I, like everyone I know, am nervous about what's coming in November, and I feel so close to powerless that the distinction doesn't seem important.
I'm writing letters with Vote Forward, and I'll keep it up, but it's a faith-based form of activism: we send out the letters, we hope they'll make a difference, we'll never know if they did, and it remains possible—even likely—that Donald Trump will be our next president, again.
Meanwhile, I read the New Yorker so at least I get saddled with a better class of election anxiety, and I have the overwhelming sense that the country is slipping away from any form I can understand or empathize with, which may be the only universal sensation in America right now.
I learned from the New Yorker that lots of Muslim voters in Michigan are planning to vote for Trump, along with working class voters of all races in Pennsylvania. And I know that Democrats are now overwhelmingly a party of the college-educated, but I still don't get why anyone who isn't white would back Trump, who seems pretty clearly—to the extent that he isn't only in it for himself—to be only in it for white people. Like I said, I don't feel like I understand my country as well well as I used to think I did.
This autumn stretch of activism sucks. We send letters out, like setting messages in bottles afloat on an exiting tide, and then voters in a tiny number of states, most of which I've never visited, will decide whether we get Harris, or a man who has told anyone who will listen that he plans to be a dictator.
But what we do next doesn't have to feel like this.
Whether we spend the next four years in a Harris presidency or a Trump presidency, the work we need to do will be the same: to strengthen the bonds that connect our local community and build power by winning victories that make our city a more safe, abundant, and delightful place to live for everyone. Right now we ALL act like you'd expect people to act in precarious circumstances where nobody except those closest to you seems to have your back, and it doesn't seem like a good idea to trust anyone or anything all that much. Nothing will change unless we change how it feels to be alive right now. But we CAN change that, a little at a time, on our street, in our neighborhoods, across our city.
And if we do that, even a little, and other folks do the same where they live, we'll be in a better place four years from now, no matter what.*
Of course, this all feels urgent NOW but there's a lot that's urgent. Maybe in four years I'll read this post and think "well, I blew it again and forgot to build community" but I hope not.
*BUT a way worse place if Trump wins than if Harris wins, so I’ll keep writing those letters!