The morning Trump won, I woke up in Brooklyn to the sound of a man yelling, “KAMALA!” out of his car window in the haze of dawn.
I intentionally went back to sleep and refused to check the news to see if he was yelling it for a fun-good reason, or if was more of a *primal scream* situation.
When I did finally read that the orangedon would be returning, I listened, and realised that my normally electric, roaring Brooklyn borough had become eerily silent. It could have been a bit of cosmic projection, but I really felt a distinct, funereal mood hanging low and dank over New York City.
Now, in these last weird days of purgatory leading up to the inauguration, the city has come back to life—but that doesn’t mean that anyone’s feeling overly keen. I mean, some people are—but hey! Let’s not talk about them!
As an Australian who moved to New York last year with a head full of dreams and a suitcase full of deluded ambitions, the threat of Trump’s return has been a constant weight on me—as well as on a a country that in so many ways, resembles a legitimate Hollywood dystopia.
There are 334.9 million people who live in the United States. 63.88% of the eligible population had their say in the 2024 election (with millions from marginalised communities barred from voting). Although this was the second biggest voter turnout in U.S. history (gasp!), it still isn’t much given the sway government has over every sentient life in this nation.
In the reliably progressive nexus of New York City, we’re sheltered from the true, unrelenting force of Trumpism – but that doesn’t mean that it’s not there.
In 2024, I met a bunch of young Trump voters dressed in their black tie best to see their demigod speak at the ‘Young Republicans Gala Dinner’ in the freezing days of early February, their fur-coat-tuxedoed entrance accompanied by the yells of angry protesters outside
I’ve been told off by an elderly Trumper on a rural road, seen MAGA posters and hats in solitary windows hanging over the subway tracks, and watched, fearfully from my Manhattan midtown office on the day he held a rally in Madison Square Garden.
Despite being a long-time blue state, NYC isn’t actually the utopic dreamscape of an Alicia Keys’ song.
The city’s voting in of Eric Adams (a former cop and fully verified crook known for scapegoating the vulnerable and driving fear around crime, who’s currently drinking pina coladas with Trumpy at Mar-a-Lago) as mayor is indicative of the power of fearmongering in a post-COVID cityscape, where poverty, social instability and cost of living have spiralled wildly out of control.
Over the last year and a half, I’ve been a wide-eyed observer of New York City as it’s battled with an increasingly fearful, overpoliced present.
The streets have roared with a public outpouring of grief and rage over the relentless violence in Gaza, then been brutally suppressed. Homeless communities get their camps swept and belongings seized – a “priority” of Adams’. ICE is gearing up for a “big f-cking operation” against undocumented New Yorkers.
Zoom out, and you have the reversal of Roe v. Wade, a late-term hardening of the U.S and Mexico border policy, and a sharp increase in exploitative prison labor (evidenced in the harrowing accounts of inmates being paid less than $10 a day to fight the LA fires).
Frankly, under the Democrats, both the city and the United States have gone through the fucking wringer – making it clear that when it came to the 2024 election, the American people didn’t exactly have a shiny buffet of choice.
A little internet search will alert you to the many reasons Kamala Harris is no messiah, nor would her warmongering government been. But—Trump really is another kettle of fish.
A few days out from his official inauguration, he’s already threatened military force to take Greenland and the Panama Canal. He’s promising “mass deportations” on day one of the millions of undocumented Americans – most of whom are working and paying taxes.
In these early, fragile days of a possible ceasefire in Gaza, questions float about what Trump’s intentions are for Palestine—a man who has said that there will be “HELL TO PAY in the Middle East” and has numerous Israeli far-righters in his cabinet. Climate policies and environmental safeguards quiver in their boots. So do I.
As an Australian young woman, I’m now definitively revising the amount of time that I want to stay in the United States. It feels a little dizzying as an (immensely privileged) expat to know that you have an out whenever you should want to call it.
There’s a sense of guilt amongst me and my fellow Aussies in NYC when we talk to our American friends, knowing that we all have a second-chance-life-raft that can be activated whenever things creep into the “too dire” basket.
So few people here have that option.
Being an Australian in the States is generally a novelty, which is a stark difference to the way most migrants are treated in this country. My accent has only ever made people giggle, yell NAUR at me approximately 900 times, and talk for a little bit too long about how scared they are of bugs (I feel like a huntsman isn’t as scary as an AK47, but hey! Whadda I know!)
I am in the U.S. on an E3—a special Australian work visa gifted from Bush to Howard after we helped him invade Iraq.
An E3 is a niche little visa that hasn’t quite cracked the mainstream. It doesn’t require paid sponsorship, can be renewed indefinitely, and takes a week to process.
This is a stark difference to the H-1B—the Kim Kardashian of work visas (aka, everyone knows about it—and it’s got some problematic friends in tech).
The H-1B powers the tech industry, and despite all the immigration crackdowns imminent under Trump, this visa has recently been strengthened by Homeland Security – allowing companies in the US to import foreign workers in bulk.
With Zuck and Elon Musk now in full-Trumpy-worship-mode, it’s evident that we’re entering a new era of techno-feudalism, with tech lords taking on a new ring of power.
From Meta eradicating third-party fact checking to a general increase in public surveillance technology, we’re seeing the apps we use and the news we consume perverted to work against us—all in service of bolstering elites’ power (and private yacht funds).
Australians in America are supremely lucky—but that doesn’t mean all of us want to stay here. Most of my friends from home who are looking to start their own families here are now planning on moving back to Australia to do it, for accessible healthcare and reproductive freedom.
While comparing ourselves to the United States, Aussies can tend to feel smug about our little, moderate democracy, but it’s also true that much like the U.S., our stolen country is rife with out-of-control gendered violence, a fierce cost of living crisis and staggering inequality.
We’re also experiencing widespread environmental degradation, much of which can be traced back to the hands of a few ravenous mining magnates whose toxic empires rest on a legacy of Indigenous oppression and very ugly Camilla kaftans. They also like Guy Sebastian.
If anything, the reelection of Donald Trump is a solid-gold reminder to all Australians to stay awake and to do our best to not allow this new-red-wave (see what I did there) make its way Down Under. With an Australian federal election looming, we now have our chance to dodge Peter Dutton’s racist fear mongering, elite favouring and political game-playing when we hit the polls.
On the day the U.S. election results were called, I cried for a bit—and then went for a walk through Brooklyn. The late autumn sun was troublingly tropical, and the air unusually quiet. Everywhere I went, people were commiserating with each other with sad, half smiles in coffee shops and on street corners. There were a lot of people sitting quietly and holding hands. Some people were crying, others were angrily shaking their heads.
There was a real emotion in the world in that day—and I anticipate there will be a whole lot more of that on January 20th, and on all the days that follow.
But, I think that in that emotion is a key to something kind of special. Amongst all the manic headlines, fear mongering and non-stop fanning of existential pain, it’s clear that at the end of the day, we are all human beings who long for peace and connection—and I do think that in that longing is the promise of peace itself.
As a foreigner in NYC, I’m aware that if I’m going to stay, I need to make my presence something that contributes. Whether it’s joining a community garden, keeping tabs for ICEWatch, getting involved in mutual aid or educating myself on the diverse histories, struggles and hopes of the people who live here, there’s so many things that can be done to infuse this weird, whack and wonderful place with a little bit of brightness.
And in those few tiny truths alone, I think we have a decent splash of hope.