The morning after the elections, like many other New Yorkers I woke feeling jetlagged. Going anywhere that day, whether to school or work or the grocery store, was much like going to a distant relative's funeral where you practice the strangest form of mourning. While the election was all we could talk about in those days and weeks before the ballots were filled in; on that morning after we had watched much of America colored red, we found speaking almost impossible
That familiar New York chatter that was often so loud and dismissive, had seemingly vanished overnight. I thought for a long time that no one would break that heavy silence. We instead walked around like apparitions afraid to touch one another for fear of being called faggots and told to go back to our countries.
In classrooms, we found our voices wondering how and why out loud--most of us trying to swallow fears and frustration, but failing. Later that day as the sky turned black we marched from Union Square to Columbus Circle. Because it wasn't at all about losing. We were genuinely afraid that that effigy of violence--that pledged deportation, retribution, conversion--would become our lives, that they would try to unravel who we loved and how we prayed.
On Thursday, our Mayor came on TV and vowed to protect us--undocumented immigrants, women, the disabled--said that "we are not going to sacrifice a half million people who live amongst us, who are part of our community . . . We’re not going to tear families apart. So we will do everything we’ve got to do to resist that."
We mourned and resisted, rallying Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. We did not stop even on Sunday. But they saw our resilience as whining and called us sore losers. They shut their eyes to the threats branding us terrorists and immoral that their demagogue spat into microphones. On that day we discovered the extent of their empathy because although they claimed not to hate us, they gave power to a man who did.
But we did not let them bury our outrage. We mourned, resisted, and organized our separate fears and anger into solidarity.
