I first voted in Columbus, Ohio. I had just moved there from living in the UK for years and thought I was doing something very adult. I had registered as an independent because I thought that was the right thing to do. I’ll never forget this angry old man at the voting booth telling me that I was just throwing away a vote; odd how I have recently become that angry old man. I really don’t want to be him, but everything I have learned in my life tells me that Trump will be a complete disaster—both to the economy and to democracy. The best people are the ones who can tell a great story. The worst are those who think they are the great story.

Local Natives ’ Taylor Rice

The first time I voted was in 2008. I was a senior at UCLA, and the Obama excitement was palpable. But it was a different vote that held the most weight for me: Proposition 8 of California, which aimed to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry.

I grew up in South Orange County, the ruby red capital of a blue liberal state. California may be known for its diversity, but the OC is not. With rare exception, people there are white, upper middle class (or rich), and they go to church. In my high school, “gay” was still an epithet, and not even really a harsh one. A mild slur, something like “you suck.” Except of course, there was something darker underneath it, a wink that you were being associated with a sexual deviancy utterly rejected by our conservative culture. Like so many of us, I had been taught that being gay was wrong. God didn’t want that, Jesus didn’t want that. So when Prop 8 came out, the “YES” signs went up on lawns all over my neighborhood.

But by that point I had spent nearly four years in a liberal university, where I had met and befriended several gay students (there was only one openly gay kid at my high school). Simply by getting to know some gay human beings and questioning the cultural assumptions I grew up in, the issue had become so clear to me: Everyone deserves to be able to love who they love. When I cast my “NO” vote to protect the rights of gay people on November 4, 2008, it officially marked my emerging personal political identity, and a rejection of ideas I had been taught throughout childhood.

When I think about how divided our country is right now, how incredible the extremes, it can be difficult not to feel bewildered and cynical about the future. It can feel difficult to not want to demonize millions of people as selfish and unthinking. But most aren’t. They just don’t know any Mexicans, or Muslims, or women (just kidding—harder to understand that one, but let’s not go there right now). How do you begin to see a refugee in need of help instead of seeing a potential terrorist? One way is that you meet one, or 10, or a hundred. Thousands of people band together, create a movement, and fight for every foot of ground. Gay rights were not achieved overnight, they were the culmination of decades of incredibly hard fought activism. The struggle continues today and there’s still a lot to do, but we can feel that we are at a tipping point. We lost the Prop 8 vote in 2008 and gay marriage became illegal, but that loss has since reversed and now love is the law of the land nationwide.

I remember walking into my first polling station, a school, in 1994 and feeling a mixture of awe and disbelief. First thought: This is REALLY how it works? I fill in this little piece of paper and my opinion actually matters? Second thought: But that’s impossible. This all must be some giant voting joke that’s being played on us. Surely this one vote on this one piece of paper won’t actually count towards anything. Third thought: But obviously, if everybody thinks that, that’s why we’re fucked. A journey begins with a single step, a revolution begins with a single vote. And if you’d told me when I first voted that the country would see both a black and a female president by the time I was 40, my jaw would have hit the floor of that school. I hope we’re not so caught up in the bullshit of this election cycle that we don’t pan wide and realize how much progress we’re making incrementally. No, it’s not ideal. Like the people it’s supposed to represent, this democracy is bizarre, messy, imperfect. I’ll take it.