365 days.
I can’t believe it’s been a year. A year of a future that felt within reach, even in the face of unmountable odds. A year of holding tight to a possibility we barely dared to dream of - a future with the glass ceiling finally cracked.
I’ve been an avid supporter of Kamala Harris since her days in the Senate (remember her putting the screws to Bill Barr and Brett Kavanaugh during their hearings? Watch here and here). I was a huge advocate for her historic VP nomination. Notwithstanding how it happened, her rise to the second-highest office in the land meant so much to me. I had my doubts - not in her, but in America. Because after all, we’ve been here before. Still, she didn’t need to convince me - I was already all in. It didn’t matter how she got there. What mattered was that she was there, and I trusted she would make the most of that moment.
And she did.
I remember the night of the convention in Chicago, sitting in my apartment, watching CNN and MSNBC on dual screens like it was yesterday. When she stepped onto that United Center stage, she looked ready. She took no prisoners and delivered the speech of her life. Sure, in hindsight, there are details we could nitpick about the campaign, but that night was right. It felt right. It looked right. Democrats, not usually the party accused of being patriotic, reclaimed the American flag and began redefining what it means to be American.
I wasn’t in the room, but the energy was palpable.
I felt the power of that moment. When she stood at the podium, the flag behind her, dressed in a custom navy Chloé suit - tall, shoulders back, eyes locked on her audience - and proudly announced her acceptance of the nomination, I couldn’t help but believe. To believe in all the possibilities of America, even if they seemed unattainable. In that moment, we dared to dream. I felt it. Saw it. Allowed myself to fall freely into the fantasy of an America that finally delivered on her promise. An America that belonged to us all.
Instead, a year later, we are living the nightmare we feared. Career civil servants forced into retirement. Public health agencies under attack. Blue cities like D.C. and L.A. under siege. And yes, egg prices are still too fucking high.
What I keep turning over is how quickly possibility can collapse under the weight of politics as usual. The energy of that night - the history, the hope, the audacity of believing we could walk into something different - has been replaced with exhaustion, cynicism, and fear. It’s not just that things didn’t get better; in so many ways, they got worse. And it leaves me wondering if our politics is even capable of holding the kind of future we imagine for ourselves, or if the system will always grind hope down into something smaller, something less.
But I can’t sit only in despair. Because that night was real. It happened. We felt it. We saw it. We celebrated it. And if we could touch that possibility once, even briefly, then it means it can be touched again.
The ache of this past year is that we are living in the gap - between the promise of what could have been and the harshness of what is. Existing in that gap is exhausting, but it also reminds us of what’s at stakes. It reminds us that representation without power isn’t enough. That democracy is fragile and needs to be protected. And that history, when made, is just the beginning.
At the crossing: One year on, I’m holding on two truths - the grief of what slipped away, and the unrelenting belief that the future is still ours to shape.
Until the next avenue,
-J.