Moving forward: There’s work to do

The bitter, nasty saga that became the 2016 election is over. Donald Trump is our next president.

But we’re resigning ourselves to an outcome most of you know a majority of our staff didn’t want to see. Before some of you mock the liberal media one last time, it appears it’s not an outcome Alachua County or the majority of voters under 40 wanted to see, either.

Here’s what we know for sure: We will accept and support the results of the electoral college. We will not point fingers at members of the media, who predicted a drastically different outcome; the people who felt a candidate celebrated by the leader of the Ku Klux Klan would be the best leader for our country’s future; the voters who gave a vote to a third-party candidate or a “Harambe” write-in.

At this point, we move forward. We can’t dwell on what could have been.

In the Alligator newsroom, we were an hour or so after midnight, and as the minutes crept closer to our print deadline, there was still a handful of us in the office. Besides the frustration of an impending deadline with the possibility of an unconfirmed result, anger, fear and sadness lingered in the air.

There are women here who wanted their first presidential votes to be cast for the first female president, and the sting of an inexperienced man being chosen over an experienced woman hits a little too close to home. There are members of the LGBTQ+ community here, and they’re afraid to lose the rights they got a little more than a year ago, afraid of a vice president who has upheld conversion therapy as a safe medical solution to being gay. There are minorities here, and they’re angry that a white majority has silenced their voices, afraid that the whispers of hate and the threats of deportation will just grow louder and louder.

We’ve witnessed a range of emotions that reflects a majority of the posts we’ve seen on social media from our friends and our readers.

For those of you who are justifiably sad, disappointed, afraid or angry, we wish we could say the country is going to be OK. That you’re going to be OK; that you, reader, won’t have to fear for yourself, for your family, for your neighbors, for the strangers you share ethnicities, religions and traditions with. But we can’t. Volatile, dangerous words and promises have been casually and enthusiastically tossed around this election cycle, and now they may become policies.

The man who is the president-elect isn’t known for his continuity, his accountability or his decency. The unknown and the danger that comes with that isn’t to be taken lightly.

But here’s what we do know.

Each day is a new day. There are things to hold onto, to work for, to build upon — the social and economic progress we have seen in our lifetime, the family and friends that are our support systems, our inability to give up on this country and its people even if the future seems bleak or if our attempts seem futile.

We won’t give up. We can’t give up.

At this point, we’re still holding onto hope that the America we believe in — one of equality and freedom — will emerge from the one we see now, a country tinged with hate, fear and division. We can rebuild this country into something greater than ever before, a country where people can compromise and work together.

We’re still angry, afraid and upset. But the emotion that will remain, and needs to remain, is hope.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump pumps his fist during a campaign rally at the Lackawanna College Student Union in downtown Scranton, Pa., Monday, Nov. 7, 2016. (Butch Comegys/The Times & Tribune via AP)