DSA

I was about to turn 15 when Donald Trump announced his first presidential campaign. I was a listless high schooler with no ambitions and socialist politics I’d picked up from listening to old protest songs on YouTube. Right up to election day, it felt like a joke. The night he won his election, I walked through the dark in my suburban hometown, watched the same news clips playing on every station, and thought that Bernie Sanders must have been right, and that everything would have to change if we were going to stop this.

I knew things would get worse, but the extent of the crisis has been astonishing. In the ten intervening years we’ve seen millions die from COVID, we’ve watched social protections, abortion rights and public services gutted, and we’ve seen our country carry out the greatest moral crime of the 21st century, the genocide in Gaza.