The Blue Wave: It’s Not Being Woke But It Is an Awakening 

Last night I went to bed with cautious optimism that, as each county reported and more and more blue was popping up, the new kids on the block, Democratic Socialist candidates could win the 4 seats they needed to win the majority in the Senate and House of Representatives. What I wasn’t expecting was waking up to Mississippi, Kansas, Texas, Maine, Ohio, Georgia, North and South Carolina and Iowa going blue with Alaska remaining too close to call! 

Once that reality sank in I began to sob, uncontrollably. I am not generally someone who is moved to tears, for better or for worse, by a political election. I care and I care deeply, I have campaigned for causes I deeply believe in, I have gone door to door convincing people to vote and all the good things the daughter of a hippie, liberal Californian should do. I was first able to vote in the election when Obama became president and while I understood the historical significance of him becoming the first Black President of the United States, I was happy but I still wasn’t moved to tears. Today, waking up to these candidates and this news felt like for the first time in over a decade I could take a deep breath and I know I am not alone in that feeling. 

I sat for a moment to think about why the hell I was so emotional over this win and not over other equally significant wins and losses and I think I have come to the conclusion that this is the first time, in my lifetime, that people came together to vote for love instead in hate. This time, we as Americans came together to build our country into the great nation it has touted itself to be all this time.

This does not go without saying, that this win, this victorious feeling we are all feeling today as Americans, is due to Black and Brown communities across the country. It is because of Black women and men and Latina voters that we have so many women in power, so much of ourselves as Americans represented in government and that we have a shift towards a government that is for the people and by the people. 

Not only are the Senate and House seats a reflection of that but local offices are being taken over by those who better represent the populations they govern. Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, Xavier Becerra in California, Deb Haaland in New Mexico, Gina Hinojosa in Texas. 

Keisha Lance Bottoms being of particular note as the first woman and the first Black person to win in Georgia and the first Democrat in over 20 years. What makes me tear up about Ms. Lance Bottoms’ victory is; having grown up in Georgia as a half Mexican, with a mom working between the Grundy hospitals in the 1990’s grabbing meds from patients who had passed before someone else because that is how those patients got care in one Grundy hospital. Segregation was supposed to be over but the overwhelming number of Black and Brown patients shuffled to this failing hospital and treated despicably, while their white counterparts just a few miles away had everything they needed to be cared and looked after. We lived in Georgia in a time where people had lawn jockeys, used racial slurs on the signage they put in their front yard to protest the MARTA moving into the suburbs and people freely calling me a beaner when I was just a little too tan in the summer. The office Keish Lance Bottoms now holds has historically been held by old white men. Slave owners, klan members and the like, with very few exceptions. To see a Black woman take office in a state that holds such a history is nothing short of awe inspiring. 

Then we see Texas, the state where women have lost their lives because they don’t have access to basic healthcare and mass immigration raids have ripped families apart, has now elected a Latina, Gina Hinojosa, to govern. And just next door in New Mexico, Deb Haaland, the first Native American to hold office in a state, in a country where her ancestors lost their lives to colonization. Along with the countless other women and people of color that turned states and have real social change policies to implement. 

In addition to what is historic and important about these wins, it feels like the US collectively decided to vote for love. People, and again disproportionately Black women, came out to make that happen for the greater good of everyone. They allowed us (at least me) to feel proud to be an American for the first time, in a very long time if not, ever. In an election that felt as though it was looming over us like a guillotine waiting to drop, you can feel the collective take a deep breath of relief that not money, not hate, not cheating, not changing the maps, not a single thing could stop us from coming together as Americans and saying Enough!

I am still crying and I probably will be for a while but these are tears of joy and hope. Hope for the future everyone deserves to have. Hope for safety, hope for basic human rights, hope for dignity, hope for communities of color, hope for us all to collectively heal.