It’s about 48 hours from the election and so far I’ve cried twice: once about the story of an 18 year old immigrant volunteering as a poll observer in Miami Dade County as he talked about his pride in the promise of America and once because I got a little too upset at having to research what happens if a militia groups overruns a polling station as a part of my Thursday afternoon work day. It got in my head a little bit, okay?

It’s been 6 months since I last felt the need to put pen to paper in any serious manner, not because I don’t have anything to say anymore — but because time has lost its meaning. We passed 6 months into the pandemic a while ago and I’ve moved past the fearful rage of mid March and into the quiet solitude and ability to find yeast of Early November. 

If my therapist was being generous with me, she’d say that the past 6 or so months provided further evidence of my resilience and adaptability. As of right now, with 2 days left until the Election, I’m not sure if I’ve evolved or regressed. Either way, I’ve definitely changed. Everything’s changed, hasn’t it? 

In Quarantine, I’ve felt transported back to the 18th century. I should be on the Prairie or braving the Oregon Trail. I’m excited by the prospect of access to flour and a brisk walk at the end of the day. Very few people see me during the day, so my once high and tight top bun has deflated into a sad, droopy Dickensian low chignon situation. I haven’t worn pants with a button since March. 

I’ve begun making more things from scratch just to eat up time because talking about the monster occupying the White House, the enormity of what faces us on November 3rd, the devastating scale of the death, grief and destruction of what we knew as normal — is boring. Everything is unprecedented, record breaking, important, and pressing and thoroughly discussed. I want to talk about frivolity — I want gossip. I want poorly lit celebrity paparazzi photos. I want a mysterious tweet with a “Well, I heard that…” 

I want the excitement of spontaneity and casual, serendipitous human encounters. If it’s not on my Google calendar, it’s not an interaction that’s going to happen. I don’t have cute eye-contact with hot guys anymore because I’ll only go outside alone if I’m wearing headphones, sun glasses, and a mask. 

Now, I find solace in the small apartment I have for myself. It’s a space that is mine — finally, a room of one’s own. After months upon months of quarantine, it was finally a bit of good news. A relief. I’ve been working hard to accomplish this goal. Now, I work here. I cook here. I sleep here. I campaign here. I don’t do much else. It’s a small sanctuary. 

More than anything, I think it’s just a commitment to coping towards the tail end of Season 3 of The Pandemic™. 

I feel more resolute now. Really, I do. Right now, at least. While my feelings lie just beneath the surface, on an absolute hair trigger, I know they’re not as flopulous and effervescent as the boiling anger I felt in March. I was taken aback by what feels like small potatoes now — the lack of emotional depth in men, the embarrassingly ass-backwards verging on really fucking racist political beliefs of a questionable few on my timeline and whatever the fuck is happening on Twitter. It doesn’t matter. 

Like the Queen of the Machine Gun Kelly Fan Girl Club Jessi herself says, “Imagine giving a single fuck.”

Truly can’t relate. 

Once people started voting, my all-consuming anxiety started to dissipate. Because I did all that I could do. I tried my best. I did. I really fucking did. All of my hard work. All of my writing. All of my tough decisions. It’s all in the hands of the American voter. And even still, after all that, I still have the radical audacity to hope in something better for this country and that we’re all the better if we come together as a collective to fight for it. So I worked really fucking hard. 

When I was in high school as a part of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program, I wrote my Extended Essay on how the Freedom Riders, helmed by the late Congressman John Lewis, influenced the cultural zeitgeist of America during the 1960s. I got a C because the IB diploma proctors are cheap bastards, but the experience was nonetheless constructive. I saw that activism was making history in action, and I loved history. If I was an activist, I didn’t have to read about history, I could just make it. I could just do it. Right then and there! No need to wait around to read about it. Did the brave men who sat at the Woolworths Lunch Counters in Greensboro, North Carolina know they were going to be written about in textbooks? Did they realize that they’d be in the Smithsonian when white nationalists and racists were burning cigarettes on the backs of their necks and pouring hot coffee on their heads? These quiet, American heroes spearheaded new futures for kids like me.

As I learned about the radical organizers in SNCC and the Black Panthers in high school, I’d always thought that if I was living back then, I’d be in the streets too. I’d be walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I’d be registering voters in backwoods Mississippi. I’d be sitting on the buses as a part of Freedom Summer fighting to enfranchise fellow Americans. 

Well. It’s time to prove it. 

The Civil Rights Movement isn’t over. It’s now. It’s still happening. 

Ten years after I submitted my Extended Essay, I was a part of the digital strategy team for the largest social movement in America history’s first piece of federal legislation. I’ve had the privilege of ghost writing for American giants and freedom fighters. I’ve raised millions of dollars on behalf of dozens of Democrats, members of Congress, progressives, abolitionists, activists, and organizations. I’ve moved across the state. Twice. I’ve trained dozens of community organizers in digital strategy and messaging. I’ve protested. I’ve donated. I’ve read, watched, and learned from industry and Party leaders, community organizers, and grassroots activists. I cried a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. My most ferocious qualities — my empathy, my wit, my aggression, my humor, my voice — were fostered and honed until they became sought after. I belong in rooms where decisions are being made. 

I can walk confidently in the fact that I led with my ideals and the vision that 17-year old Savannah had in her head while sitting in the back of class. I made her proud and I stuck by my ideals and fashioned them into a career where I can make change at a national scale. I’ve put words in the mouths of my heroes. 

I think it’s good and necessary to recognize and take a moment to soak in the precipice of where I’m at. I did the hard work. I made good trouble. I live in that experience and that hardwon knowledge so when I see dumb shit on Facebook, I am as unfazed as I can be. That Q Anon post or MAGA meme with misleading statistics and poorly written headlines with photoshopped tweets does not nullify my years of good work. 

Like the great Megan Thee Stallion once wrote:

I can’t be fucked with, no

Ho you can’t touch this, ay

Bitch, I do rich shit, huh

Honestly, I didn’t expect my first Presidential campaign season to end up at home, I really didn’t. But I’m proud of what got me here. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m scared about what will happen on Tuesday. I really am. Petrified. I think of J. Robert Oppenheimer whisper the words of the Bhagavad-Gita as he witnessed the first detonation of a nuclear weapon on July 16, 1945, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.

But I’m hopeful too. I can’t help it, that flickering light of hope is still there. Because so many people rose up, mobilized, and took radical action on behalf of each other. Because no one needs to go through this alone. Children lead mass movements that crippled the NRA. We elected the most amount of women to Congress ever just two years ago. Harvey Weinstein is going to rot in fucking jail. From the mountain tops, we’ve heard what’s always been and will continue to be true: Black Lives Matter. 

And my life has changed — forever shaped and altered — from this movement. 

Real hot girl shit.