I used to be a Republican. Now, I’m a volunteer at the DNC

As a volunteer for the Democratic National Convention and a proud American, I will get the rare opportunity to watch live as Vice President Kamala Harris accepts the Democratic nomination for President of the United States tonight. As a fellow woman of color, this is meaningful to me — but it’s even more noteworthy because it’s on the fourth anniversary of my dad’s death. My father Armando, a Cuban exile and small-business owner, was a staunch Republican, but I’d like to think he’d be proud of me nevertheless.

From an early age, Dad cautioned me not to take my civic duty for granted. He never missed an election; sometimes I tagged along as a kid when he went to the voting booth.

Dad had voted Republican since he became a citizen in the 1960s. Like many Cubans, he had never forgiven the Democratic Party for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, where Cuban exiles trained by the US attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro but were abandoned by the Kennedy administration. That failure left a lasting distrust among the community. Add to that the fact that the GOP has historically taken a more hardline stance against Castro’s dictatorship and has advocated for stricter sanctions and a firm foreign policy against communist states — something that aligns with the views of many Cuban exiles — and you might begin to understand why he always cast his ballot for a Republican.

In fact, my father said he would never vote for a Democrat for any office for as long as he lived.

Part of me thinks Dad would be both impressed and annoyed by my determination and persistence to volunteer for a party he vowed never to support. I attended my first prospective volunteer virtual information session for the Democrats last December, and