Faith is something I return to again and again during these times. While our reality becomes more strange and foreign, when I am unsure of how to engage with our crumbling world, I turn to faith and the wisdom of those before me to understand how to respond. A year and a half since Trump entered the Oval Office, faith seems to be the only compass this world has left. I think back to inauguration day—so many of us fearing that we wouldn’t make it the first year, let alone the first month. Others, more optimistic than I, hoped #45¹  himself wouldn’t either. Yet here we are, approaching yet another election cycle sure to be filled with doubt, derision, and deceit.

As I reflect upon how damaging this administration has been, but also how it has only brought long-hidden truths about the United States to light, I searched for some inspiration about how to move forward. We’ve lost so many leaders and activists in the last year², so many more innocent lives, and countless people have been impacted by the current administration’s horrendous policies here and abroad. As someone who has been incredibly aware and vocal about sociopolitical issues from a young age, this new era has only instilled confusion, silence, and uncertainty. What do I do? What do we do?

Strangely enough, some wisdom came…from me. But a previous self. The night after the election, I was asked (along with other students and members of the University of Michigan community) to give a speech at a rally on campus. Hoping to encourage others to stay steadfast, but also speak to my own truths, I dug deep inside and voiced my greatest fears and hopes. Oprah proclaimed at the 2018 Golden Globes, “What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.” Looking back on that moment of uncertainty, although it’s also unclear whether we were more uncertain then or now, I found strength from my truths and the motivation to keep marching forward.³

The first person I spoke to that morning, the first day we truly woke up as a nation, was my mother. This isn’t abnormal. Since I moved out six years ago, I’ve woken up every morning to a text from her, consisting of a kissy face emoji with a line of scripture from the Sikh holy book—a reminder of her love for our faith and her love for me. November 8th was different: “Call me when you wake up. I didn’t sleep.” I didn’t say much; I didn’t want her to hear my voice crack as I silently cried. But she knew—mothers always know. Perhaps my silence was more that I didn’t want to accept that this, my country had finally betrayed me. As she continued talking, optimistic as always, I heard her tone change. “You know, I know I will be okay. I’ve lived through this before.” My mother, an immigrant from Punjab, India, was telling me that she would be okay because—at my age—she had already survived a genocide against her entire ethnic and religious community. The fact that this was the comparison she had chosen to make shook me.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the election results surprised me, then nor now. The three states that it came down to—Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan—are the three states that I had lived in as a child. My life story as an American had always been linked with those who thought that a man representing white supremacy, anti-Blackness, misogyny, transphobia, and more could lead our nation. I have seen the frustration and anger of these people before when they fired my turban-wearing dad from his job out of xenophobia, when they shot and killed members of my congregation in Oak Creek, WI, out of hatred, and when they called me a dirty terrorist out of fear. The problem with the American Dream is that it was always touted as a prize with limits; as something with a reserved quantity. When we believe that only some of us can succeed, we start counting those who we can step on to get there. This divisiveness has been the story of my life for a long time, and today, I realized it will continue to be.Yet I have seen the unity in this hardship. I remember how the members of Groundcover News, a community of low income and homeless individuals in Washtenaw County, stood with me after the shooting in Oak Creek. I remember that as an elementary student after 9/11, my friends rallied around me to protect me from bullies and verbal attacks. I think of all the friends, worldwide, who reached out after the election results came through, to tell me they love me and are here for me, whatever I need. The moment we realize that we must all invest in our collective liberation, that we have all been thrown under the same bus, is the same moment we can start to work together.

Our roles in this fight for liberation will not be the same. I still am figuring out my role. Perhaps this is why I look back to my previous reflections, to find some sort of answer for a question I have yet to find the words to ask. Each day becomes more horrifying, each trauma more surreal. But all I can do is ask you, my reader, and ask myself to not let ourselves be destroyed by fear, nor let ourselves be wooed into calm. There is work to be done and it will require our discomfort, our brutal honesty with each other, and our unyielding courage. As the daughter of immigrants, a Sikh, and a young, brown woman living on occupied, indigenous territory, I have never assumed that others would carve my path for me. I have always known that this fight will be for us. We are the only ones who can speak our own truths.

I’ll end with Maya Angelou who said it best:

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still [we’ll] rise.⁴

 

¹ Not using the current President’s name was first suggested by Bernice King, the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as it removed the time spent on discussing him as a persona. Many activists and advocates have started referring to the current President as 45, in reference to him being the 45th President of the United States.

² One such blow was the premature death of Eric Garner’s daughter, Erica Garner, at just 27. After an asthma attack led to a major heart attack, she was placed in a medically induced coma. Erica had been strongly advocating for justice after her father, Eric Garner, was choked to death by the NYPD. Erica is just one of many Black women who are literally dying from the racial trauma of being a Black woman (and person) in the United States.

³ The following paragraphs are adapted from my speech at the University of Michigan on November 7, 2016.

⁴ Angelou, Maya. “Still I Rise.” And Still I Rise. New York: Random House. 1978.