I don’t consider myself a political person, but after the 2016 election, it’s nearly impossible to avoid the topic. Donald Trump has found his way into classroom discussions, family gatherings, and even a few of my own poems. I can still remember the heavy sighs from my mom – who doesn’t consider herself political either – and even my sister coming home telling me things that her classmates and teachers had said. Most times, it wasn’t positive.



But Trump’s victory has made me reconsider the complexities of morality, humanity and tolerance. As I was inevitably launched into these uncomfortable yet relevant discussions, I realized that Trump could, in a way, do a lot of good for these United States. And that Donald Trump may be one of the most inspirational leaders this nation has ever had.



I know it sounds insane, what with Donald Trump’s antics since he’s been in office: the tweets, the speeches, the misogyny and discrimination, we’ve all seen it. We have been paying very close attention. But what we haven’t paid attention to is the effect his term has had on my generation. This political neophyte has caused unrest in our nation – but he’s also inspired America’s youth to action.

Many of us didn’t have to consider politics as intensely when Barack Obama was president. We knew that it was important to vote, but many of us didn’t care. Generation Z, some have said, has taken for granted the basic liberties we’re the first to grow up with, like the right to marry no matter your sexual preference. This may have been the case before, but it was all turned on its head when Trump was elected.

It’s time to change things, and now we know that if we want things to change, we have to do them ourselves

Politics is on everyone’s tongue now – and faced with issues like school shootings and mass deportation, young people in my generation are taking their rights seriously.

On 14 March, high school students staged a walkout that lasted for 17 minutes – one for each student murdered during the Parkland shooting in February. Ten days later, the March for our Lives took place: hundreds of thousands of young people and the adults that supported them marched as a way to demand stricter gun laws. Since the protests, many teenagers have registered to vote, showing confidence in the legitimacy of our opinions as well as our intention to use our voices in the coming election.

We’re done waiting around. It’s time to change things, and now we know that if we want things to change, we have to do them ourselves.

Perhaps we were also inspired by dystopian YA novels like The Giver, The Hunger Games and Divergent, in which young people lead the rebellion while adults tell them that injustices are just a way of life. For a long time, teenagers in the US have stood by, seeing the faults and flaws in this system, feeling as if there was nothing to be done to change things. We were told: “That’s just how things have always been.” Well, now we are refusing to accept this as an answer.

Qadira Miner. Photograph: Larry O Gay Photography

The students at Parkland refused to accept the status quo. As soon as the shooting happened, Cameron Kasky, Alex Wind and Jaclyn Corin started the #NeverAgain hashtag to call attention to the tragedy; already March for Our Lives was in its budding stages of development. More than 50 celebrities supported the movement in some way, whether it was by donating, performing at the march, tweeting about the movement, or all three. Although there was much help, most of this movement was orchestrated by teens, for teens.

Besides moving us to take action, Trump might also force us to be more tolerant. Earlier generations became very familiar with this concept of black and white, saying that a thing or a person can only be all bad or all good and that there is no in-between. But my generation can see the gray area. Trump has shown himself to be incredibly racist, sexist and asinine, but he’s a businessman who could do a lot for our country economically. If we can acknowledge that and reach out to him, if we can look past Trump’s flaws and see what he could do for our country, then there’s nothing stopping us from looking past any person’s race, sex, background, struggles.

Instead of being divided, we could look into the face of someone we disagree with, and find some common ground.

Trump has also made us contemplate our vote in 2020. With the unrest caused by the last election, we will be sure to not just vote, but vote for local officials as well. We’ve learned that things must be changed on a smaller scale before they can change on a large scale.

America is in the second of three phases. In the first stage – construction - America was established as a very rough draft. So there’s stage two, demolition, where everything that we as a nation have created, conquered, experienced, valued and achieved is re-evaluated – and ultimately destroyed.

Which brings us to stage three: reconstruction, in which we rebuild, taking things and people into consideration that we completely disregarded the first time around. Generation Z will be the ones to do that. And they will do so without slavery, exploitation, war, debt, or ruining the economy. Donald Trump may have wanted to make America great again, but in the end he will just be a catalyst, causing something much, much greater to form.

Qadira Miner, 16, is a black, pansexual female poet from Birmingham, Alabama. She is a sophomore in high school and an alumna of Woodlawn Writers Corp, a poetry program for elementary and middle schoolers. Miner organizes TBD (To Be Determined), a youth poetry reading, to create a place for teens to express themselves about their uncertainties about their identity without the worry of judgment from parents or their peers from school.



Miner plans on taking her GED and enrolling in college courses early, which will allow her to devote herself to her art and writing full-time