Bring the ruckus
Well, it happened. Donald Trump is now the 45th president of the United States.
We now have one of the most unpopular presidents ever elected. He’s the second to lose the popular vote, and the first to have experience with neither government nor military.
Of course, the almost 63,000,000 people who voted for him are thrilled he was able to pull out a win through the archaic Electoral College, and that’s fine. Trump won fair and square.That doesn’t mean I will take this sitting down.
This past Saturday, I marched for Women’s Rights in Sioux Falls, and here in Vermillion. And I don’t think this will be my last. Of course I would love for progress to roll forward and alleviate me of a need to protest, but I have little reason to believe that.
We now have a president who has mocked the disabled, denied climate change, settled a fraud lawsuit, shown a very demeaning attitude toward women and a state ready to again consider transgender bathroom legislation. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, but a lot of issues I care about and that seem fairly popular with my generation are already under siege.
For almost a decade, we saw some tremendous progress under the Obama administration, specifically in social and scientific progress. To be fair, President Trump has said that while he does intend to repeal the last administration’s signature Affordable Care Act, he at least wants to replace it with something. So, I’ll keep an open mind and wait to see what Trumpcare ends up looking like.
On the other hand, not even 24-hours after they were sworn in, the Trump administration has removed the White House pages for civil rights, LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, voting rights, climate change and immigration for a 404 error. Of course I don’t expect Obama’s policies to stay up, it’s a new administration, but if we were worried he didn’t have a plan before, this isn’t very reassuring.
What do we do now? We do what our parents and grandparents did, we get active. Ever since the era of Civil Rights and the Vietnam War, students around the country have been important catalysts of change, and we as a gifted generation must not let that flame die out.
This is a free speech campus, adorned with the Al Neuharth building proudly proclaiming our First Amendment. Our generation is blessed with better communication and organization technology than any before, and what do you know, there’s a reality TV personality in the White House. I think there’s fairly solid evidence for reality TV stars taking concerned with votes and #socialmedia.
Reasonably, I need to get my marching boots on and get ready to leverage my privilege as a straight, white, Christian man for those without it. Maybe I can’t get involved with every issue I care about in the rural Midwest, but you can bet that I am going to make some noise.
No matter what happens in the future, I will always stand ready to support anyone whose rights are threatened. As noted American poets Chuck D and Flava Flav once said, “We need to fight the powers that be.”
Smith is a member of College Democrats.
