The past several days, at least 70 million people have felt despair, anger, betrayal, disappointment and deep and genuine fear. The only people who don’t know why may be living under a rock.
A racist, sexist, transphobic, 34-time felon who has been accused of countless other things was elected over a Black southeast Asian female former prosecutor who has dedicated so much of her life to public service and given the country so much hope.
I’ve heard from many on campus and in my social circles that they want to move to blue states, U.S. territories or leave the country entirely. I know panic is partly fueling these claims, but they are rooted in deep fear for the next four years. These claims are concrete expressions of how people have felt in the past few months worrying about the worst possible scenario.
Well, we’re living in the worst possible scenario. The White House and the Senate are confirmed red, and the House of Representatives is looking magenta — reddish-purple, if you prefer.
In the hours after the AP called the presidential race, I doomscrolled on Instagram. All the victory comments were about how gas and groceries will be cheaper and how we will finally have national security. The defeat comments mourned the loss of safety and security for reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, working class rights and *insert marginalized community’s rights here.*
It’s easy to want to give up and flee when the victors don’t seem to care about anyone other than themselves. The promise of safety that blue states provide is tempting.
However, we can’t give into the siren’s call because that is exactly what they want.
We cannot choose flight because we must stay and fight.
If blue voters leave the red states, the blue states will get bluer and the red states will get redder. This seems safe at a state level, but past elections have proven to us that the electoral college works in red states’ favor. If we don’t stay to turn red states blue, we will live under a red administration for the foreseeable future.
In Vice President Kamala Harris’ concession speech, she declared that she was not giving up the fight.
“While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign — the fight: the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness and the dignity of all people. A fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation, the ideals that reflect America at our best. That is a fight I will never give up,” Kamala said.
If Kamala won’t give up on a country that includes 15 million Democratic voters who showed up for her predecessor but failed to show up for her, we can’t give up either.
Kamala ushered in a new wave of hope for the American people in just 107 days. We’ve seen what we can do when we come together for 107 days. Imagine what we can accomplish if we come together for the 1,461 days that Donald Trump will be the 47th president of the United States.
We have lost this battle, but the war for our rights is not over. There are people already putting the building blocks into place for the next phase of this dogfight.
The American Civil Liberties Union published a powerful message in The New York Times to former president and President-elect Donald Trump: “In case you had any doubt, we are the American Civil Liberties Union, and we are not moving to Canada.”
“So, rest assured that when you target immigrants, dissidents and your political opponents — we will challenge you in the courts, at state legislatures and in the streets,” read the ad published in The New York Times.
Kamala is not taking flight. The ACLU is not taking flight. We must stand with them and fight too.
We must fight for ourselves, for the women in our life, for our trans and queer friends, for our BIPOC friends, for our disabled and neurodivergent friends, for the planet.
Sometimes the fight takes a while, but we must fight because we have no other choice. We owe it to ourselves, to those who fought like hell before us and to those who will pick up the torch after us. Like Kamala said, this is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves.
There may not be a ton we can do now, but we can start small. Volunteer at a local nonprofit, attend a protest or a sit-in at the Capitol or keep yourself informed as to what your local, state and federal governments are up to. When the call comes to start campaigning for 2026, be ready to make phone calls, knock on doors and do whatever it takes to make our voices heard.
Instead of packing your bags and purchasing your one-way ticket, I hope you’ll roll up your sleeves and get to work.
Because that’s what I’m going to do.
