Guest Editorial: An Open Letter to My Mother, Who Voted for Trump

The author (right) and her mother, circa 1982.

Shawna Murphy was first seen on the Slog site in December, when she, husband Christian, and daughters Beezus and Minnow were featured in a photo essay about their uniquely progressive family and the active roles that all four played in their community. Since Trump's election win, she's had to make some tough decisions.

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When you announced your plans, at your 70th birthday last summer, to vote for him, I patiently explained why a vote for Trump was a direct vote against the safety and well being of your only two grandchildren. You didn't listen. You spouted rhetoric about how much you hated Hillary and didn't trust the government. As we drove away from your house that day, I knew in my heart that it would be the last time I would bring my children there. Something in the way your husband blurted out, during lunch, about his gun not being secured while Beezus was alone in your home made me realize that this was no place for my most beloved humans, my children, your only grandchildren.

Over the next few months I tried to appeal to your rational side. I don't believe you are racist and I know you're not homophobic. I've also always known you to be a feminist, maybe you've changed and I just didn't notice. Maybe I assumed you were still the mother I had in 1969, 1974, 1980. I kept sending articles your way and sharing the writings of your very astute 12-year-old LGBTQ granddaughter. You did not budge.

And then the morning after, when the rest of the nation was mourning our loss, when my 6-year-old was too sad to go to school—trying to grasp why grown-ups would elect a bully for their president, you went on Facebook to gloat about his victory. You told us that he would fix everything that was wrong with our country. When I reminded you that you had chosen to vote against your own granddaughters' well being, you chose to ignore me.

And now it has begun. First he and his cronies, white men who have never known a day without extreme privilege, have made plans to dismantle my children's health care coverage. We are income eligible for Apple Health and since enrolling after the ACA was enacted, my children have received free medical and dental coverage. In the past, when my daughters, your granddaughters, were uninsured, we didn't take them to the doctor except in the most extreme of circumstances. It has been such a relief to know that they have finally been receiving the medical and dental care that all people deserve. Beezus is worried about how we will be able to afford to continue with their now regular dental visits. I'm worried too.

I'd like to take a brief aside to mention why it is that my children are eligible for free health care coverage through the state. Am I unemployed? No. I work full time, more than full time usually, about 50-55 hours a week. I am also a college graduate, Dean's list UW, 1996. But I happen to do "women's work." I am a child care provider, one of the most feminist and necessary occupations in our country. I am here every day making sure that six other American families can go to work. I make about $11 per hour.

But I digress, back to health care. We should be okay, we've gone without healthcare before, but I worry a lot about my friends' children with asthma and life threatening allergies, and of course, all of our friends with Type 1 Diabetes. What about you and your other friends with MS? You use Medicare. Didn't you think to worry about all of your friends with pre-existing conditions, and how a lifetime spending cap would affect them? My elderly neighbor feels lucky he had his heart attack early in November. His 11-day ICU visit to Harborview came in at just over $200,000—his portion will be about $1,500. But what will it be for my neighbors who have their heart attacks after Paul Ryan has his way with Medicare?

But maybe you're like your president and think my neighbors don't matter? After all, many of them are black and brown and certainly some of them don't pray to your Christian God. My next door neighbors are Muslim, recent immigrants from Iraq. The next house down, Muslim also, from Somalia. In fact, of the 20 children who live on my block, only two of them are white, your granddaughters. Maybe you were counting on their whiteness to save them from this new administration and its devastating policies?

But it won't. Because you made me a liar. And this is what pains me most of all. When your granddaughter came out at age 9, I told her this was the best time, best city and best family to grow up in gay. Your granddaughter already knows Mike Pence thinks she should be electrocuted. And now Donald is sponsoring the anti-LGBTQ "First Amendment Defense Act" that would legalize discrimination against your granddaughter in all aspects of her life.

Your vote made my daughter unsafe. Your vote made my friends' trans kids unsafe. Your vote made my friends' gay sons unsafe. You know who made me an ally, though? You did. You worked at the phone company in the '70s when it was one of the only safe work places for the LGBTQ community. They were relegated to working as phone operators on the night shift with all of the others who were seen as weirdos and freaks. And you, being a night owl and something of a freak yourself, loved that shift and loved going out dancing at Shelly's Leg after work with all your wonderful gay and lesbian friends. You were the one who taught me about the struggles of trans people when our friend Kelly, who had once been our big beautiful black friend Eric, was going through his transition and surgeries. You were the one who introduced me to gay marriage when I was 4, in 1974, when we went to your friends' house and they showed me the photo album of their recent nuptials and I mistakenly asked, "but where's the bride mommy?" I'll never forget how those two lovely men took my hand and explained to me that THEY had gotten married. I have carried that moment and their pure joy, with me always.

And what about your granddaughters' education? That's something that has always been important to you. They're both Special Education students, you know that, so maybe you know that your president's pick for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, didn't know about the federal protections my children are afforded through IDEA. She would prefer I be given some vouchers so that my children might attend a parochial school or one of the full day online, screen time charter schools. Betsy DeVos doesn't care about my children and their right to an amply-funded high quality education at a public school by highly-trained union teachers. But I know you did. You and my father made sure that I attended the finest public schools in our city. In fact, you were so discouraged with the lack of racial diversity at my neighborhood school that you enrolled me as a "voluntary racial transfer student" in 1978. I rode the bus all the way from Lake City to John Muir Elementary because you believed it was important for children to grow and learn in diverse schools.

I believe that, too. That's why my children go to a very diverse public school. A science school, by the way. Up until recently, science didn't seem very revolutionary but it is now that our Forest Service is on the forefront of the resistance movement simply by speaking their truth and the daily evidence they see of climate change. Our science school is breeding its own resistance movement. Twice already the middle school students have held classroom walk-outs in opposition to your president and his position on our civil rights. Both of your granddaughters were out on the sidewalk in front of school chanting, "This is a safe place!"

And they are right. Our city, Seattle, and our friends in nearby Burien, have declared our cities to be Sanctuary Cities. Your president has said that he will withhold funding to penalize us for this, but our city's Mayor Ed Murray held a press conference yesterday in direct defiance of that threat. We shall not be moved.

And then there is the earth. But if you couldn't bring yourself to vote for the safety of the children, and that of your own friends, I'm guessing you don't care about the earth, either. Your granddaughters do, though. They wept when I showed them the photos of the brave people who have camped out all winter to protect all of us, and our Mother, from the pipeline. Water is life.

But your president is only concerned about protecting the life of the unborn. Smugly signing away funding for women's access to reproductive health care services by global organizations, simply because some of those providers might also provide, or just mention, abortion services? That photo of he, and the other white men in their suits signing away women's health care was so vile, so unsettling—their hatred for women so palpable.

I still feel powerful though. I can thank you for that too, I suppose. You didn't know how to drive so we walked and bussed all over this city when I was a little girl. Often just the two of us, after dark. You were never afraid. If anyone tried to bother us you always said, "Move along now, move along," quietly but firm. I took that quality from you and I've passed it to my girls. But I am loud. Our girls are so powerful, too, marching through the streets with 150,000 of our friends who believed that your president is wrong. We had signs from their Uncle Derek and the girls had pussy hats from my old friend Sara in Jersey and DIY buttons. They looked like mighty Power Puff versions of young revolutionaries as they chanted and marched for miles and miles.

I believe that me and my people will make it through this time, but I also believe that you and the people you have chosen to lead us are going to do a lot of damage that will not be easily repaired. Irreparable. What you've done is irreparable. I will work to clean the mess. I will march and post. I will display signs of commitment, Black Lives Matter, Women's Rights Matter, Muslim Rights Matter, Immigrants Rights Matter, LGBTQ Rights Matter, Worker's Rights Matter. And most important, I will do my job as a Citizen and a Mother to raise two voters who always think of the greater good of ALL people and our earth, first. When that time comes, we will truly be able to say it was WE, not he, who made America great again.