Jessai Flores

On Nov. 5, I shifted around in my seat in class. I procrastinated my essays and assignments. I doom-scrolled and joy-scrolled through Kamala HQ’s ingenious TikToks. I listened to “Freedom” by Beyoncé. I reloaded my browser until my wrist hurt, my heart slurring at every update.

As the sky darkened, the AP map glowing in front of me started to make me feel uneasy. My vision groggy, I shut my laptop and took two melatonins. Red mirage, I told myself as I fell asleep early.

When I woke up on Wednesday, I grabbed my phone while still in bed and found out via push notification that Trump had won in a landslide. I stared for a moment, not willing to click on the notification banner. 

I got dressed slowly and sat on my made bed, thinking of the women who do not have the privilege I do to access whatever healthcare they need, the children who will hide under plastic classroom chairs while gunmen wield assault rifles, the people who will stand at pharmacy counters across the nation and beg for insulin. 

I walked through Cross Campus, eerily quiet and unseasonably warm, feeling a quiet kind of rage. And then I remembered the Harris-Walz campaign: pioneering, brilliant and beautiful.

The vision and ethic of the Harris campaign will forever fill me with vigor. Kamala Harris is intelligent, well-spoken, overqualified, compassionate and a class act. She is brilliant, bright and kind. She gave Gen Z the opportunity to use our first votes on a Black woman whose commitment inspires us, whose kindness warms the soul of the nation and whose belief in the United States spurs us forward.

For several months, Kamala Harris offered me and many of my peers a new vision of America, one in which joy could beat darkness, where love would win, where people could live and parent in safety. She gave me the gift of hope.

I sat alone at the wooden desk in my bedroom facing Prospect Street as the vice president conceded the election with grace and conviction. The screen flickered across my face as I felt waves of despair mingled with intense pride. 

To the young people, she said, it may feel like we are entering a dire time in history. But there is an adage that says we only have a clear view of the night sky when it’s sufficiently dark. “Now, let us fill the sky with a brilliant billion of stars,” she said.