Virginia Rufina Marquez-Pacheco – Contributor

As we head towards the end of 2024, the world finds itself once again focused on the

American presidential race. A few years ago, watching a race like the one we are witnessing today would have been exhilarating and empowering to me. To think that the most powerful country in the world could be on the brink of electing its first Black and Indian female president. Yet instead of being inspired by the prospect of this historical event coming to pass, I find myself feeling bittersweet and fearful about the election.

To begin, the prospect of a Trump re-election is chilling to the core. When he

won his first term in 2016, I was in secondary five. I remember the eerie silence in class the next day and some of my classmates—fellow BIPOC classmates—had even broken down into tears. Eight years later, and we find ourselves once again with his racist, misogynist, transphobic, capitalist and now felon running for the most consequential role on the planet. The sole fact that a person like Trump received the Republican nomination, when Black queer people like me are not even deemed worthy to live by those same people, was a violent admission of indifference.

Graphic courtesy of Payton Langevin

The true pain, however, from this presidential campaign was the realization that I could not in good faith say that I am happy to see Kamala Harris perform. There was a time in which there would have been nothing more that I would rather see than a BIPOC woman being democratically elected over a bigot like Trump. Since then, however, we have been witnessing genocides unfold with our very eyes, including under the administration of which Harris is currently a member. Since then, I have advocated for a ceasefire for months. Since then, I lived in an encampment that showed me an alternative way of being in community. I can no longer ignore the fact that although some of her policies are arguably better than Trump’s, she has also continued to support imperialist interests.

I now see the world as a web of interconnected systems that impact our collective wellbeing. The oppressive systems that affect some of us, chain all of us. In fact, whether we speak of transmisogyny, the patriarchy, white supremacy or imperialism, we are all referring to different faces of the same system. I do not believe that Kamala Harris, nor the Democratic Party in general, are detached from these systems of oppression. It is no longer sufficient to claim that you want peace in Gaza while simultaneously denying Palestinian Americans the opportunity to share their stories at your national convention. It is no longer sufficient to claim to have the best interests of all Americans at heart while walking back on prior promises to defund the police and refund community services. It is no longer sufficient to make a claim and then have one’s actions or inactions contradict that claim.

Let me make one thing clear: I would rather see Harris in the White House any day over Trump. Nevertheless, I will not be deluding myself into thinking that her election will solve our problems. Unless she puts her money where her mouth is, a Harris administration will simply mean a continuation of the violent imperialist policies that the United States have historically adopted, whether headed by a democratic party or not. These are the reasons why I am pained and disillusioned. So, I choose to avoid news of the American presidential campaign… for now.

Instead, I choose to process this grief and try to turn it into energy to work towards our collective liberation, to get to the root of our problems. As Angela Davis famously wrote in her address “Let Us All Rise Together: Radical Perspectives on Empowerment for Afro-American Women”:

“If we are not afraid to adopt a revolutionary stance—if, indeed, we wish to be radical in

our quest for change—then we must get to the root of our oppression. After all, radical

simply means “grasping things at the root.”

The reality is, we cannot allow a democratic victory to lull us into a false sense of complacency. What does it matter for a president to look like me if the actions they take do not help our communities? No matter who wins the election in November, we will have to continue to fight for a free Palestine, for an end to capitalist violence and for a true revolution.