brief.

This election has shown us a painful truth: we will not become a progressive people by continually compromising back toward the center. It proves that we cannot overcome the pull of our most primal instincts by electing older, wealthier, whiter voices who are more invested in preserving their power than in driving the change we so desperately need.

The change we seek will only come when we embody it—when we become the very vision we are fighting for. Not when we settle, not when we compromise. So mourn. Take the time you need. Today is hard, but it is not the first, nor will it be the last, hard day we face in our quest to transform into the beloved community.

We have the power to reshape the narrative, to reclaim our stories. We are not passive observers of history; we are its makers. Each step we take toward justice is a victory, no matter how small. We must stand together, because the resistance is not only about confronting the powers that be—it’s about embracing the power within ourselves to transform the world.

Our future demands it. We must rise, not in fear, but in purpose. The struggle is long, but so is our resolve. kfr, all rights reserved. Grammatical clarity provided by AI.