*This article of mine is published on CNN.*
People always tell me not to take politics “so personally,” but trust me when I say, the political is personal and personal is really political, now more than ever.
In next month’s midterm elections, women will not just be voting for their candidate but voting for the kind of America in which many of them want to raise their children.
I know this because I feel the same way. In the shadow of Anita Hill’s 1991 testimony, watching Brett Kavanaugh get confirmed to the US Supreme Court in 2018 has lit a flame in me I could not even imagine I was capable of feeling.
I was born in Bangladesh and came to the United States to attend college.
For the longest time, even after I became a US citizen, I didn’t really feel American. When I first came here, I might have wondered: If America allowed a man accused of sexual assault to become president and then that man nominated another man accused of sexual assault to the US Supreme Court, how does that affect me?
Now that I have two daughters who are American, everything has changed.
America is at a crossroads and the midterm elections will be a huge testament to how much we really value the things we have stood for, like democracy, free speech, and equality.
And unless we send a strong message that we value women’s rights and women’s lives, we can’t really stand for anything else.
The America I seek for my daughters embraces the diversity and experiences of immigrants, and says “no” to the kind of toxic masculinity we see every day in Trump’s America.
Enough is enough.
*This article of mine is published on CNN.*