Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Because we need to fight a would-be dictator

In my junior year of high school, I spent a study-abroad semester in Spain. At the time, Spain was ruled by a dictator who’d been in power for more than three decades. He would ultimately die of old age in office.

I know what it’s like to live in a place where strongmen rule for life, where a censored press serves as their mouthpiece, and citizens are forced to bow down to corrupt functionaries of the permanent ruling party. Like my hosts, I lived in fear of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.

Donald Trump says he will be a “dictator on day one.” This isn’t a joke. He tried every maneuver to overturn the 2020 election, including inciting a mob to take over the Capitol and kill his vice president and members of the opposing party. He has expressed admiration for brutal strongmen like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. He has called immigrants, religious minorities, and his political opponents “vermin” to be eliminated.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will strengthen our democracy. They know that the right to vote in free and fair elections makes leaders accountable to the people. They know that freedom of speech and a free press are essential. Without a free press, without accountability in free and fair elections, there’s no limit to a leader’s, or ruling party’s, corruption and cruelty.

Three of my novels—among them Torch, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature—are set in dictatorships and portray young people living without freedom or hope of making their lives better. Our young people have their whole lives ahead of them. They deserve to live those lives with the freedom, opportunity, and security that democracy offers.

Lyn Miller-Lachmann is the author of YA novels Eyes Open, Torch, and Gringolandia and a translator of books for kids and teens.