It’s been almost a week and it still hasn’t sunk in. I keep saying the words over and over in my head. President Trump. President Trump. Donald Trump, President of the United States.
But no matter what I do, the words don’t sound right and I know they never will.
Obviously, the results of Tuesday’s election were beyond shocking. The experts, the polls, the statistics, the predictions, the media -- all of them projected so much confidence in the election results. I can’t help but feel betrayed as I watch a man whose comments have targeted every marginalized group in this country walk triumphantly into the White House.
Interestingly enough, I actually have been able to witness the aftermath of the election results right here in the heart of the nation, Washington, D.C. FCNL, the organization through which I intern, holds an annual conference here right around this time, giving me a chance to see how Tuesday's results will affect every day from here on out.
The election results are present in every corner of D.C. My Uber driver from the airport, an immigrant, said,"What the hell is happening with this guy, I don’t know. Maybe he pay someone off. Maybe he lie. But something’s going on." He told me that on Wednesday, hundreds flooded the streets of D.C. in front of the White House and the Trump International Hotel in a last attempt to salvage the progress our country has made in the last few decades.
Fortunately, I was able to talk to someone who was actually present at the protests and a member of the organization I work for. She told me that there were a couple of protests, some more radical than others, but all sharing the same underlying message: not him. When I asked her if the ambience of D.C. changed after the election, she gave me a sad smile. “They, we, were extremely disappointed. And we were so close,” she said as I was heading out to my lobby visit.
My lobbying experience itself reflects the completely overturned situation behind-the-scenes in Washington. While we were lobbying for sentencing reform, it was difficult to see staffers for Members of Congress in this mindset of hopelessness and confusion about the current state of affairs. Many of them had just finished staff meetings where they were told that the future is more uncertain than even they could say.
“I have little to no faith it will pass,” said one of the staffers we met with regarding sentencing reform, shaking his head. “Right now, we have no idea, policy-wise, job-wise… because the future's so unclear."
Last night, walking back to our hostel, my peers and I saw an anti-Trump protest in the heart of the city. The protesters were crying, shouting and marching assertively across the streets. It wasn’t an unfamiliar cry because I heard the same chants amplified in the streets of downtown Portland. They express the fear felt across the country, the anger at the fact that this election has set us back 50 years of progress, a disheartened acceptance that we will have a racist, sexist, xenophobic leader representing our nation. But to see it in the nation’s capital and one of the most liberal cities solidifies my understanding that moving forward, we can and must stay rooted in whatever common ground we have left.
