I Want a President

I want a voter who is an undocumented immigrant. I want someone who’s lived under a dictatorship and fled their country and been detained at our border.
I want a voter who has no address, or form of I.D.
I want a voter who is below the age of 18, and I want a voter who has lost someone to the coronavirus.
I want a voter who is in prison, a voter who just got out of prison, but can’t pay their fines, restitution, and legal fees.
I want a voter who has no access to transportation and can’t take off work.
I want someone who isn’t registered, who can’t be reached by telephone, who can’t wait in line all day, whose name has been purged from the rolls.
I want someone who’s been gerrymandered into a new district.
I want someone who is on their deathbed and never learned to read or write, someone who hasn’t recovered from Hurricane Maria, whose polling location burned down in the fires, who’s been displaced by US intervention.
I want a voter who knows just voting is not enough.

I demand trust be restored in the presidential office.

I want a president who is unprecedented in how they act and lead. I want a president who is not a “president.”
I want a president willing to learn and listen and share all of their mistakes.

I want someone who can apologize, own up, be human.
I want someone who changes their mind.
I want a president who is deeply ashamed of our country’s history. I want a president who creates intimate spaces, someone willing to show vulnerability and make connections.

I want a president who does not disappear into their power. I want a president who continues to work with community organizers after being elected.
I want a president who is one of us.

I want one that looks like me and talks like me. Someone who has become numb to the word faggot, embraces the feminine switch in their hips and maintains an unwavering sense of empathy.

I want a president with hearing, speech or visual aids.
I want a president who has apraxia of speech.
I want a president who knows sign language and reads braille.
I want a president who was too scared to go to the doctor for medical treatment.
I want a president with pre-existing medical conditions and couldn’t find health insurance to cover them.
I want a president who can’t afford their medications and dental care. I want a president living with AIDS to show the world that sex is safe once society collectively suspends stigma.

I want a president with mental health issues.
I want a president who goes to therapy.
I want a president who sees a psychiatrist.
I want a president who takes antipsychotics.
I want a president who experiences brain zaps if they forget to take their medication.

I want a president who has hit rock bottom more than once and had to start life anew.
I want someone with no safety net.
I want a president who is sober and in recovery.

I want a president who has relapsed.
I want a president who has been to rehab.
I want a president who goes to AA/NA meetings.

I don’t want a president that attended private school. I want a president who went to community college and changed their major three times.
I want someone who has walked a mile or more in the cold and waited in line at the food pantry. Someone who has never tasted caviar, but is open enough to try it, and embrace the unknown.

I want a president who opens up a methadone clinic at Blair House. I want a president who puts a community garden on the White House lawn.
I want a president who turns the Capitol building into a food pantry. I want a president who makes Walter Reed’s health services free and available to all.

I want a president who converts their palatial space into communal living facilities for house-less people.
I want a president who was a sex worker, who’s loud and raunchy. Someone who will affirm sex work as the work it is.

I want a president who taxes billionaires out of existence.
I want a president who makes it illegal to lobby, who makes it illegal for special interest groups to finance campaigns.
I want a president willing to give so many reparations the economy collapses.

I want a president who has experienced persecution.
I want a president who doesn’t start wars.
I want a president who will hold every weeping family member of civilians killed by American soldiers.
I want a president who teaches history as it actually happened.
I want a president who centers and amplifies BIPOC voices.
I want a president who isn’t sworn in on a Bible.
I want an indigenous president, one who respects the land we live on and works with grassroots movements to protect it.
I want a president who has drunk the water in Flint.
I want a president who knows the faces, names, families, and communities of those affected by environmental injustice.

I want a president who knows the faces, names, families, and communities of those affected by police brutality and over-policing. I want someone who recognizes our justice system as a relic of religious punishment. Someone who believes in rehabilitation, education, and preservation of the human spirit. I want someone who will apologize for being president.
I want a president who will eliminate the role of president.
I want a president who’ll shut down this bullshit excuse for a democracy, and focus on community-based prosperity.

I don’t want a president.
I don’t want the power to be old, pale, male, and stale. I don’t want a country meant for all to be ruled by one. I don’t want violence, visible or invisible.
I don’t want politics.
I don’t want hypocrisy.
I don’t want drone strikes.

I don’t want cops. I want a friendly neighborhood social worker who responds to those having a mental health crisis. I want a neighborhood of people who call on her and each other.
I don’t want corporations that profit off the little wages I make in turn for my necessities. I want to know Bluestockings will never get kicked out of their building, and I want to read my middle-aged lesbian friend’s copies of Monique Wittig while my girlfriend and I take care of her cat.
I don’t want insurance. I want disabled people to teach me how to make this world better for them.
I don’t want doctors, I want everyone to get the treatment they need. I don’t want highways. I want dirt paths and level ground for everyone to move. I want non-toxic, accessible public transportation. I don’t want to pay for leisure. I want a non-polluted lake to skip rocks on with my non-binary friends named Teeth, Caterpillar and Reno.

I don’t want a state-sanctioned gender. I want people to use my pronouns with as much understanding as possible, knowing that I’m much more than a she, they, he, ze, we.
I don’t want individualism. I want a collective of people who feel empowered to express their individuality, who take on accountability together, and who feel safe to disagree with people in their community.

I don’t want to file a police report against my abuser. I want to be believed. I want to heal and to learn how the other abuse victims in my neighborhood are healing.
I don’t want you to tell me to vote. I want you to tell me how I can look in someone’s face and navigate our community together.

I don’t want a military. I want a fully-armed militia of socialist trans women to overthrow the government.
I don’t want prisons. I want community rehabilitation.
I want to know where we came from, how we’ve been hurt and what we need to heal.

I want a government that isn’t fascist.
I want to build a community without capitalism getting in the way. I want protection and safety for trans folks. I want protection and safety for black trans folks.
I want to choose what I do with my body.
I don’t want to choose between a lesser of two evils.
I don’t want evil.
I want an older butch lesbian to invite me over to teach me how to cook ravioli for my girlfriend. I want a big strong dyke to wrap me in a big hug and teach me how to change a tire.
I want accessibility.
I want mutual aid.
I want to imagine a safer world.
I want everyone to speak and be heard.
I want the Earth to be respected.
I want land returned to the hands of Indigenous people.
I don’t want a president, I want the power to be the people.

I don’t want a president. I want a community.

The project was collaboratively produced by the following students: Sophia Arnesen, Katherine Degennaro, Mickey Dick, Trevor Falsey, Katie Giovale, Carli Grossman, Hayley Jackson, Isabel Johnson, Sarah Kendric, David Moore, Kalie Nattinger, Lily Pando, Amanda Parker, Mairead Reo, Rebecca Rosset, Margaret Ryan-O’Flaherty, Patricia Schwartz, Avery Steigerwald, Rebecca Velasquez, and Emma Windsor.