Shock, devastation after election for minority groups

Even though Colorado State University classes were in session Wednesday in Fort Collins, Maritza stayed home.

Normally, the senior entering her final stretch toward a diploma would have gone to class. But hours after Republican Donald Trump was named America's president-elect, she woke up devastated and afraid.

Maritza, an undocumented immigrant whose Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status has shielded her from deportation, doesn’t know what her life will look like a few months from now. She’s lived in the United States for 18 years after coming here from Mexico when she was 5.

“This is a country I know and love, and I thought it loved me back,” she said in a phone interview. “It doesn’t feel good.”

So, she took a personal day.

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Other members of Fort Collins’ minority groups had different ways of coping with a Trump victory that followed months of sound bites featuring the Republican nominee's hard-line stance on issues of Mexican and Muslim immigration.

Tawfik Aboellail went to work. All day, the president of the Islamic Center of Fort Collins fielded calls from church representatives and community members who wanted to know how they could help.

Aboellail confesses he didn’t sleep well Tuesday night. His wife was in tears about the outcome of an election that she and others fear leaves minority groups — LGBTQ people, people of color, religious minorities, people with disabilities and others — in peril.

America has elected for president a man who launched his campaign on a promise to build an impenetrable wall between the U.S. and Mexico, who suggested barring all Muslims from entering the country, who mocked a reporter with disabilities, who opposes marriage equality.

“Will all these promises materialize, or were they just a way to attract voters?” Aboellail mused in his office Wednesday afternoon.

“I worry about the foundational values of this great nation: Freedom of expression, freedom of religion and civil rights. If any of these are compromised or … given to only select groups, this country will be in crisis.”

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Around lunchtime Wednesday, more than a dozen students packed into the Pride Resource Center at CSU’s Lory Student Center. They talked about the election, held hands and offered up beds to students worried about bumping into dorm mates who voted for Trump.

“I’m baffled that the nation decided this,” freshman Angelise Guerrero said. “I don’t feel American at all. I don’t feel like my future is in my hands anymore.”

“I don’t understand how you could look at millions of people’s lives and go, ‘eh,’” freshman J.R. Hendricks said, mocking a shrug.

Hope was hard to find in the resource center on Wednesday. The students said they feel disenfranchised and afraid that Trump’s presidency will mean the end of gay marriage, progression of LGBTQ rights and access to hormones for people who are transitioning genders.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence has supported federal “assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior,” which many interpret as support of gay conversion therapy.

“Tomorrow we can go back to the audacity of hope,” Hendricks said. “But today we can be scared.”

Aishah Islam, a Muslim woman who attends the Islamic center, is afraid, too.

Like many Muslim women in Fort Collins, Islam wears a veil. She said she’s had things thrown at her, heard insults yelled from car windows and found a nasty note tucked in her windshield at the grocery store. Once, a man in a white van careened toward Islam and her family while they were on a walk, veering away when he was within 5 feet of hitting them. She could feel the draft created by the vehicle on her face.

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Islam is afraid incidents like these will become more commonplace under a Trump presidency.

She said she and other Muslim women in Fort Collins hope Trump will listen to Muslim Americans and be mature in his decisions. And she hopes the people who voted for him will “see us as human beings.”

Aboellail said there’s a glimmer of hope in the election results: In times like these, people come together. RSVPs have rolled in for the Islamic Center’s Saturday Open House. Calls from community members wanting to help have “touched our hearts,” he said.

“We should have faith in one another,” he said. “That is what counts in the end. If we are not divided at heart, then no one can divide us.”

Maritza, the undocumented student, is reminding herself of the same. She’s worried her dream of a career in social sustainability, helping Latinos bolster their communities against the threat of climate change, is disintegrating.

But tomorrow, she won’t stay home. She will rise again and she’ll remember the millions who voted against Trump’s ideals, she said.

“The slogan was ‘stronger together,’” she said. “We have to be that.”

Islamic Center of Fort Collins Open House

The center will hold an open house for people interested in learnining more about the Islamic faith and area Muslim community.

When: 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday

Where: 925 W. Lake St., Fort Colins

RSVP: Email admin@icfc.org.