Mr. Trump,

Since your election, my Facebook feed has been littered with people who are afraid. LGBTQA, people of color, immigrants, refugees, Muslims, women, veterans, and disabled folks who are all afraid of what you can do as president with a red congress and senate. Why? Because you built your campaign on blatant homophobia, racism, and sexism. I don’t know why you chose to do it. It hurts me to think that this is where your ideologies lie, because as a queer, bipolar, Native American woman who attends a public university, who only has health insurance because of Obamacare, who has a lot of friends and family on your hit-list, I have a lot to lose.

We are the American people, and we are relying on you and the policies you make. Our voices matter, and they should matter to you. We tried our hardest and cast our votes against the ideologies you represent, and despite our best efforts, you’re our president now. It's not just that we disagreed with your ideologies -- it's that your ideologies deny the rights and humanity of millions of Americans. And now that you’re here, I hope you know that the presidency comes with the responsibility of representing constituents who don’t agree with or like you. That may be a hard truth to swallow, but you represent America now, and America encompasses many people of different skin colors and creeds, not just the white folks who elected you.

White supremacists are roaming the streets of my college town. Women, minorities, and the LGBTQA population was already vulnerable before your election, but now we have to go in groups just to meet friends for brunch downtown. We have to walk in groups around the university campus. This should concern you.

When over half of America is scared to leave their houses because of possible hate crimes, that should scare you.

When you threaten to repeal Obamacare, it means the medications I rely on to stay alive go full-price, which is upwards of $300 a month, and even more for some of my friends. When you threaten to cut the funding for Planned Parenthood, it means my trans friends lose access to their hormones, which for trans women can mean facial and body hair growing back aggressively, putting them even more at risk for hate crimes. It means women going without breast exams and not catching breast cancer early, which means they could die. When you threaten to cut government funding for food stamps, it means thousands of Americans just struggling to get by because of a tanked economy and an abysmal minimum wage could starve and die.

These policies and programs that you are threatening to cut are what people are relying on for their lives.

You’ve never had to experience racism or sexism. I’m certain you’ve never feared for your life walking down the street at three in the morning. People don’t tend to mess with rich white men. So, you can’t possibly understand our fear; but I’m asking you to think about it if the tables were turned. Think if your wife or daughter developed breast or cervical cancer but never knew because they didn’t get their yearly exam. Think what would happen if your daughter was the victim of a hate crime against women because she decided to go downtown when white supremacists were having a march. I’m certain you’ve seen all the hate media circulating of your wife when she was a model and posed nude (which, I don’t endorse at all by the way -- I think body shaming doesn’t get us anywhere). That has to have had an effect on her. Imagine what that would be like for her going down the street if she didn’t have you or her bodyguards to protect her.

Mr. Trump, I really think that the ideologies you push exist because so many people don’t understand what it’s like to be on the other side of things. Problems arise, such as the rise of ISIS. We see that it’s an extremist Muslim ideology, so all Muslims must be evil, right? But that’s like saying Christianity is evil because of the Ku Klux Klan. ISIS does not represent all of Islam, just like the Ku Klux Klan doesn’t represent all of Christianity. Really, it’s all a matter of perspective. I don’t expect you to understand because you’ve lived a very privileged life, which on its own is not a bad thing. It becomes a problem when you allow it to cloud your world view.

You may not understand what it’s like to live a day in the life of every single American. But it’s your job to know now.

You signed up for the highest office in the United States, and it’s not all going to fancy parties and meeting other world leaders. It’s going to impoverished neighborhoods with underfunded schools and reading to the children there. It’s visiting children in hospitals who are dying due to medical problems we don’t have the funding to solve. It’s going into neighborhoods with high immigrant and refugee populations who are scared to death of deportation because it would rip them from their families and send them back to the war-torn countries they were trying so desperately to escape.

You grew up in a different era. America today looks very different from America back then. You said in your acceptance speech that you want to unite a divided America. Uniting the divide (that you fueled greatly, by the way) begins with understanding both sides. You know corporate America. You may have gone out and learned about impoverished, rural white America. Now you need to learn the rest of America -- the disabled America, the black and brown America, the impoverished America, the LBGTQA America, women's America, refugee America, the immigrant's America, and the veteran's America. Understanding begins with going out to the different communities and just listening. I think if you did that, what you learn there would surprise you.

We, being a large and important part of America, are counting on you. And if you disenfranchise us, we're going to fight you like hell. That's not a threat -- it's a promise.

Signed,

A Native Woman
Proud Daughter
Grateful Sister
Fierce Friend
Strong Believer
Hopeless Optimist
and Fellow American