Being born and growing up in the US, I never doubted if it was the country I'd live my life in. That has slowly changed after 2016. On a consistent basis I question whether this will be a safe country for people who look like me to live in. Trump empowers White Supremacy to live "out loud" and those kinds of folks live everywhere, even when you don't expect it. On the flip side, I see an America that is ready for radical change and a generation (including myself) who wants to fight for what we believe this country can be. I won't settle for the old politics that left BIPOC and working-class people to suffer the worst consequences of our system. I guess I'll have to figure out which impulse wins out. I believe it'll be the latter. This is my country and I don't intend to leave it.

I think I've been radicalized in a way. I come from an upper-middle class family and grew up believing the meritocracy was real and that personal responsibility was all that mattered. I believed this probably up until 2013 and since then I've been seeing more and more that the systems our country is built on is not resilient enough to empower people to live their American Dream. The last four years have only confirmed and sped up this change in my view of the US. We don't have any major force in politics that fights to make the country better for BIPOC and working-class people. We're leaving millions of our fellow Americans (immigrants included) without access to healthcare, education, and the tools to live a good life. I'm more determined than ever to change these systems.

I want people to remember how Republicans and their militias responded to the ordinary flux of our representative democracy. Without ideas to fight on, they resolved to steal the election by attacking voting rights and trying to intimidate voters. They are morally and intellectually bankrupt and are trying to force their will upon us. And we aren't letting them.

Healthcare. My family faced a situation where we were days away from having to choose between life-saving healthcare for my mother and everything else we had. Luckily, at the last moment, we received a "scholarship" from the pharmaceutical company that made her treatment. Most Americans are not this lucky. They end up going bankrupt, in debt, or ration their medications to their detriment. I believe that in the future, we'll look back on our healthcare situation in a similar way to other human rights abuses we learn about in history books. We need universal healthcare.

I don't know. I hope we can finally put the old-guard of politics to rest and start cultivating leaders of the future who want to tackle the challenges of the 21st century, not simply re-litigate the challenges of our past.