The week before the United States general election, we solicited short-form narrative nonfiction submissions from the Nassau Weekly community. We hoped to gather and serialize scenes, images, and glimpses from Election Day and the following week. We asked writers to tag their reflections with a date and time in an attempt to track the progression of thinking on campus. Unfortunately, we only received the following responses. The collective aphasia of the situation speaks for itself. We rarely have so little to say.
Elena Eiss
November 4th, 2024 – 7:39 pm
On a phone call with my mom. She tells me––the evening before election day––that both presidential candidates are in town. Trump has booked the hockey arena, PPG Place. Kamala Harris was supposed to speak at Point State Park, but after safety concerns, she is giving an address at the Carrie Furnaces—a monument to steel—in Swissvale. It’s true then: Pittsburgh must really be the center of the universe.
My phone holds a hidden avalanche. Text after text after text urges me to vote, asking me if my parents have voted by name, reading me out my own address. My high school social studies teachers post pictures of themselves canvassing and at rallies on their Instagram stories. Any other time, Pittsburgh is an APUSH plot point: Andrew Carnegie’s and Henry Clay Frick’s and union suppression. Remember when we made headlines when that bridge collapsed or when that bus got stuck in a sinkhole? Probably not. But a reporter on CNN kept speaking outside my high school for their 2020 election coverage. This year’s candidates and all their political acquaintances just can’t help themselves but return again and again to this city of bridges.
When Jubilee released the “Pete Buttigieg vs 25 Undecided Voters” video yesterday, I was relieved all 25 participants were from Michigan.
Lillian Paterson
Wednesday, November 6th, 2024. 5:00 pm.
The first time I saw my dad cry was November 9th, 2016. He sat on the couch, hands covered over his face. I don’t remember a lot from that week, but I do remember his expression when he finally looked up at me and my sister. It wasn’t just sadness; it was with anger and determination as well. There was a lot on the line in 2016, and there’s a lot on the line now.
“This isn’t an anomaly,” he told me this morning over FaceTime. “Most of the presidents I’ve had in my lifetime were Republican. And every single one of them were worse than, or just as bad as their predecessor. You know what was an anomaly? Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton. Kamala Harris. Anomalies aren’t normal, even if they should be. And we don’t usually catch them happening more than once. But that doesn’t mean we stop fighting for them, you know?”
In a New York Times piece from 1977, James Baldwin said that “people can cry much easier than they can change.” My dad didn’t cry this morning, but I did, because it was the easiest thing to do. Eight years ago, he cried the same tears and I wonder if there’s something I’m missing that he has now.