This piece is part of Yellow Scene Magazine’s Opinion section. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent a reported news position. At Yellow Scene, opinion pieces speak freely, challenge assumptions, and say the quiet parts out loud.
by Junie Joseph
In late August, I boarded a plane for Bosnia and Herzegovina to serve as a long-term election observer. For 47 days, through the country’s general election in early October, I watched a nation choose its future. This was my second mission in the Balkan region.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the most beautiful countries I have ever seen. Red roofs crown the hills, and the landscape is nothing short of majestic. But beneath that beauty lies a country shaped by a difficult history.
The war that ended in 1995 killed approximately 100,000 people, including more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys murdered in the genocide at Srebrenica. The legacy of that war is everywhere, and every step you take reminds you of it. Across Sarajevo, scars left by mortar shells have been filled with red resin. Known as Sarajevo roses, they mark places where people were killed and ensure that the violence is not forgotten.
That war still shapes how the country governs itself. The Dayton Agreement that ended it built the system Bosnia lives with today: a three-member presidency divided by ethnicity, with one Bosniak, one Croat, and one Serb. But in conversation after conversation, I found that the people I met were watching another election just as closely: ours.
Again and again, they asked me about our midterms and about the actions of President Trump, both in the U.S. and around the world. It put me in a tough position. I was there for Bosnia’s election, and I did not want to talk about my own country’s politics. Still, the questions kept coming. In some of those conversations, in a last-ditch effort to distance myself from the Trump administration, I boldly said that I am a Democrat.
For a minute, I thought being a Democrat would let me go unscathed, that it would get me off the hook. What it got me was confusion. In those conversations, I realized that the distinction between Democrats and Republicans mattered far less to the people questioning me than I had imagined. They simply saw a nation that seemed to have lost its way. That was a hard truth to sit with so far from home.
And yet, even there, hope found me. I met a gentleman who had worked with Madeleine Albright, who later became U.S. Secretary of State. He was so happy to meet me, and he recounted, with real warmth, his experience working with her. Many in Bosnia still remember that the United States helped broker the peace that ended their war, and that Albright, then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, was one of the strongest voices for ending it. In that moment, I remembered what America still means to so much of the world. America still represents hope.
In Bosnia, I was reminded that hope is not simply something we believe in; it is something people work to preserve. On election day, I watched poll workers navigate new voting technology, technical difficulties that caused delays, and voters waiting in long lines to cast their ballots. Some workers were well prepared, while others struggled with unfamiliar procedures. Yet people kept the process moving, and voters kept showing up. It showed me that democracy depends not only on the choices voters make, but also on the institutions and people entrusted with protecting those choices.
I carried all of it home with me, the confusion and the hope, and I came back to an election of our own. On November 3, Americans answered with hope. Voters gave Democrats control of both chambers of Congress and supermajorities in both chambers of the Colorado legislature. In states that had not sent a Democrat to the Senate in decades, people chose change. The world was watching, and it saw a nation that has not given up on itself.
Now the real work begins. Bosnia taught me that the world will judge us not by our party, but by what we do. When the new Congress convenes in January, Democrats will have a mandate, and no excuses. They must get to work diligently and swiftly to thwart the Trump agenda, an agenda that has tested the limits of due process, the rule of law, and the protections that keep families together.
Congress must also stand up for working people by lowering the cost of housing, health care, and child care. It must restore the Voting Rights Act, a pillar of our democracy that opened the ballot box to millions of Americans, after the Supreme Court weakened it in Shelby County v. Holder and again this year in Louisiana v. Callais. And it must restore balance and respect for our institutions, so that America can reclaim its standing in the world.
Here in Colorado, we will do our part. Our state has its own Voting Rights Act, and with supermajorities in both chambers, we have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to keep protecting the right to vote and to uphold our democracy.
In Bosnia, a man who remembered Madeleine Albright reminded me that America still represents hope. On November 3, Americans proved him right. Now it is up to the people we elected to honor that hope, and it is up to all of us to make sure they do.