What American Expats Can Do About Trump
On November 8th, I sat down to watch the U.S. presidential election results in Kigali at 4am between two women. One was wearing a pantsuit and an American flag around her neck, the other wore jeans and an over-sized sweatshirt. The three of us passed a soft grey kitten between us as we and a roomful of other Americans watched a fascist tangerine on a wide flat-screen television become our president. Two American children under the age of five played on the carpet at our feet as their parents looked at them, their eyes wide, full of unspoken apologies. Someone in the room pledged to go back to the U.S. and run for public office. I went to work.
At the office, my American colleague was watching Trump’s victory speech live on MSNBC at a cubicle next to mine. I’d forgotten headphones. Rwandan colleagues walked softly around the office, shaking their heads with pity when we looked up with red eyes from the blue light of our laptops. Younger Rwandans group WhatsApp’d congratulations for “those of us who did vote for Trump, even if you don’t admit it” and wished us a peaceful transition, not understanding.
Rage bubbled up and subsided all day and night. Mourning, followed by another morning. My partner and I fought about whether we should go back to the U.S. I hesitated. I emailed my father back-and-forth telling him that I was going back to my college town in rural Florida to organize because he voted for Jill Stein in Wisconsin. Fifty years ago, my father seized an opportunity to leave the U.S. for Greece during the Nixon presidency and has never considered moving back. He was shocked that I was considering the opposite approach: “I am unaware of any particular loyalty you may have to the U.S.” he said. “I will definitely not be at peace until you abandon this very noble but bad plan.” I replied stubbornly, “Running away is not an option. It is an insult to those who cannot run.”
A full generation ago, my parents — both primary school teachers — emigrated as young adults with their powerful blue U.S. passports for a more wholesome and diverse life abroad. They left the U.S. when it was in a different violent, ideological entanglement. Instead of the Middle East, we were bombing Vietnam and instead of hating Muslims, we hated communists. Anti-blackness, of course, is timeless in our country. My parents protested, but then they left for a better life, raising me in six different countries in Africa and the Middle East.
Some days I flirt with the idea of falling back into this version of myself who isn’t really responsible for starting wars, allowing the financial crisis, extracting natural resources or deposing political leaders. If global citizens like me get to pick where ‘home’ is, do we get to also pick where and who we feel accountable to? But there is one thing that won’t let me recline my chair at 30,000 feet and fall back into the easy cosmopolitan identity of my childhood.
The combination of my whiteness, my two passports, and my unique childhood grants me a get-out-of-jail-free card in many cases. When I introduce myself on this continent or meet an African expat and tell them where I’m from (which is followed by immediate inquiry into what my parents do), I am warmly told I am essentially an African. None of my Middle Eastern friends from childhood have distanced themselves or held me accountable for how different iterations of my government have torn apart and droned their families and countries.
Some days I flirt with the idea of falling back into this version of myself who isn’t really responsible for starting wars, allowing the financial crisis, extracting natural resources or deposing political leaders. If global citizens like me get to pick where ‘home’ is, do we get to also pick where and who we feel accountable to? But there is one thing that won’t let me recline my chair at 30,000 feet and fall back into the easy cosmopolitan identity of my childhood.
Though I’ve physically left the U.S., I know that I am much more connected to community organizing in America than my parents were as expats 50 years ago. Geographical distance gave my parents the freedom to hypothesize about what they would have done. In 2017, expats do not have the privilege of inventing hypothetical political histories.
My education on inequity and power in my country continues with every social media status and shared article I read. I stay in touch with friends who’ve put their emotional, intellectual, and physical energy into sustaining movements like Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ liberation, and immigrant justice. I see photographs and read testimonies of them getting arrested and harassed at protests and I cannot look away — I want to go put my body between them and the police officers. Yet as much as I feel a pull to go back to Florida or Georgia and re-immerse myself in grassroots organizing again, I know that this is not necessarily the answer, despite what some may claim.
I think there are critical ways that we, the collective body of expats who care about America although we don’t live there, can leverage our tools and resources to provide meaningful support to those who can’t or don’t want to leave the US:
- Money as leverage: If you’re done paying off student loans or never had them, donate at least five percent of your income, every year, directly to grassroots organizations led by and for queer people of color and immigrants.* Here’s a list of some of them.
- Labor as leverage: If your student loan balance is five or six figures or you have other financial constraints, then donate as much as you can and then offer your labor. If you can have expertise in website design/management, grant writing, work plan coordination, graphic design, data analysis or other areas, pitch in! Figure out how many hours of free labor you can do in a month, then get in touch with a grassroots organization led by and for queer people of color and immigrants and offer your skills. A starting point: a partial map with contact info for black-led black liberation organizations.
- Voice as leverage: Read A Vision For Black Lives, internalize those demands and then call your reps. Hold parties to call your reps. Share with them all of the global implications of this administration’s policies. Get a Skype plan and call, call, call. White folks: see what other ways you can use your voice as leverage here.
- Cravings as leverage: Find some Shit White People Love (Artisan cheese? Granola? Craft beer? High quality socks? Craft cocktails?) and get a bunch of it. Hold a fundraiser in your capital city, sell it for absurd prices, and then give ALL the money away to grassroots organizations led by and for queer people of color and immigrants. I resold Dr. Pepper to homesick American kids in Doha for a nice profit when I was 10. It isn’t rocket science. If you decide to go the buy-and-resell route, when you are ordering items on Amazon for you or someone else to pick up state-side and bring abroad, use Amazon Smile to donate to grassroots organizations led by and for queer people of color and immigrants. Again, the list.
If you, like me, are thinking about what you should do, let’s start making $olidarity part of our daily, weekly, and monthly routines before our sense of urgency fades, as it always does when our own lives are not directly impacted. Let’s make sure we aren’t complicit. Inaction is not an option.
As expats, we will be more insulated from what Trump running the country into the ground feels like on a day-to-day basis because we are no longer living in the U.S. This is particularly ironic for those of us who are documented, able-bodied, cisgender white women because our demographic is responsible for making Trump president. If you, like me, are thinking about what you should do, let’s start making $olidarity part of our daily, weekly, and monthly routines before our sense of urgency fades, as it always does when our own lives are not directly impacted. Let’s make sure we aren’t complicit. Inaction is not an option.
*Author’s Note: I use the phrase “grassroots organizations led by and for queer and people of color and immigrants” in this piece for three main reasons: 1) Organizations like the ACLU are getting lots of support already, 2) We need rural and urban organizers, particularly in the South, to keep up the hard work they’re doing, and 3) There are too many organizations that have leaders that do not come from the communities they serve. It is critical to recognize and make space for the leadership of the most marginalized communities, as they were fighting the power long before we all marched in pink pussy hats.
Joanna Galaris is a Monitoring and Evaluation and Quality Improvement Officer at Partners in Health in Rwanda and a Global Health Corps Fellow. She grew up in Greece, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Qatar, Ghana, Uganda and the United Arab Emirates. She has worked in collaboration with activists and community-based organizations on mental illness, racial and immigrant justice in the Southern U.S., gender-based violence in Northern Vietnam, and health systems strengthening in Rwanda. She holds a Bachelor’s in Anthropology and a Minor of African Studies from the University of Florida and a Master’s in Development Practice from Emory University.
