2024 was the second time I have had to teach first thing in the morning after a Trump victory. This time around, I was more seasoned, probably a little more pessimistic, and definitely less shocked than I was eight years prior as a mere 26-year-old, first-year teaching assistant, facing my students with thinly veiled emotions and a loss of words.

Since that first Trump election in 2016, a lot has changed. I have steeled myself against the relentless attacks on the political and human rights that my communities and I had previously held more certain. I became more aware of mutual aid networks, and I got more involved in direct community support and grassroots activism (in Washington D.C. of all places!) as some of our best response to these attacks. And I have also become a more veteran instructor of service-learning pedagogy, having trained in 2018 with the University of Maryland’s Do Good Institute to develop a community-oriented version of the standard public-speaking basic course. In this class, students individually choose a local nonprofit that they must research and speak about informatively before conducting a needs-based assessment through an interview with a staff member, and then creatively (and critically) pitching persuasively a small-scale community project that they might want to enact as a class in the last few weeks of the semester. My public speaking students, therefore, learn to not only speak well, but to also do good.

On November 6, 2024, I walked into my classroom at the University of South Carolina Upstate – a regional college in a very conservative state where I have seen students don anti-Biden/pro-Trump apparel – without any fanfare regarding the election, and quickly turned them to the task at hand: the launch of our service-learning inspired civic engagement projects. For the six years that I have been leading service-learning public speaking, “Group Kick Off” day is always my favorite day of the semester, as students transition from individually researching, analyzing, assessing, and speaking about community needs to collaboratively starting group projects to address those needs. Over the next few weeks, my students would spend the rest of the semester raising money to support the Public Education Partners of Greenville County, encouraging college-student literacy through a book swap event benefiting the minority-owned Hub City Writers Project, collecting Christmas gifts for the children and women at the Julie Valentine Center, and even doing a pet-rock race fundraiser for Children’s Cancer Partners of the Carolinas. Collectively, they raised nearly $1,000 and forged lasting partnerships between the university and local organizations. These projects not only helped meet immediate community needs but also empowered students to see themselves as active agents of change.”

This is what gives me hope in a sea of despair following the Trump victory. Students, some still high schoolers in dual enrollment, are working with joy and vigor to help their communities and make them stronger. They are working to help public school teachers, creative thinkers, survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, and children undergoing cancer treatment. They are helping to redistribute resources. They are using critical thinking to consider community needs and then putting their feet on the ground to address those needs. They are learning that we have so much more individual power than we ever really sit down and consider, and even more power when we work together.

In this regard, there was truly no need to directly address the election results in my class. My decision to focus on the task at hand – to direct my students to be resources for those without, to focus on “speaking well and doing good,” to start their projects for their local organizations – was the only rhetorical choice I needed. Of course, the suffering we face as Americans is intricately and intimately related to the policies driven by state and federal leaders, and I do not wish to discount that. A Trump victory has material and far-reaching negative effects on our quality of life, especially those in marginalized communities. As a teacher, I often find myself balancing the weight of these events with the need to remain hopeful for my students. It’s not always easy to reconcile the global political landscape with the local, hands-on work of education. But it’s in these contradictions that I find the most meaning: teaching students to be agents of change while navigating a world that feels increasingly out of control. And so, rather than direct our attention to the election results, I chose to direct it towards our collective action and our collective power.

In the face of an oppressive empire, we must build community. We must love each other. We must laugh together. We must care for and about each other. I am inspired by my students, and I hope you are too. 2024 has taught me that grief and action can coexist. In the face of insurmountable fear, you do what you can to turn it into love, hope, and belief. And I believe that by focusing on tangible, local efforts we can turn frustration into meaningful change. I’m not always sure on how to do it, but I know that I love my students for the caring justice work they are doing, that we are doing, together. When we care, we win.

Dr. Farzad-Phillips is an anti-racist and feminist scholar who studies at the intersections of public memory, space/place especially in the contexts of higher education controversies. As a teacher-scholar, she is known for her practices in civic engagement and for building student autonomy both in the classroom and out in the community.