While the tangerine in a suit himself is frightening, Donald Trump is a mere pawn compared to the Vice President-elect Mike Pence – a man who supported anti-LGBT legislation as Indiana governor – and Trump’s recent appointee for White House Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor Stephen K. Bannon. A little background on Bannon: he used to run Breitbart News and was infamous for transforming it into an alt-right source, reeking of bigotry in all of their articles published under his control. The Anti-Defamation League and the Council on American-Islamic Relations both criticized Trump’s choice of a racist and anti-semitic person for Chief Strategist.
Trump made a useless attempt on CBS’s show “60 Minutes” to discourage his supporters from committing more hate crimes. This was not only useless, due to the hate crimes still being committed, but his entire presidency will forgive people who continue vandalizing establishments with swastikas, doing the Nazi salute at pro-Trump rallies, pulling headscarfs off of Muslim women, yelling xenophobic slurs at people, and acting violently towards LGBT people, among other acts of hatred. Neo-Nazis and KKK members alike will be cushioned under Trump’s reign. Donald Trump is the new face of moral authority for America, and I am deeply concerned. He does an awful job at thinking before he speaks… or tweets. By publicly supporting people like David Duke, a former KKK member and white supremacist, and Bannon, an anti-semitic, sexist, homophobic, and racist figure in politics and the media, Trump is doing damage to marginalized groups on a grassroots level and on a federal level. Donald Trump’s lack of censorship for himself and his lack of selectiveness for the kind of public figures he cozies up to normalizes hate crimes and allows other acts of discrimination to persist.
As a dual American-Canadian citizen, I fear greatly for my friends at home in California and for all Americans who are Jewish and Israeli, LGBT, people of color, women, immigrants, Muslims, people with visible and invisible disabilities, and other marginalized groups. It’s a strange feeling to be separated from my dearest friends and family during such an emotional time. While I love the new friends I’ve made during my first few months at University of British Columbia, I still miss being able to express my frustrations at Trump’s sexist remarks to my mom, while we watch the news in the kitchen. I miss being able to rant to my other Jewish friends about Bannon or the wrongful justification of Trump’s pro-Jewishness, just because he claims to be pro-Israel. I also feel isolated watching the protest happening on American college campuses from Canada. I see friends on Facebook live streaming themselves at rallies holding “Love Trumps Hate” signs and chanting. I see pictures of people protesting at UC San Diego, just 20 minutes from my house, voicing their anxiety and frustration at Hillary Clinton’s loss. I want to be able to cry and yell and march in the streets, refusing to stay silent when the new administration could pass legislation and use rhetoric that threatens our existence.
For now, I’ve just been listening to Solange Knowles’ new album on repeat, eating spoonfuls of peanut butter to soothe my nerves, watching a gay ice-skating anime, while constantly seeing shared articles and videos on my newsfeed about acts of violence being committed since the election. I feel grateful to be living and learning in a much safer country, and I will do all I can to help my fellow Americans from abroad. I want to make phone calls to Congress members expressing my frustrations, and donate to organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, that fight all forms of bigotry. To anyone reading this article, I know how easy it can be to let the election results rule your mind. Make sure you take care of yourself. If it means staying off social media for a while, do so. If it means venting to your pro-Hillary friends, go for it. And with that, I share this #safetypin to match the one on my jean jacket, to show my solidarity with marginalized people in the States: