As we evaluate Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, there is much cause for alarm. From attacking our healthcare system to attempting to institute an unconstitutional "Muslim Ban" to appointing a Supreme Court justice who wants to take away women’s bodily autonomy, each new policy his administration promotes threatens our democracy and sets our country back further from the bright future so many of us have been working decades to build.

Watching the daily destruction of all that we as Democrats and progressives care about, I find myself clinging to the only silver lining I can find — the wave of Democratic women determined to take their communities and our country back.

Nearly 130 Emerge America alumnae have stepped forward and announced that they are running for office in 2017 in state and local races. That’s a woman for every day Trump has been in office plus 30 more. And we expect the number of Democratic women running for office to continue to grow with each day.

An even more hopeful sign of what is yet to come, is that women are already winning elections in 2017. Every week it seems like we are greeted with the welcome news that a Democratic woman candidate has won her race and can use her position to help lead the resistance to Donald Trump.

Just this week, Emerge Massachusetts alumna Maureen Butt was elected to the Wakefield Board of Selectmen, winning her seat in a crowded field of six people. The only person of color in the race, she is the first female Muslim-American selectman in Massachusetts and the third Muslim-American elected to office in the state.