Opinion: A College Democrat’s guide to action

“As young people, we have a uniquely strong political voice and it must be our top priority to defend our values.” 

As Democrats and young people, the past few months have been a gut punch. In January, we inaugurated a president who seems to be the physical antithesis of the very values we hold dear. Since taking office, Donald Trump has accelerated deportations with no due process, stripped our colleges of funding, and begun an unprecedented crackdown on dissent. 

To be warrantlessly optimistic about the future is to commit a grave mistake that will leave us unable to take action until it is too late. Of course, a far greater mistake would be to be daunted into inaction. The challenges that we face in the next four years and beyond are steep but they are not insurmountable. I am not here to tell you that everything is going to be fine or that just because we survived the last Trump term, we can survive this one. There are concrete things that we can do to push back against the Trump administration. As young people, we have a uniquely strong political voice and it must be our top priority to defend our values.

It is important to get out, organize, and build the infrastructure that we need right now. It is essential not only that we connect with and build relationships with voters but also that we are messaging effectively so they understand the effects these policies have on their lives and the importance of ensuring their continuance 

But the most important thing we can do is reach out to each other. This is going to be a tough time for a lot of us. Keep tabs on your friends, and make sure that they are doing ok. More crucially though, reach out to the Trump voters in your life. This can be hard, I know. As someone who has a transgender brother, I know how difficult it can be to have grace for a group of people who were, at the very least, not turned off by vicious attacks against his right to exist. It is tempting to shut these people out of your life, but it is important to remember that less than 50% of Americans voted for us this year. If we isolate those people further we will never win an election again. 

The key to this is empathy. We must understand that Trump widely appealed to the working-class voters who have for so long been the pride of our coalition. For a lot of them, they did not vote for him out of spite or hatred; to reduce it to that is an insult not only to their intelligence, but also the compassion of these hardworking Americans. They voted for him because they felt left behind by the modern age and Trump provided an answer, one that through our eyes may be horrific, but to them was an answer nonetheless. 

Our job as Democrats is to mend these relationships, sit down with these people, and show them that we are the party that does want to fight for them. It is tempting to equate them with the things that Trump represents, but we must treat them with grace and listen to the very real concerns that they felt he spoke to. This involves not brow-beating them into agreement, but earnestly listening to them and demonstrating that Democrats are the ones who are advocating for the working person. We do not get to look down on a section of the electorate and then get angry when they do not vote for us. 

We are staring down a long, hard four years. We are going to require constant energy and action to ensure that this country continues to be a place that lives up to the values of democracy and acceptance that we are so proud of. People are fighting and though we might have lost this battle, the war is still raging. 

As the months progress, we at College Democrats are going to be serving as a hub for action on campus. Whether that looks like running food drives for those who might be losing federal assistance, keeping tabs on ICE agents in Ann Arbor, or organizing protests, we will be actively fighting back. It is important in this fight that we have grace for those who supported the president. They do not represent hate, this president does.

This is part of the op-ed series from the Michigan College Democrats. To learn more about the series and read other submissions, click here.