I grew up in a blue state. I didn’t become aware of this until I hit middle school and began my education into civics. The conversations surrounding politics as kids were heavily reliant on our household’s media at that time–and the biases of our respective families.
So when something political came up when we were kids, our parents always seemed to come up as a source. When I moved out of Southside Chicago at an early age, I noticed that being in a more privileged environment meant that kids were innately passionate about politics. They viewed it as a sport.
I moved into my new neighborhood in 2016. It was an election year with one of the most polarizing political candidates in the history of politics: Donald Trump.
My family hated him.
But I wasn’t so sure.
I remember one instance where I was biking through the neighborhood with my buddies and Trump came up as a topic of discussion. I argued against him but I was outnumbered. My friends at that specific time were all white boys from privileged households and a rich neighborhood.
I am Latino. Being raised in a Latino family heavily shaped my view of Trump because of the rhetoric my family saw on the television screen and on Facebook. I heard words like:
“Racist.”
“Fascist.”
“Bigot.”
And I said those words to my friends.
They were prepared.
In this new neighborhood, everyone who was political treated politics as if it were a sport.
They fought tooth and nail with context and research on his speeches, but I still argued on the moral side of things. As a writer, I wanted to bring humanity to the things I knew I heard. But they were twisting it to make it sound not so bad. So I lost that battle.
This was my introduction to my own personal political journey.
I didn’t find out much about his political career until later, when I read about him and I found some of his old speeches in his attic. And much like my parents, he never tried to push his beliefs on me. Instead, he taught me values.
In this year’s election, I voted for Kamala Harris. Here’s how I came to that decision.
My parents typically voted Democrat. But they never straight-up told me their views or how to think. They gave me complete freedom to learn and grow. And I did.
I am very political now. I do extensive research on civics and modern day politics. But when I was a kid and had just been pummeled in a debate by my friends who were Trump supporters, I started to ask myself questions.
The main one: How could I be wrong?
I researched his speeches and began to realize that my friends were correct. So I dug deeper. Wanting to fit in, I did what they did. I started to give Trump a lot of credit. I thought that since he was a businessman he would know how to straighten out our economy. His being a Republican meant lower taxes and less government interference with our lives.
These were my beliefs until I entered high school and the pandemic hit. That was when I first became outraged at the political state of my country. While my whole family had been infected with COVID twice—while taking the proper precautions—I felt a deep resentment for my leader when he denied the validity of this global pandemic. He had told us that it was completely safe to go out and continue our lives.
It was not.
He had told us that COVID was a Chinese hoax made up to hurt his political position of power.
It was not.
I did extensive research during the pandemic, along with major soul-searching. Tensions in my familial life also started to rise. I had to gain a new identity. It was another election year and my biases had swayed me in both directions, back and forth like a pendulum. I was tired of it. All this was happening while my grandpa had fallen ill due to COVID. His health began a downward spiral from there, and he was in and out of the hospital for the next two years until he passed in April of 2022.
I had quite a close relationship with my grandpa, and he shared with me some secrets he hadn’t shared with the rest of his family: He was an undocumented immigrant from Mexico.
Then my grandpa became a politician in the town of Holland, Michigan–something my grandma always took credit for. She would say, “You know he argued with me so much and I could never win so I said, ‘Why don’t you just do this for a living?’” And so he did.
He was a Democrat. He was progressive and a proud member of the Latino community. It was a mostly white town, but it had an up-and-coming Latino population. My grandpa helped spearhead reform for welcoming the Latino community.
I didn’t find out much about his political career until later when I read about him and I found some of his old speeches in his attic. And much like my parents, he never tried to push his beliefs on me.
Instead, he taught me values.
He was the kind of person who led by example. He taught me to be proud about where you come from, and to look at the world with optimism.
I did my best, and I hoped for a better future—and I voted with that in mind.
This was what I saw from both the Biden and Harris campaigns, respectively. I felt comfortable with the idea of them as my leaders. I felt optimistic thinking about charting a new way forward, and their policies resonated with me.
I felt like inclusivity and hope was at the forefront of Harris’ campaign, while incorporating facts and logic.
It felt like her policies were geared toward the middle class and class mobility. Things like helping first-time business owners with tax credits, and helping new families looking to buy homes. It felt like her policies were shaped to help younger people and ambitious creatives enter the new world and spearhead a way forward. I saw the Inflation Reduction Act help fight inflation.
I felt like Trump’s policies, on the other hand, were not. I saw how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act worked, and saw how it disproportionately helped the top 1 percent gain more wealth instead of bolstering the middle class. I saw how he treated the media, and COVID, and immigrants.
And not just the lines taken out of context by the media. I watched his entire rallies, his speeches, looked up his policies online and saw the ethnocentrism and totalitarianism oozing from his administration. Not only did I disagree with it, but saw it as threatening to our democracy.
The more research on Trump I did, the more against him I became. And the more I realized how the media landscape was shaped to not hold him accountable.
I saw Trump lie as he breathed. It was almost effortless. But he was great at getting people mad, and that is his superpower.
I felt like Kamala was the only choice to help secure the future of my generation. I also know it now, even after Trump won the election.
I see no accountability in him as a leader. In Harris, I saw someone help legislate with Joe Biden in these past four years, and saw how they really did pull us out of the COVID recession and fought inflation. In Harris, I saw accountability.
I was open to my mind changing, and it did.
My problem is with the people who are not open to changing their mind and only looking to serve their confirmation biases. I started my journey by asking myself how I could be wrong, and I keep asking myself that to this day. That’s what provokes my consistent research into this world, and it’s why I feel confident to speak about my position.
I did my best, and I hoped for a better future—and I voted with that in mind.
I went to the ballot box feeling hopeful and confident, while I knew there were many others around me who weren’t.
In the aftermath, I’ll keep doing the same. I will be critical of Trump when necessary, especially when he tries to pass some of his extreme proposals. I will navigate the polarization to the best of my ability and keep arguing on the basis of my factual analysis.
I will try my best to be fair and critical of both sides, and I will be aware of my biases.
While I am scared of what Trump’s proposed plans are, I believe it will be easy to be critical of them. Some of them are dangerous and threaten the people of America, including the ones who voted for him.
Velocity 
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