Get Angry.

Angry? What have I got to be angry about? Well… there are a lot of things probably. I’m just not typically an angry person. When I’m upset or hurt I usually cry, I don’t usually get angry, because I understand the other side too much. But there are a lot of things I’m angry about. I’m angry that American society fails to acknowledge the importance of community. Of working together and putting more emphasis on relationships with people. I’m angry that after nine-eleven I sat and listened to George Bush with a broken heart, and heard him say we’re going to start the war on terror, a phrase that doesn’t even make sense grammatically, but that’s not why it angered me. It angered me because that was the first time I had ever felt what it felt like to feel unsafe in America, and it made me never want any other person or family to have to feel that unsafe. I wanted to hear a president that was going to use the time of great difficulty to call people to help one another. Because my freshmen-in-high-school self really wanted to show that I cared. I wanted a message of hope and of love and support. I wanted to hear what I could do to help. Instead I heard a man’s voice telling the world that my country and my American people who were broken and afraid that day, were going to do things I had previously never understood the impact of, and still cannot. I am angry that a year later I sat in my software applications class with a TV on broadcasting live video of the US bombing Baghdad with conservative students cheering, saying “Go USA!” And thinking of what a horrible disconnected people we are, to be able to cheer at the death of innocent families like our own, in a competitive sport-fan-for-America sort of way. Like we were watching football.

I’m angry that when I finally got down to New Orleans, a year after Hurricane Katrina hit, there were still towns without electricity and people without homes. Another opportunity for our president to call on the people to help fellow Americans, resorted in some sorry poorly executed government efforts. Houses provided by FEMA costing the government much more than it would to have fellow American’s helping rebuild homes. And while I was there, cooking with donated food from grocery stores for Americorps members and some of the hurricane victims, I learned of the budget cut for Americorps, and saw half the group that was doing some good work for that part of New Orleans have to leave. Knowing that no budget was being cut for the war on terror. And I was angry.

But when I heard Obama give his acceptance speech, I could feel the energy in the room. We all know our country is in deep shit right now, but with Obama as president we’re all going to have an opportunity to help make it better. We finally elected someone whose heart seems to be about bettering the people of our nation and of the world. Someone who cares about creating peace rather than settling for unnecessary violence, creating trust rather than relying on fear to rule the nation that effects so much of the world. I have hope that in times of need, like right now, our country finally recognizes the importance of working together and relying more on one another than on money and power. This is my hope for the future, and it is a hope I think my President Elect supports. A hope that believes if we each contribute and help one another out, this world will be full of much more happiness and love than depression and hate. It takes a president who believes in his people for those people to act to create a positive change. I have hope that our willingness to act has not been extinguished in the past eight years of bad advice given to us by our former president, but that our motivation has been waiting for the right day to bloom into action, and that day has come.