I Protested the Muslim Ban in 2017. Have Arab Americans Forgotten It?
The audacity of Trump campaigning for their votes. My horror that it’s working.
Like so many Americans, I stared at the TV in horror on election night November 2016. I’d gathered in a neighborhood pub to watch the results roll in with about 70 friends. We’d brought our kids. We were ready to celebrate with our daughters as we watched America elect the first woman president, Hilary Clinton.
As it became clear nearly every pollster was wrong, that our country was electing an orange conman to lead us, a disbelieving stupor came over the room. And that was all I could feel — other than an overwhelming need to Get. Out.
Of the pub. Of the country. Of my mind, in that moment.
Did we need to flee? I knew Trump would install several Supreme Court justices, and that Roe vs. Wade would be overturned. I was two years old when women were granted bodily autonomy, when abortion became the law of the land. I’d never known anything else. Now 44 years later, I looked at my daughters and thought, that’s a long pendulum swing. I won’t live to see the damage undone from tonight.
My school-aged daughters may no longer be of childbearing years by the time the pendulum swings back.
