Putting the economy before social freedoms; consequences that come from social privilege

Wednesday, Nov. 6—I wake up at 4:17 in the morning and cannot go back to sleep. I am awake when the AP confirms the electoral votes.

I witness people’s reactions live across the internet.

As a woman, as a queer person, as someone with a nonbinary sibling, I am scared.

But more than that, I am disappointed.

At the time of writing this, the afternoon of Nov. 6, Donald Trump has 71,851,722 votes.

Of course, not all of these voters believe climate change is a lie, or see women as objects, or despise immigrants, but many of them do.

And when I take a look at that number, I see 72 million people who see my friends, members of my family and me as sub-human.

I see people who have the highest access to information in the history of the world, and still chose to vote for the only candidate in America’s history who is a convicted felon.

I see millions of people, some of which include my own family, who would look me in the eye and tell me that the price of milk is more important to them than my individual freedoms and my future.

If you voted Republican during this election, I implore you to ask yourself, why?

Genuinely, take a moment and think about it.

If your answer primarily includes economic reasons, I want you to ask yourself this: Is the ten cents saved per gas gallon worth destroying our planet and all of our children’s futures?

Is it worth the potential deaths of thousands like Nevaeh Crain, an 18-year old mother who died from sepsis after a new Texas law made it impossible for her to receive treatment following a miscarriage?

Is it worth possibly separating millions of immigrant families, who themselves pay taxes and work the jobs that keep our country afloat?

I entirely acknowledge, as someone who comes from a middle-class household, that I am speaking from a place of economic privilege.

What I do not understand, though, is that some of you would see people struggling, or perhaps be struggling yourself, and instead of utilizing or supporting reduced school lunch fees, free childcare, improved healthcare access and programs like SNAP, you decide to willingly cut funding to the very things that would help you.

Our Catholic schools were built on the very idea of community—it is the cornerstone of the Benedictine values.

Because of this, your goal should always, no matter what, be to support others in need.

This means participating in community assistance.

This means voting to protect the rights to healthcare access, harassment protection and wage equality of the roughly 1,400 Bennies on campus.

This means being willing to endure a less-than-desirable economy in order to guarantee that your transgender classmates will not live in fear.

In this election, if the only reason you voted Republican was to try to save yourself some money, then you must reexamine your priorities.

I implore you to focus instead on the queer high schoolers being called slurs in school, on the thousands of children who may lose the ability to eat breakfast soon, on the planet dying as every second ticks by.

This is our future, this is your future, and there is always time to fight for what is right.