I'm Marching Because I'll Always Be With Her

Like the majority of our country, I thought November 8 would be a day of celebration. We were supposed to pass the baton from our first black president to our first woman president. As the results were tallied on election night, that feeling of celebration turned to distress.

I was just finishing a play date with the kids I used to babysit when their mother, an avid Hillary supporter, handed me a "Nasty Woman" pin. I could feel her excitement, and it eased the pain I had felt in my stomach earlier that day. She was so sure our girl was going to win that I started believing it too. I proudly displayed the pin on my shirt and headed downtown for an election night party.

Of all places, I chose a gay club to witness the rise of a strongman and his homophobic running mate. By the time I arrived at Precinct, Florida was called for Trump, and Ohio was too close to call. In this moment, I feared that Michael Moore was right all along, and I ordered a drink to calm myself.

OK, maybe I ordered several and maybe they were all on the rocks.

When victory seemed impossible, I finally looked around and saw that everyone's head was as low as mine had been. I went home just before midnight and woke up several hours later to discover the election had been called for Trump. I couldn't stomach his speech.

When I watched Secretary Clinton concede the next morning, I cried. It felt like someone had died.

I mourned for what I thought our country represented. I mourned for the disabled, the female, and the immigrant. I mourned for the bullied, the conned, and the diverse, and I realized common decency is actually quite rare.

For weeks, I refreshed my Twitter feed over and over searching for answers, reading think pieces, and listening to podcasts as a form of catharsis. But I grew tried of reading about the white working class. And I got sick of hearing how Hillary was a lousy candidate. And I became enraged by this infant in chief and his thin-skinned Twitter tirades.

Like so many others, I was lost, and to a certain extent I still am. Van Jones, Samantha Bee, and Teen Vogue have become my shining beacons of hope while calling my congressman's office has become part of my weekly routine.

I had expected to continue using film to promote LGBT causes after the election, but I thought our leaders would be promoting them too.

I expected our country to always be moving forward, but like our president said while channeling Dr. King, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

My role, like so many others', has changed. And while I'll always create art that fosters diversity and promotes compassion, it's now our job to engage more and to make history move a little faster.

I'm marching on Washington, D.C., not as a form of protest but as a show of solidarity. I want to witness all the thousands of people around me who stand for fairness, inclusivity, and decency. I want to experience our common human connection, and I want to viscerally feel what I know in my bones to be true -- that love trumps hate. Because I need to have hope, and I want to remember what it feels like to lose it.

Trump believes he's going to bring us together, and he's sort of right. The Women's March is an inclusive, feminist, and humanist movement. We consist of artists and teachers, farmers and housewives, and, in a glorious and manicured middle finger to the patriarchy, sex workers are part of our platform.

The infighting that has plagued the left for so long does not need to end, but it needs to realize the alternative. We must get back to our activist roots, and the Women's March will not only inspire those who attend, like myself, but it will show the world what America represents.

And even though this march goes beyond one candidate or one election, you can bet I'm wearing my "Nasty Woman" pin. This queer feminist is proud to always stand with her.

MIKE ROMA is a writer and director whose work includes Danny the Manny.