I know that some of you are thinking that a Trump presidency might not be that bad, and that some of us might be overreacting. I just want to share a few things from the past few days to let you know it’s already that bad, and if anything we’re not reacting hard enough.

Yesterday I talked to my students (at Missouri State University) about the election. I gave them space to tell me how they were feeling. One student told me that she’s terrified that once the Affordable Care Act has been taken away, her husband will die of the cancer he is currently battling because they will not be able to afford treatment. Multiple survivors of sexual assault told me they felt devalued, delegitimized, and dehumanized yet again (do you guys understand yet how many women have been and continue to be assaulted on a daily basis? For every woman who speaks out there are 10 who are afraid to tell their story). A graduate student told me that a graduate instructor came into her office crying because a group of four male students in Trump shirts were openly hostile and disrespectful to her and to a black female student in her class. These four men have been her students all semester; this is the first incident like this. It happened the day after Trump was elected. A Latina student cried while she described a lifetime of being called racial slurs by her classmates in a small Missouri town and how the painfulness of those attacks comes back to her every time Trump and his supporters talk about his wall. An LGBT student told me that people she has known her whole life, who she thought were her friends, have been calling her “faggot” and telling her that she should die since she expressed dismay about a Trump presidency in a public venue. Other friends have told her she should just shut up and hide her identity. Her family has asked her to stop dating for now. Another student told me that he’s terrified of being forced into conversion therapy (Pence’s pet project, for which he wants federal funding), which does not work and in fact tends to result in suicide. Another student emailed me later to say that she couldn’t speak up in class because she knew she would cry too hard, but that she “had someone say to me that they ‘wish they had a slave nigger to do their work for them’ in passing conversation.”

There is an active branch of the KKK in Springfield. If you think they’re not feeling emboldened to attack and harm people right now because Trump is president elect, you’re insane. Other branches are holding celebratory parades over the election, for Christ’s sake. We’re living in a nightmare. If you can’t see that, I don’t know what to say to you other than wake the fuck up. If you’re not speaking out against what’s happening in our country right now, you’re part of the problem.

Trump has already unleashed human misery on a massive scale and he’s not even in office yet. If you have any modicum of human decency, it’s up you to lessen that misery as much as possible for all the people who are bearing the burden. Wake up. Speak up. Protect the people who are under assault from their neighbors and their politicians however you can.