I Show Up Because I Want To Be Able To Know That I Did. Also, A Healthier Election Anxiety Coping Mechanism Than Cupcakes.
6 days left in the 2020 election - do you want to look back and know you did everything you could to get Biden and Harris into office? We’re hosting virtual phone banks from 10 am - 7 pm every darned day until the end - join us and channel that election anxiety into action!
I’ve been asked recently if I am feeling positive about next week. Honestly? No, I’m not. With Amy Coney Barrett forced through to the Supreme Court with a week to go before the election while voting rights and ACA cases sit in waiting, ready to be decided on, while Merrick Garland’s nomination languished 293 days in an election year without an up-or-down vote, I’m not feeling great. With the USPS now slowed to a crawl, and the Texas Supreme Court siding with the governor to allow only one ballot drop box per county, I’m not singing from the roof-tops. With the Trump administration essentially giving up on containing COVID and continuing to host super-spreader events across the country, I’m definitely wrapped in a self-imposed blanket of anxiety. And don’t get me started on the concerted voter suppression occurring in swing states…
But we do the work. We show up every day, ignore the polls, leave Twitter unopened (or try to), and do what we can in the days we have left. And yes, I imagine I’m a bit of a broken record right now, but this matters to all of us, even if you feel like it doesn’t impact you.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why I’m back on the organizing train, spending much of my free time helping others learn to call strangers in swing states. As I tell the phone bankers I train, I do this every day because I am an immigrant, I have pre-existing conditions and the ACA is a matter of life and death, and I own a uterus that no one else should have the license to legislate. Those are my very personal and selfish reasons I show up every day. This election means everything to me.
So why are you showing up? Or, more to the point, why aren’t you?
To the internet.
Dad of the Missive sent me this 1v1 convo between Hillary Clinton and Kara Swisher and it is excellent and after everything Secretary Clinton went through, I have no idea how she is seemingly more optimistic than I am about this election (and my goodness, I wish everyone could have seen how forthright and blunt and funny like this she is in 2016): Hillary Clinton Say It’s Different This Time.
This is awesome: The University of Cambridge and the UK government created a game that “pre-bunks” COVID-19 conspiracies called “Go Viral!” It’s quite informative. Send this to your masking-abhorring family and friends!
Over at conservative Never Trump pub The Bulwark, Charlie Sykes captures the energy that many of our phone bankers are encountering when the get yelled at by supporters of the other side: “Voters will back Trump not because he stands athwart history, yelling “Stop,” or because he offers a compelling vision of a Trumpian Morning in America, writes Lowry, but because he is a giant opportunity to say F*ck You to the media, academia, Hollywood, professional athletes, and entire world of woke culture.”
Have you been watching The Vow, the HBO series on the NXIVM cult in upstate New York that involved a sub-cult of women branded with the initials of the male founder? Because you absolutely 100 percent should, it is an EXCELLENT series. But then know, spoiler alert: Sex Cult Leader, Facing Life Sentence, Regrets Nothing and he was sentenced to 120 years in prison and a $1.75 million fine. Good.
Wash your hands, wear a mask, drop off your ballot, volunteer like your life depends on it, and be kind to each other.
xoxo Amy