Dear Michelle Obama,

I just want to start off this letter by saying that I’m a huge fan. However, this letter isn’t about my admiration of your work in and out of the White House. This year’s election is incredibly frightening. Thinking about it alone riddles my whole body with goosebumps and an unswallowable lump develops in my throat. Democracy should not have to come down to picking which poison one thinks will be less lethal. We as Americans should not have to vote for the lesser of two evils when it comes to who will be the President of the United States of America.

The idea alone that Donald Trump, the Republican Candidate, might win the election makes me want to call up my landlord and break my lease so I can move out of the country I was born and raised in. I’m actually willing to pack up my whole life and relocate to a completely different country in hopes that I can get away from what might happen. I know that I’m not the only one who feels this way. I’ve overheard conversations, engaged in conversations, and have seen posts about it on social media.

This upcoming election scares me for many reasons. It makes me scared for my friends with undocumented statuses and even the ones who are here on visas. It makes me scared that everyone that I know, myself included, that is in the working middle-class is going to have to work more just to keep up with the costs of living. It makes me scared that the strides of progress that the LGBTQ+ community has accomplished will be put to a screeching halt. It makes me scared that the veterans that risked everything for our country won’t ever get the 100% support and help that they need. It makes me scared that defunding Planned Parenthood won’t get women and men the help that they need. The list of what scares me about Donald Trump goes on and on and on.

I was at the Donald Trump protest in Chicago back in March 2016. Although our protest was peaceful, it was not portrayed as such due to a few fights that the Trump supporters started. I can speak about this because I had a personal experience with one disgruntled and physically aggressive Trump supporter. After the protest was over (Trump cancelled his speech), I was walking down Harrison Street when a woman, decked out in Pro-Trump gear, shoulder checked me. Now by no means am I an easy girl to knock down or move, I’m very solid and proud of such. After she shoulder-checked me, I turned around in utter disbelief to which she had screamed in my face, “Get a job, freeloading bi**h!” I couldn’t understand or grasp why she knocked into me and yelled an extremely rude assumption towards me. I calmly replied, “I actually have three jobs.” She continued to yell obscene things to me, at which point I had to walk away because it wasn’t worth wasting my time and energy on someone who clearly already had a closed-off mind.

Trump’s dangerous rhetoric scares me to the point that my fear of the possibility in which his followers ultimately start an all-out race and/or religion war makes me want to run to Canada... and let me tell you, I am not a runner, nor was I born with grace or agility. Now, I’m not trying to deny that racism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc., doesn’t already exist, because it clearly and painfully does. But what will happen if Donald Trump walks into the White House? I fully understand that the president only has so much power, but then again, there is tremendous power in numbers, and Donald Trump has those numbers when it comes to his followers.

Will his supporters continue to spew such hateful and awful beliefs to their children, causing us to forever have a systemically racist society? Will his supporters make America digress to how this country was in the 1950s? Will there be a race war? Will America’s history forever be white washed? Maybe none of what I mentioned will even happen. I don’t know and no one can really know until it happens, but I hope to all that is good in the world that it doesn’t have to get to that point.

Having Donald Trump in the Oval Office will be an abomination to the progress that know that you and President Barack Obama have worked so hard for. I know that you and Mr. Obama have publicly endorsed Hilary, but since this letter is about honesty… I’m honestly having an extremely hard time getting with the whole #ImWithHer movement. I suppose that people can “change” for the greater good, but it was only a few years ago that Hilary didn’t support gay marriage. I don’t know about you, but I for one do not want someone that didn’t support my (future) marriage at one point in time. It’s all or nothing when it comes to love.

Truth be told, I don’t even want to vote for either of the candidates, but I will vote for Hillary, because if I don’t exercise my hard-fought-for right to vote, I will have failed as an American citizen and failed as a woman. If I don’t vote, I have possibly allowed someone with dangerous rhetoric and beliefs into the Oval Office. I don’t care for Hillary as President for a variety of reasons, but I definitely do not want Donald Trump as President. It feels as if I’m in a lose-lose situation, where one scenario won’t be so bad, but the alternative could be deadly.

However, this isn’t me being a 21-year-old whining about how Bernie Sanders won’t be president. This is far from it. This is me, a 21-year-old from Chicago, asking you with the utmost respect to run for president next election.

Just because one of America’s greatest Presidents, Barack Obama, already fulfilled his two-terms in office, doesn’t mean the Obama administration needs to end. Even as First-Lady, you already changed so many lives of Americans, you started uncomfortable conversations to get people talking, and you’re a role model for every girl, woman, boy, man, and for everyone in between the male and female gender spectrum.

Four years from now, America may or may not need saving. Regardless of either way it plays out, we will need the Obamas to march right back into the White House. America needs leaders who have worked hard to achieve their goals. We need leaders who were not fed their meals on a silver platter. We need leaders who know what it’s like to not grow up wealthy. We need leaders who serve as role models, not war-moguls, not liars, not racists, etc. We cannot be progressive if we do not face and tackle the problems that are right in front of us. Mrs. Michelle Obama, please save America.

Sincerely,

Nicole F. Anderson

Chicago, Illinois