The Only Inevitability is Progress.

A writer reflects on her political life so far, and her nation’s political future.

My first political memory is playing on my neighbor’s driveway when I was four-years-old, and watching my mom argue with my friend’s dad about why Bill Clinton was the only right choice for president. And how much George H.W. Bush sucked.

I don’t remember what exactly was said, but I remember her body language. Hands flailing about, like a true impassioned New Yorker, and the tone of her voice — imploring him to understand the right choice. The moral choice. It’s a tone I now know well, and one which I use myself every day. Just like mom in 1992, I often feel like I’m flailing about, but falling on deaf ears as I try to explain why caring about the lives of all Americans can’t be optional.

My first political act was dressing up as then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton for a third grade class project. The assignment was to choose an important American and tell his or her story as if you were that person. I chose Hillary because I understood from a young age that she wasn’t just the president’s wife: she was a force in her own right. The adult-sized suit I borrowed from my mom obviously didn’t fit right, but the role of Hillary did. Her influence was important to me then, and it’d be important again.

My first overt engagement in election politics came when I was 17, the year of the 2004 presidential election. Though I wasn’t old enough to vote, my parents and I watched the Daily Show every single night, and had begun a countdown to the end of the Bush years. While my friends crushed on Freddie Prinze Jr, I only had eyes for Jon Stewart. I ordered Kerry/Edwards pins to pass out to older classmates and teachers, covered my schoolbag with them, and phone banked by myself after school to encourage people to vote for a man I thought would be good at the job. I learned an important lesson that cycle: boring trumps smart. When Kerry lost, I was immobile on my bed. I never wanted to feel that way again, but I knew I would. Because it was at that point I realized I cared. And soon I’d be off to college in Washington, DC, where I wouldn’t be able to help but care.

My first time traveling for politics came senior year as a reporter for the George Washington University student newspaper, covering a College Democrats trip to Charlotte, NC, a few weeks before the ’08 elections. I talked to soon-to-be Senator Kay Hagan. Senator Amy Klobuchar popped onto our bus to say hi. The people of EMILY’s List made sure the volunteers I was shadowing had their marching orders. As a reporter, I was meant to separate myself from their glee, but it was impossible to quell the waves in my stomach. On election night, I attended the College Democrats results party. When they projected Obama as the winner, the ballroom erupted, and after hugs were exchanged, we sprinted the few block to the White House to bask in the glow of future President Obama’s home. The better future we’d dreamed about had finally come.

My first time professionally {see: for money) covering a campaign was, of course, the 2016 presidential election. We were going to elect a woman president. We were going to elect a woman president. We were going to elect a woman president. I kept saying it until I felt it was actually true. In June of that year, I attended a conference where I listened to President Obama, Vice President Biden, First Lady Michelle Obama and Oprah (!), among many others, lift up the room, and help us peer into the next presidency. And the closer it got to the election, the more compelled I felt to write about it — about reproductive rights in peril, about rampant misogyny in the opposing party. My editor even let me go to Washington, DC, for election day to post up outside the White House, and relive my glory days during another exciting American First. But election day came in like a lion and out like a dead lamb. The whole world changed. My whole world changed.

Earlier that day, I showed up to my polling place in New York, hardly able to contain squeals in the booth as I filled in the scantron bubbles. Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine: check. Then I hopped on a train to DC, spent a little while roaming around near the capitol, snapping photos, trying to distract from my boundless nervous energy. I’m not going to go through the blow-by-blow of election night, but it involved a lot of alcohol, the only cigarette I’ve smoked in the last decade, denial, paralysis, and eventually, tears so constant and heavy I couldn’t breathe. I don’t even remember the train ride back home.

Now I’m sitting in a hotel in Crystal City, Virginia as I write this, a few short miles from the hotel where I stayed in DC, that November night one year ago, and everything looks different. One week after that, I was laid off from my job. Three weeks later, I met my boyfriend. Two months later, I was back in DC marching shoulder to shoulder with women from across the country (including my mom), vowing to heal our country’s wounds in spite of the new administration. A few days after that, I started a newsletter about upcoming protests around the country, which about 4,000 people seemed to find interesting. In May, I moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn. And in June, I was approached about a job at Hope, a new media and activism platform. That’s why I find myself back in DC now, as part of a training and funding program that Hope is a part of. I still devote my days to reading and absorbing the news, but now I’m actively working to help Americans regain some sense of control by turning news rage into meaningful action. And as much as I love it, it can be hard. If you haven’t noticed, there aren’t a ton of reasons to be hopeful.

It’s easy to say that this past year has changed me. That I went from someone excited about the future of the country to someone so profoundly disappointed by nearly everyone and everything around her that she can’t imagine a way out of this mess. But truth is, that person last year was blind. She showed up to her polling place, I’m With Her shirt purposely visible to all, thinking that if Hillary could just eek out ahead, that our year-long national nightmare would be over. But as the bomb that is this year continues to go off, I’ve become acutely aware that our country’s entire history is the nightmare. The 2016 election was just another stage of it. While we had our first black president and universal healthcare was instituted, we also saw the serial killing of unarmed black men by police officers, with little to no consequences for the offending officers. As a reporter covering the aftermath of Eric Garner’s death, seeing heartbroken people take to the streets of New York City to protest lack of justice for people of color, I was finally actively looking behind the curtain. And this year, the curtain’s been torn down. The hoods removed.

I wish it didn’t take the election of a white supremacist for me to understand that hate — for people of color, for women, for LGBTQ folks, for people with disabilities, for anyone “other” — doesn’t exist solely in one-stoplight towns and former states of the Confederacy. It exists in my ultra-liberal city, in my hometown, in members of my own family, in former colleagues, in friends. It exists overtly and covertly. It slaps you across the face and hides in plain sight. It’s a large part of what compelled 46% of people who voted last year to make a conscious decision to digress.

Since I can’t think of a more delicate metaphor, the zit has been popped and the pus is oozing out. Now we’re wading through the pus. And just to continue with this disgusting metaphor, our nation’s blemishes aren’t skin-deep: they’re deep-rooted, systemic, pathological, and reinforced. It’d be naive to imagine we’ll ever eradicate them completely, but we aren’t powerless. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut put it best, in the wake of yet another mass gun tragedy this week.

“The sinking feeling — the helplessness that washes over you as news of another mass shooting pings on your phone or scrolls across the TV screen. That feeling is not inevitable. I know this because no other country endures this pace of mass carnage like America. It is uniquely and tragically American.”

So as I move forward, marking more political firsts while treading familiar paths, my work is to think of progress as the only inevitability. The process will be difficult, and disgusting, and depressing, and heartbreaking, but will culminate in victories and better days for a greater share of the population.

If I become a parent, I hope my child, and all our children, will live in a country better than the one we have now. And I hope they’ll look at us, our hands flailing expressively, and when they’re old enough, grab the baton to continue the work that will never be done.