The air is thick with a familiar dread, a kind of suffocating anticipation that clings to the skin like the humidity of a storm that refuses to break. The news of Donald Trump’s return to power, his grip tightening once more on the reins of a nation already frayed at the edges, feels less like a surprise and more like a reckoning deferred. For those of us who have lived in the margins, who have felt the cold steel of history’s boot pressed against our necks, this moment is not an anomaly. It is the echo of a song we have heard before, its melody haunting, its lyrics etched in blood.

Trump’s America has always been a mirror, cracked and unflinching, reflecting back the ugliest truths of this nation. His rhetoric, his policies, his very presence in the highest office of the land, have never been about progress or unity. They have been about power—raw, unvarnished, and unapologetic. And power, in the hands of those who wield it like a weapon, has always been most dangerous to those who have the least of it. The vulnerable. The poor. The Black and brown bodies that have borne the weight of this country’s sins for centuries.

What does it mean, then, to face another term under his rule? What does it mean for the mother in Flint, Michigan, who still cannot trust the water that flows from her tap? For the migrant child caged at the border, whose cries are drowned out by the roar of political posturing? For the young Black man walking home at night, his hands empty but his life already deemed forfeit by a system that sees him as a threat before it sees him as human? It means that the walls are closing in. It means that the promises of justice, of equality, of freedom, are once again being drowned out by the drumbeat of division and despair.

Trump’s policies have never been subtle in their cruelty. His administration’s assault on healthcare, on environmental protections, on civil rights, has always been a direct attack on the most vulnerable among us. And now, with the weight of another term behind him, there is no reason to believe that his agenda will soften. If anything, it will harden, emboldened by the support of those who see his presidency not as a failure of democracy, but as its triumph. For them, Trump is not a symptom of America’s sickness—he is its cure. A cure that seeks to purge the nation of its diversity, its dissent, its very soul.

But let us be clear: this is not just about Trump. He is but a figurehead, a symbol of a deeper, more insidious force that has always lurked beneath the surface of American life. It is the force of white supremacy, of capitalism unchecked, of a nation built on the backs of the enslaved and the exploited. Trump did not create these forces; he merely gave them a voice, a face, a platform. And in doing so, he has exposed the fragility of the progress we thought we had made. The Voting Rights Act, the Affordable Care Act, the meager protections afforded to Dreamers and refugees—all of it hangs in the balance, vulnerable to the whims of a man who has never shown anything but contempt for those who do not look, think, or pray like him.

And yet, even in the face of this darkness, there is a flicker of light. For every Trump, there is a Stacey Abrams. For every ICE raid, there is a sanctuary city. For every act of hatred, there is an act of resistance. The history of this country is not just a history of oppression; it is also a history of resilience. It is the story of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, of Fannie Lou Hamer and Malcolm X, of the countless unnamed souls who refused to bow, who refused to break, who fought not just for their own survival, but for the survival of us all.

We must remember this as we move forward. We must remember that Trump’s America is not the only America. It is not the America of Langston Hughes’s dreams, or of Maya Angelou’s prayers, or of James Baldwin’s fierce and unyielding hope. It is not the America that we, in our darkest hours, still believe is possible. That America—the one we have fought for, bled for, died for—is still within our reach. But it will not come without a fight. It will not come without sacrifice. It will not come without the courage to look this moment in the eye and say, “No more.”

The road ahead is long, and the stakes could not be higher. But if history has taught us anything, it is that the arc of the moral universe is long, and it bends only when we bend it. So let us bend it, together, with all the strength and fury and love that we can muster. For ourselves. For our children. For the America that has yet to be.

—In the spirit of James Baldwin, with hope and defiance.