msvirginiap's JumboTweets
- Last year we voted for president in Argentina. It is illegal not to vote and I take my right seriously. However, the top two choices were BEYOND bad. Years ago I survived a brutal attack while BOTH Argentine candidates were in power. Though what I went through was not their faults, it was their responsibility to make our country safe, instead, both went with laws and protocols that silence victims. I couldn’t understand how any of those men were the options my country still wanted at the helm. Girls kept (and this has escalated) being brutally raped and in most cases, murdered, yet these two man in power brushed it off, and at the time, so did most people. “Fixing” the economy (that has gone down the drain) was imperative, so blood on the streets could wait… dead girls can’t complain, alive wounded ones did not matter.
I went to vote to the Argentine consulate in NYC. Crying. I couldn’t possibly cast a vote for any of the people that I still consider utterly dangerous (and the crime rate now is UP!). In line, fellow Argentine expats mirrored my sad expression, we didn’t get it. “How did we get here?” we asked each other. We felt already hopeless, to me, whatever way it went, Argentina was at a loss.
We kept telling each other: the president is not the country, the people are its DNA. It’s not enough when you don’t trust the candidate, but it’s something… it didn’t end there. Argentina, divided as ever, had a tie. We went to a second round and my home country had a president (who won with a little over 1% of advantage) announced the day of my Birthday… cruel joke since I almost died on the street when the new president was in charge of my beloved buenos Aires. The next day, people were mostly fighting each other “my guy won, yours sucks”, “we’re doomed”… the country remains divided and is more contentious than it’s ever been. Things have not gotten better. I am still in shock that we had those two options to begin with. Wounds reopened during that election, the message I read was: people just don’t care. And they rather fight each other. The national media did their dirty game as always. Once again, I felt my country failed me, but most importantly, I believed it failed to protect its own. Surprise surprise, I was shunned (again) for saying that out loud. Internationally, I didn’t see reports announcing the apocalypse. But I’m used to it. Nothing changes when nothing changes. Nothing can change when those willing to fight either have to leave or be killed. And no one seems to know about this…
The election in the US is a different ball game. Obviously, as an immigrant, no matter how legal I am, how much I pay in taxes, devote to volunteering, work and study, I cannot vote. It’s the law, and I’ll say this a million times, this is the country
I came to to heal, to recover the voice that was taken from me. The country where I’ve always felt safe…
Every time it’s election time in the US, I feel a little bit like an adoptive kid who doesn’t have the same perks because she is not a full-blooded member of “the family”. Each time I trust that my adoptive brother and sisters, who were born here, will make the right choice between who to live, in this case, “mom" or “dad"… and each year I accept that choice. I don’t have the right to vote, but I am here too. I want THIS family to always do better and I never expect things to go bad, after all, I was once left for dead on a filthy street…
I love this country. I love my friends/family here. It breaks my heart to see those I love in this kind of pain and utter disappointment. Last night I saw devastation, tears, fear, I saw dreams crushed in an instant, by a number. There is nothing I can do or say and everything will come off as condescending. I feel I’m unable to protect emotionally all the wonderful... <<<<<< N.B from Jumbotweet: auto-truncated at 4K characters on index page - Click here or on the "view" link to see entire jumbotweet! http://www.jumbotweet.com/ltweets/view/175029