As Election Day looms, speaking up as a young journalist is more important now than ever | Opinion
As the election nears, I feel overwhelmed with dread. It’s hard to pinpoint why, exactly: The threats to my reproductive rights? My freedom as a journalist? The safety of queer and trans family members?
With the outcome known (hopefully) soon, I also feel more certain that the ramifications of who wins and who loses could not be more drastic: A continued period of relative normalcy under President Kamala Harris, or a long-lasting dystopia ushered in under President Donald Trump. If that sounds hyperbolic, I promise it is not. Dystopia, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is a “society in which people lead dehumanized, fearful lives.” That’s the reality that awaits anyone who is not a white Christian man under Trump’s second term.
A dictator on day one, he said. Why do we assume he’s joking?
With the fate of the nation being decided in just a handful of days, I feel compelled to say something while I can — to use my freedoms as a journalist (an “enemy of the people,” according to Trump) to speak up for good, for democracy, civil rights and voting rights and to condemn the global rise of fascism unequivocally.
I feel compelled to speak at a time when opinion journalists at major media institutions have been stripped of their right to free speech and editorial control. When the billionaire owners of the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post quash their editorial board’s right to endorse in this presidential election — perhaps the most important of our lifetimes — it’s clear to me that my industry has already suffered the consequences of a Trump presidency.
Someone once told me that it doesn’t matter who’s president because the executive branch has a minimal impact on our day-to-day lives. Perhaps that was true once — or perhaps that remains true for certain individuals — but it couldn’t feel further from the truth now. It seems that every facet of our daily lives and our essential basic rights are at stake.
The fact that I reside in a blue state that believes in reproductive rights and protections for marginalized groups is no longer reassuring when the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court is poised to strip away our civil rights one at a time. Others feel the same way: A large impetus for California’s Proposition 3, which would enshrine marriage equality into the state constitution, was a fear that the next civil right on the high court’s chopping block could be gay marriage.
At 26, I will feel the repercussions of the decisions made by the current Supreme Court for the rest of my life. That’s why the current election looms so large in my mind.
And what about the planet? The last time it was in power, the Trump Administration rolled back more than 100 environmental rules and protections. How is my generation supposed to survive in the face of global climate change if now — at this critical juncture — we elect a leader who has promised to continue polluting our planet?
And what of Election Day and the week after that? What if Harris wins? Trump has promised that he will fight the election results if he loses. And if Trump wins? What’s to stop neo-Nazis and white supremacists from celebrating their victory in the form of targeted hate crimes and violence?
I want the election to be over, but what kind of world will we live in when it is?
Since graduating high school in 2016, the year Trump was elected, I have often found clarity and reassurance in an unlikely place: Facebook. Before and after big political moments, my beloved high school government teacher, Brandon Dell’Orto, takes to the platform to post something that’s always reassuring in the most impossible of times.
“One week from now, we’ll be waking up to what is probably going to be a chaotic and contentious presidential election result,” he wrote. “Regardless of who wins, it will ultimately be a test for all of us.
“To continue to survive, Democracy’s winners need to be humble in their power and the losers gracious in their defeat. That’s the only way to move ever forward. If every time you lose an election you scream fraud, foul, stolen election, democracy slowly dies, replaced, sadly, with the much more tantalizing autocracy.
“Please, for the sake of the younger generation that I teach every day, let’s show them how this is supposed to work. ‘Bipartisan’ is a word they’ve heard, but never experienced. It’s going to be an important week.”
This story was originally published October 31, 2024 at 11:19 AM with the headline "As Election Day looms, speaking up as a young journalist is more important now than ever | Opinion."