Today, I am sixteen years old. One, four, eight, and twelve years ago, I sat in front of a television screen in a living room and watched our country be inherited by someone new. I have seen our country. I have seen the hate groups, and the way my neighborhood welcomes newcomers, and the shattered store windows, and the fireworks above the hills. I know it can be a beautiful and terrible place.
I am the daughter of immigrants. I am a woman. I am a teenager. And I am an American, who believes in the American dream of liberty and justice for all. That American dream is what draws so many people here. It is, after all, a land of immigrants and travelers. Our flag has grown to encompass more and more. So should our minds. And the people who claim to support the ideals of this country and its beliefs are, more often than not, too white or too old or too male or too straight or too rich and always too privileged to truly represent the people – all the people.
As a teenager in America, I am constantly told I am too illusioned, too sensitive and naively obsessed with the idea of a perfect nation. They smile and shake their heads and tell me, You’ll understand when you’re older. And yet here I am, older, and still I don’t understand how every day the noose is allowed to tighten on that ideal of American liberty that our parents, my parents came to this country for. How we sit back and let corrupt old men scream and sweat behind podiums on national television. How we make jokes and turn them into satirized cartoon characters so we don’t have to face the fact that we are the ones who gave them the power to spew their vitriol. How we allow the so-called law to close in on our bodies and our borders and still defend it to our last breaths.
There is only one thing left to do. Make noise, make a mess, insist loudly and make people angry. That’s how you get it done. Not through living-room conversations and Twitter rampages, but through buying posterboard and screaming in the streets for change. For clean water, for clean air, for equality and the chance to watch people who look like us lead the country. For the chance to strive for that perfect America.