Do I stay or do I go? After the election of Trump in 2016, there were a lot of memes and stories going around social media about why Americans should become Canadians. Some of that was real, and some of it was the Canadian tendency to pat ourselves on the back when we compare ourselves to the US. Regardless, many of us have friends who asked the same thing, so we know there were some Americans who live in Canada who breathed a sigh of relief that they were up here.
But, attachment and sentiment for one’s country is not a straightforward thing. Whether to stay or go is a question that some progressive Americans have asked themselves since November 8, 2016, and they continue to ask it.
“Are you going to stay or go back home?” is a question rabble podcast exec producer Victoria Fenner asked Sophia Reuss even before the election happened. Victoria met Sophia at the World Social Forum when it was held Montreal in August of that year, just a few months before the election. An American who grew up in Washington, DC, Sophia had just finished up as a rabble intern after graduating from McGill. She was volunteering to help produce ‘Ears on the Earth‘, a daily rabble podcast from the Forum. You can hear one of Sophia’s stories here.
At the time of the World Social Forum, not many people were seriously considering the possibility that Trump could win. And then, the unthinkable happened. Sophia could have stayed in Canada, but ultimately, she decided that she needed to be back home. She moved back to the US last year.
She currently lives in Brooklyn, and works at the Prisoner Reentry Institute, an organization at the City University of New York. She also is continuing her work with rabble as an assistant editor.
Today on rabble radio, Sophia shares her thoughts about why she decided to go back home.
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