A little more than a month ago, I rejoined the full-time workforce as a page designer for the Center for News and Design with Gatehouse Media, which owns 121 daily newspapers and hundreds of weeklies across the country. It's not my dream job and it's not a career job, but it's a job for now, 40+ hours a week, every week. And it's a job that I like to think makes a difference in the world, does some good: it supports the news, gets the news to the people, helps people decide what to read, makes them want to read the news.
When I started this job Oct. 31, I didn't have many worries about it; I was worried about other things, things that I thought would go away soon enough. To be honest, I'd been struggling personally for a while with what I'd thought was a kind of late-election-season depression. As a woman, as a feminist, as a liberal, the election hurt a lot. It hurt to hear crowds of people chanting "lock her up" about a woman who has dedicated her entire life to public service, to universal health care, to women's rights around the world; it especially hurt that these crowds were cheering for a con artist who refused to pay workers for jobs done, who ripped off students wanting to improve their lives, who denies climate change exists, who was supportive of white nationalist ideas and policies, who has infamously bragged about not just judging and promoting women based entirely on their looks, but with getting away with sexually assaulting women, with invading the privacy of teenage women changing their clothes... I could go on and on and on but death comes before we know it. So I'll just say that even back then, the list of election-related injuries to my psyche, my being, was long. But The election was less than two weeks away, and I, like many Americans, was absolutely convinced Hillary Clinton would win. I was convinced that there was no way Donald Trump would become president. I was convinced that it just Could Not Happen, that people were smarter than that, better than that. I was convinced that my voice — and the voices of the people who agree with me — was loud enough to be heard, even though I was voting in Texas, a state where I knew my vote would not count. I was convinced it would all be okay, that I was just in the thick of it, in the worst of it, and that the storm cloud in my heart would lift, that the sun was coming out soon. The night is darkest before the dawn, or so they say.
But I had no idea that the night would be four years long, that I hadn't even gotten to minute one. Minute one, it turned out, happened somewhere around 8:38 p.m. Nov. 8, when news stations began reporting that a Donald Trump victory was likely. That a white nationalist victory was likely. That an anti-climate science victory was likely. That an anti-health care victory was likely. That an anti-refugee victory was likely. That a man that seemed to stand against everything I stand for had been elected president of the United States, and not by popular vote, but via the electoral college.
It's been more than a month now, and I'm still processing this world I live in, this world in which a white nationalist is a top advisor to the president, in which the person put in charge of protecting the environment is against the environment, in which the national security advisor promotes the legitimacy of fake news stories, in which up is down and what's wrong is real. And I have to say, I'm not coping well.
I remember a time a long time ago when I was talking to a friend about something, and I told him that love is greater than fear. It was from something I saw from somewhere, and I wanted to believe it. But he just shook his head. "No, it doesn't," he told me. He said fear is more powerful than love. I didn't want to believe him, but time and time and time again the world has shown me otherwise. It's hard to believe now that love trumps hate. It's hard to believe now that we can unite through our common humanity, that people will help each other out of love. It's hard to believe now that I have a voice. It's hard to believe now that I can make a difference. It's hard to believe in anything right now, except that I am afraid. I am afraid of speaking up. I am afraid for the economy, for the environment, for human rights, for women's rights, for civil rights, for the freedom of the press, for the truth. I am afraid.
But I don't think I'm afraid for myself, not really. Who am I? I'm a bit of a nobody. When I speak up, nobody hears, nobody listens. When I write, I write into the vastness. I have no audience, no following. I lack those things that people have that makes them noticeable, that makes them seen, that makes them heard, that makes them somebody to the somebodies. I don't know what those things are, exactly; maybe confidence, or focus, or presence, or a skin thick enough to withstand the pressure of having been seen, of having been heard, of having been noticed. Either way, this invisibility, the weight of it, it becomes both heavier and lighter with each passing day, because I worry, but it's not me I worry about. I don't worry (much, yet) that I will be thrown in jail for anti-Trump sentiment; I worry that the thought leaders, celebrities, comedians, professors and scientists that people do follow will be thrown in jail or silenced. I do not worry that the environment will be destroyed during my lifetime; I worry about whether my friends' grandkids, who I will most likely never meet, will still breathe fresh air. I do not worry that I won't be able to get the abortion I desperately need one day; I worry about the stranger in an abusive relationship who thinks she must stay and must keep the fetus because there aren't other options available. I don't worry that I will have no where to go after my house is bombed and my city is destroyed; I worry about the thousands and thousands of refugees who already have no place to go. I think that's the hardest thing, is that so many of us believe that we will be okay no matter what, that these policies won't touch us that much, that closely, that we will survive just fine. It's the world we worry about, not ourselves, but the world is out there and I'm in my living room and that's just enough distance between me and my fears that even as I sit here, afraid for my planet, afraid for my country, afraid for future generations, afraid for neighbors — even as I sit here, that fear is just sitting here next to me, peaceful and calm, carry on, go to work, today is just another day and tomorrow will be too.
But the truth is, today has not been just another day. Nobody knows what is coming, and I don't think the institutions we depend on — like the free press — to keep our freedoms intact were prepared for what has already come, let alone what might come. We say we have checks and balances in our government, but when those checks and balances are corrupted, threatened, ignored, demonized — we don't. As the months leading up to the election clearly demonstrated, we don't have a strong defense against an authoritarian white nationalist president who spreads fake news to the masses.
We need a defense. We need an army of individuals who will refuse to do the wrong thing, who will work to do the right thing even when the right thing is hard to do. We need our institutions to stand up for our beliefs, our constitution, our truths, our facts and to be steadfast when threatened by litigation, imprisonment, misinformation, or even by conflicting values. Our universities, our news organizations, our schools — now more than at any other point in my lifetime, it seems they will be choosing between supporting the freedom of speech or the innate equality of all human beings, and they must make the right choice. We must make the right choice.
Growing up, in junior high and high school and even college, I wanted to be a reporter. I wanted to find out what was happening in the world and to help other people understand it; I wanted to tell other people's stories, to get a more universal understanding of the world. I wanted to know about the things that mattered, locally and globally. I respected the role newspapers played in our world, as the gatekeepers of information, as the information-gatherers, the question-askers, the deciders of what news was fit to print. But I didn't know then that I was growing up on the cusp of the digital revolution. I was growing up with the Internet. I saw the world of information as it exploded like the Big Bang from newspapers to 24-hour news stations to social media to what it is today. How could newspapers have ever kept up? They couldn't. They didn't. They broke. They closed up shop, sold themselves to the devil, started hiring people off the street who would write what they wanted for cheap, who had never studied journalism or ethics. And the ones that didn't do those things, the good ones that somehow managed to survive the budget cuts, that are pieced together with duct tape and good intentions, that history, tradition and reputation have kept alive — they have reached a pivotal time here when it's not about keeping up with the times, as it has been for the last two decades. It's once again about standing up to the times. It's about drawing a line in the sand and saying, we will not report lies. We will not report mistruths. We will not normalize hate. We will not promote this propaganda. And not just that, but we will call a liar a liar, we will not always give opposing viewpoints shared space, we will not tell the world that climate change isn't real just because the President and the director of the Environmental Protection Agency says it's not real. And those are monumental tasks to ask of the media, of newspapers, because at the end of the day, newspapers and the media — the ones not owned by special interests — they aren't newspapers. They aren't "media." They are people. Individuals. Sometimes it's a room full of individuals trying to decide what to say and how to say it; other times it's just one or two people working on behalf of their rural community. The vast majority of reporters and editors are working long hours, struggling to make ends meet, fearing that their jobs will be cut. They have their own belief systems, their own idea of what constitutes a fact and what does not. And as Trump takes office, as his ideas become normalized, as his cabinet becomes accepted, those beliefs and ideas might change, devolve, struggle.
I fear that someday soon, "alternative" news will merge with the news and I will be tasked with helping to create a newspaper in which our nation's leaders state that climate change does not exist, that a Muslim registry is necessary, that refugees are terrorists, that protesters belong in jail. And I believe that I will not do it, that I will stand up for my beliefs and refuse to have any part in spreading misinformation or hate. But I also fear that it will not matter, because our policies have not changed with the times, because we are holding on to traditions and ideas and catch phrases that worked when times were simpler, when we knew less, when the world wasn't so open. That at best, someone will nod in understanding and the work will be passed off to the person sitting next to me or across from me or four tables down from me, and they will do it, because they need this job to get by because there won't be jobs to go out and get. That most likely, I will be told it's not my place as a page designer or a graphic designer or an artist or an employee or as simply a cog in the machine to decide what goes in the newspaper and what does not.