Lady Liberty’s torch has long served as a leading light upon the road to freedom. And for far too many people it surely must seem as though that light has just gone out. Those who have been historically marginalized — those “huddled masses longing to be free” — today awoke to the horrifying reality that half of America has voted for a man who actively and vehemently has said he wants them marginalized or simply gone.
As a heterosexual white man of the middle class, I can hardly begin to know what they are feeling. I want to say that I have their backs, but of course that would really mean I’d be making them lead the charge down the road, making them take the hard hits first. Better, I think, to say that I’m here for them and you and all of us as we continue on this journey. Though we may need to crawl forward in the mud for a time, I’ll still be at your side.
Because above all today I was thinking about how this isn’t the end of a journey. Trump’s Election may feel like a dead-end on the road to freedom, but in truth it is a broken bridge. The road ends here only if we allow it do so.
Good bridges aren’t built in a day. It will doubtless take years to build the one we need, the one strong enough to take us all, but we can do it step by step, person by person, working together and apart, day by day by long, hard day.
And there will be time. The sun will rise. Though Trump lies like there’s no tomorrow, you can take heart: there will be a tomorrow and a tomorrow after that. Even if a GOP-dominated federal government ultimately declares it to be flat, this blue world of ours will keep on turning.
What those tomorrows will bring — as it has always been — is up to us.
For now, hold your loved ones and trust in that love. And please look out for those in need. So many will be so in days to come.
Liberty’s light is hardly quenched. If it flickers, we will need to do everything we can to fan those eternal flames.
We are going to need her light, after all, to work day and night on building that new bridge toward freedom — one big and strong and wide enough to carry us all forward.
So don’t despair, America. Let’s get to work. We got this.