On November 9th, 2016 I woke up at 2:30 in the morning and flipped on the television to check the election results. The feelings I had at the time are hard to put into words. Unable to go back to sleep and brimming with a sort of restless energy, I took to facebook and posted the following,
“There's going to be a lot of looking in the mirror on all sides for years if not decades to come. I don't know how we come back from this, but I know we can. I, for one, have just resolved to stop being content with the way the world is. I will change it in any way that I can, starting in my home, then into my community, and on into my state, and then my country. I will not pull back from politics. I will join in the process as much as possible and use my passion, and love for my children and fellow man to try and fight these feelings of fear, to look hard for solutions to the problems that plague us as a nation. I hope that this fire is ignited in others as well.”
I had no idea when I posted it where this statement would take me. At the time I quickly became distracted by a more pressing fact than Donald Trump being elected president. The election results had put me into labor. On the evening of November 9th I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. It was the strangest thing that an un-medicated and slightly traumatic childbirth was a welcome distraction, but these are the times we live in.
The novelty and trials of having a newborn did the trick and kept my mind occupied for a while. Still, my words of that morning, my pledge to join in the process “as much as possible” stuck in the back of my mind, quietly echoing, refusing to go away until they were addressed. I decided that I likely couldn’t have too much of an impact on a national level, so I looked to the state level to see what I could do to effect change there. I knew it would be difficult. I live in a very rural area, where it’s considered rude to talk politics, but only if you’re a Democrat. However, this new sense of urgency was pushing me past normal restrictive social conventions and enabling me to raise my voice, and so I had hope.
At the time I knew next to nothing about our state delegate. Having graduated from college with a mountain of student debt I had spent the years since just trying to survive. Politics were the farthest thing from my mind. I was worried about putting food on the table and making it to the next paycheck, but recent events had begun to show me that even if I ignore politics, politics can still hurt me and the ones I love. I began to look up the record of my delegate. I was, frankly speaking, horrified by what I found. I did not feel represented by this individual, and the question then was: what do I do about it?
The answer was seemingly obvious; I would recruit a candidate to run against him! Determined to fight the good fight, I set out talking to family and friends, explaining the need for change. I pointed out the injustice that people in our area are working 40-65 hour work weeks and are still barely scraping by. I spoke about the children in our schools dependent on the free and reduced lunch programs, dependent on bags of food sent home over the weekends by local charities so that they don’t go hungry. I spoke about the inaction within our House of Delegates. Repeatedly, I got back an answer I was not expecting: “You’re absolutely right. Something needs to be done, so when you run for office I will vote for you.”
My reaction to this was a strong and visceral no. I’m only thirty. I’m a female progressive Democrat in an area where Trump swept the vote. I have school, work, a family. Talking in public gives me heart palpitations. The excuses were endless, and yet the words in the back of my mind persisted. I began to joke with my family that this was my Jonah calling. Much like the individual in the Bible, everything was pointing towards this direction, but everything in me was screaming no and running away. Then one day, I was sitting in a town hall listening to Tom Perriello speak to a crowd about their opposition to the Mountain Valley Pipeline, and someone asked, “What can we do?”
The answer was simple, so simple in fact that it is often automatically dismissed out of hand. He said to run for office. The thought that had remained so resolutely in the back of my head at that moment began to crack through my resistance. All excuses crumbled against the urgency of the moment, the realization that I could not look my children in the eye as they grow and tell them that I had done all that I could unless I was willing to do this one thing. So, after some prayer and a long talk with my husband, I laid aside my pride, I laid aside my fears, I laid aside my name, my finances, and my privacy and answered my Jonah calling.
Stephanie Cook is running as a Democrat in Virginia House District 9. For more information about her campaign, please e-mail cookfordelegate@gmail.com and also see her facebook at facebook.com/cookfordelegate .