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Accountability Post
Feb. 21st, 2018 08:30 amTrump Year 2 February 21
On Valentine’s Day I called both Senators and my Representative to keep the pressure on about reinstating DACA and a path to citizenship for the Dreamers.
Last weekend I joined the Swing Left trip to NC-13 to canvass in likely Democratic neighborhoods. I saw a little of how hard hit these neighborhoods have been by economic downturn and “recovery” that has lifted the rich (and white) and left them behind. It seemed like every other house was vacant and many of those boarded up. I heard stories of family members shot, and police who did not care. I met people who felt their votes did not count and who quite reasonably brought up Hillary’s “loss” despite winning the popular vote as evidence the system was rigged.
And some of them were just so happy to talk to someone who cared. I listened, I wrote down their concerns, and I talked to them about the importance of the House of Representatives in blocking the Trump agenda, the fact that the Electoral College would play no role here, and the fact that they were in a swing district and had a real chance to get rid of their gun-store-owning far-right Representative and get someone who would care more about them.
My parents tried not to be racist, but I was raised in a nearly-all-white suburb and absorbed society’s messages about black people, so I was nervous at first in this majority black neighborhood. Walking up to lanky young black men in bright clothes and sagging pants and blingy necklaces ... it wasn’t very hard, but it felt almost as if I were pushing through a force field erected by my own mind.
But I’m so glad I did. The force field was just in my mind. We talked a couple of young men who had given up into promising to vote and to take their mother to vote. Several people said we could contact them about volunteering. So many people were just happy to meet another Democrat; I think a lot of them didn’t realize how many of us there are. We registered a couple of people to vote.
Toward the end of the day I was noticing that same feeling I got when canvassing for Doug Jones, that inner warmth when the person who came to the door was black. Yes, we got a few who were like “I don’t think about politics; I have no opinion; no I have no concerns about the neighborhood” but everyone was nice and some were quite friendly and welcoming.
You know how some elections are so important that you wish you could vote twice? Canvassing is a legal and ethical way you can do that.
Monday I called my Representative in the State Legislature to oppose a bill to cut Medicare by instituting a work requirement. Since a lot of people on Medicare can’t work, and many of them have small children, this is basically another “Fuck you poor people you and your kids can die in a ditch” maneuver that the Republicans typically engage in. I was much more polite on the phone of course, but we can all see the pattern.
Tuesday I drove in to Knoxville to go to an Indivisible meeting, because Charles had been invited to talk to them about phone banking and canvassing, and he was nervous. He’s quite comfortable one-on-one but speaking to groups is fairly far outside his comfort zone. Resisting means moving outside your comfort zone but I thought a friend in the crowd would help. There were sixty people there. Hopefully the resistance (even if not our particular group) gets a few more phone bankers and canvassers out of this. We also heard that Indivisible has decided to allocate resources to Tennessee to open an actual office in the state, which is kind of cool.
I don’t particularly like this work. I like small groups of people I know well, and talking to strangers is tiring and being in large groups of strangers is particularly tiring. But there is a reassurance that comes with knowing you are not alone and you are doing something about the problem. This is freaking necessary, and I am privileged to not have to work for a living, which gives me more time and energy to do the thing. So I’m doing the thing and I don’t hate it as much as I expected to. In Trumpland that is the best that we can hope for.
On Valentine’s Day I called both Senators and my Representative to keep the pressure on about reinstating DACA and a path to citizenship for the Dreamers.
Last weekend I joined the Swing Left trip to NC-13 to canvass in likely Democratic neighborhoods. I saw a little of how hard hit these neighborhoods have been by economic downturn and “recovery” that has lifted the rich (and white) and left them behind. It seemed like every other house was vacant and many of those boarded up. I heard stories of family members shot, and police who did not care. I met people who felt their votes did not count and who quite reasonably brought up Hillary’s “loss” despite winning the popular vote as evidence the system was rigged.
And some of them were just so happy to talk to someone who cared. I listened, I wrote down their concerns, and I talked to them about the importance of the House of Representatives in blocking the Trump agenda, the fact that the Electoral College would play no role here, and the fact that they were in a swing district and had a real chance to get rid of their gun-store-owning far-right Representative and get someone who would care more about them.
My parents tried not to be racist, but I was raised in a nearly-all-white suburb and absorbed society’s messages about black people, so I was nervous at first in this majority black neighborhood. Walking up to lanky young black men in bright clothes and sagging pants and blingy necklaces ... it wasn’t very hard, but it felt almost as if I were pushing through a force field erected by my own mind.
But I’m so glad I did. The force field was just in my mind. We talked a couple of young men who had given up into promising to vote and to take their mother to vote. Several people said we could contact them about volunteering. So many people were just happy to meet another Democrat; I think a lot of them didn’t realize how many of us there are. We registered a couple of people to vote.
Toward the end of the day I was noticing that same feeling I got when canvassing for Doug Jones, that inner warmth when the person who came to the door was black. Yes, we got a few who were like “I don’t think about politics; I have no opinion; no I have no concerns about the neighborhood” but everyone was nice and some were quite friendly and welcoming.
You know how some elections are so important that you wish you could vote twice? Canvassing is a legal and ethical way you can do that.
Monday I called my Representative in the State Legislature to oppose a bill to cut Medicare by instituting a work requirement. Since a lot of people on Medicare can’t work, and many of them have small children, this is basically another “Fuck you poor people you and your kids can die in a ditch” maneuver that the Republicans typically engage in. I was much more polite on the phone of course, but we can all see the pattern.
Tuesday I drove in to Knoxville to go to an Indivisible meeting, because Charles had been invited to talk to them about phone banking and canvassing, and he was nervous. He’s quite comfortable one-on-one but speaking to groups is fairly far outside his comfort zone. Resisting means moving outside your comfort zone but I thought a friend in the crowd would help. There were sixty people there. Hopefully the resistance (even if not our particular group) gets a few more phone bankers and canvassers out of this. We also heard that Indivisible has decided to allocate resources to Tennessee to open an actual office in the state, which is kind of cool.
I don’t particularly like this work. I like small groups of people I know well, and talking to strangers is tiring and being in large groups of strangers is particularly tiring. But there is a reassurance that comes with knowing you are not alone and you are doing something about the problem. This is freaking necessary, and I am privileged to not have to work for a living, which gives me more time and energy to do the thing. So I’m doing the thing and I don’t hate it as much as I expected to. In Trumpland that is the best that we can hope for.
