11/9/2016

It is a hard day to be brown today.
It is hard day to be the son of immigrants.
It is hard to think about all the women I let down today.
My Wife, My Daughter, and especially my mom.
My poor mom who I consoled in 2008 when Hillary lost.
My poor mom who gave up her entire life to give me something better.
I’m sorry mom that we couldn’t find a way to win this for you.
I’m sorry Goldie for making you think
for weeks that we could win this
for making you watch Katy Perry videos with me
for all the rallies, the buttons, the stickers, 
for all the hours I spent away from you
I’m sorry for all the lessons that we taught you
about love, respect, humility, hard work
that are just not going to very applicable in the real world.

To my friends who don’t live in Wisconsin.
I am sorry we haven’t figured out how to win an election
how to talk to people outside our circumference
how to get our people to show up to the polls
how we falsely fetishize our
state traditions of beer, cheese, football
knowing deeply how we are not
remotely cut from the same cloth
unless we pull hard enough at one another to rip our fabric
We know first hand from 2010 that the legislation
is going to brutal and swift
We know that the roots we dug
to brace against climate change
will be submerged in oil and pipelines and
painted green with black tar bubbling beneath them
We know our protests will be strong,
a faint flicker in the darkness
and utterly useless

In the end, I still believe in the American dream
It is the only guiding principle I have,
I don’t have religion, I don’t have faith, I don’t have a god
I still barely have my country.
Because yes, it is my country. 
Brown, black, straight, queer, homogenous, diverse, angry.
I won’t let them pollute my America.

We had the talk with Goldie,
We told her Donald Trump won.
We told her that it doesn’t change what our values are:
hard work, respect, and our deep love for another
love for our community
love for our institutions
and yes, love for our government.

As we struggle with the words
that we will use to explain this election to our children,
my only advice going forward is this:
believe those words
believe every one of those words,
they will give you comfort,
they will give you purpose,
they will be there for you in the dark biting colds day ahead.

Talk to your children
and believe those words,
we need them right now a lot more than they do.
With deep love and despair,
Yogesh