should I stay or should I go now?
About three months ago, 48 hours after the presidential election this past November, my dad decided to go on a bike ride. My parents live about a mile away from our home, and there’s a local hike and bike trail in our neighbourhood. My dad is in great shape and has been an avid cyclist for a couple of decades. Because of this, he knows his way around a bike and is intimately familiar with our trails. So to help exorcise his feelings around the election, he put on his cycling gear, hopped on his bike, and set out.
My dad decided to take it easy on this ride, so he was moving at a slow cadence. It was a beautiful day, but the traffic on the trail was light. Suddenly, he became aware of a cyclist approaching from behind him, so he slowed down even more, and move to the far right of the trail, to allow him to pass.
The cyclist was moving at a rapid clip, far after than my dad My dad waited for the cyclist to call out, “ON YOUR LEFT!”, the warning traditionally used by cyclists to let each other know that passing is imminent. But the warning never came. Instead, as this young white man passed my dad, he deliberately body-checked him, sending my dad flying off of his bike and into the scrubby underbrush alongside the trail.
The cyclist never skipped a beat. “You’re fine!” he yelled over his shoulder as he sped off, and my father lay there, stunned.
Soon after, two white women came rushing to my dad’s side. They helped him up, asking him if they should call for help. When they saw that Dad was badly bruised but not broken, they agreed to let him make his way slowly home, instead of calling for medical assistance. Once he was standing, one of them looked at my father in his eyes:
“I saw what he did to you,” she said, not breaking eye contact.
My dad smiled at her, saying nothing in response. He just thanked them and left.
Today is my dad’s birthday. He’s eighty-five years old.
Marcus and I happened to be at my parents’ house that day when he came home limping and bruised, and told us what happened. We were there because I was leaving in the next few days for almost a month in Bath, and I just wanted to touch base with them before I headed out. Needless to say, we were aghast. Although we admittedly have no true knowledge of what motivated that cyclist to assault my dad — he could have just been your standard-issue asshole — we all couldn’t shake the idea that perhaps this man had been emboldened by the outcome of the recent election. After all, there were signs. Like how, twenty-four hours earlier, when my mom and dad had inadvertently parked their car crookedly in a public parking space, a white woman approached in her own car, and told them if they didn’t get back in and park their car properly, she would get out of her car and “kick their asses.” Or that time during the first Trump administration when a driver overtook me in the road, and as she did, she rolled down her car window and yelled “n*gger bitch!” before speeding off. Or the countless microaggressions that we’ve all — all of us who are members of the global majority, or anyone who prays differently, or is a member of the LGBTQ+ community — have endured in the months leading up to the election, and noticed their frequency intensifying.
So when I left my parents’ house that day, and then three days later hopped my plane for my extended visit to the UK, the results of the election and all of these incidents kept replaying, over and over, in my head.
Should I stay or should I go now?
Marcus and I have always intended on eventually retiring in the UK, so when we bought our little place in Bath, we bought it as a simple foothold until we were ready to make a more permanent move. This is a fact. But the truth is also bigger: we knew that authoritarianism was on the rise in the United States, so we thought that buying a small place now, instead of years from now, could act as sort of an escape hatch, should we need it.
And I would be lying if I told you that my family — not just Marcus and Alex, but all of my family in the US — haven’t been considering our options since the election, almost every time we get together.
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble,
and if I stay it will be double.
I’ve seen an uptick of women — particularly white, American women — lambasting folks online for even considering leaving the country. “Now is when we fight!” they say. “Leaving helps no one!” I watch these videos with some curiosity. I assume that their speaking to fellow white, straight, cisgender Americans is implied: I fully admit that despite my watching their content, I may not be a member of their target audience. But nonetheless, I don’t think their advice holds true for everyone.
Sometimes you have to leave to fight.
Sometimes fighting looks like remaining online on questionable platforms to be an online haven for others, while also considering how to create a haven outside of the country for disenfranchised friends and family, should in the future, they find themselves having to flee for their own safety.
Sometimes the way we stay in the fight looks different for each of us, depending on the risks to our own personal and physical safety.
Anyway.
On a practical note, our hope is to remain in the US for the foreseeable future, certainly at least until our daughter graduates from college. But until then, don’t be surprised if you see us making moves so that we can be more nimble. Don’t be surprised if we accelerate our plans, because the risk is just too damned high.
And so this week, my wish that all of you — especially those of you who are LGBTQ+, members of the global majority, Muslim, Jewish, immigrants, or are a member of any disenfranchised group — my wish is that first and foremost, you are safe, even as we all individually wonder: should I stay or should I go now?
A little about the new book.