Hi Everyone!
HELL YEAH! We did it!
I’m writing to you after having slept an entire Sunday afternoon and into the evening. It feels good to finally relax after the longest Tuesday of all time. I’ll never forget four years ago when I dropped my daughter off at school the morning after Donald Trump was elected. In fifth grade then, my daughter was greeted by her group of friends who called out to her as soon as she got out of the car. They consoled each other, giving each other hugs. They too were in disbelief that their president for the next four years was going to be that guy on tv talking about grabbing pussies and calling Mexicans rapists. Later, I stood in line at the grocery store and I just started bawling. The cashier asked if she could give me a hug. I nodded, yes, and cried in the arms of a stranger in checkout lane two of the Lassens in Echo Park. It will probably be a few years before I can fully realize the trauma that was the Trump presidency. (I get to say that in the past tense!) After years of blatant white supremacy and utter incompetence, the misery of his presidency had become a kind of white noise. A sonic weapon that was probably slowly killing me inside. What will it be like to not have a fascist for president? What will it be like to have a president who can speak whole sentences? What will it be like to hate the president a normal amount?
Biden wasn’t my guy. I rode for Bernie. I knocked on doors for the primary, donated weekly. I went to his rally in LA. Chuck D was there. (Flava Flav wasn’t.) Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of BLM, spoke with a giant American flag draped in the background. It was weird to participate in democracy so whole-heartedly. It was the first presidential rally I had ever attended. Up until then I was a lesser-than-two-evils kind of voter. But I actually really wanted Bernie to win. And then, COVID hit. Bernie soon dropped out. My guy wasn’t on the ticket anymore, but it was pretty clear that Donald Trump was going to try to kill us any way that he could, if not by sonically damaging my insides with his white supremacist rhetoric, then by negligence. So I started making calls to battleground states with People’s Action. Every week I talked to voters in rural parts of the country. Besides my one uncle, who I occasionally trolled in my family zoom calls, I had not spoken directly with very many Trump supporters. Our job wasn’t to argue with voters on these calls. If they were a strong Trump supporter the directive was to just say, “Thanks for your time,” and move on to the next call. We were looking specifically for undecided voters to share with them the reasons we were voting for Joe Biden and to listen empathetically to their concerns. There was a script, but we were supposed to speak from personal experience, a method called deep canvassing. And so I found myself telling folks in rural North Carolina why I support Joe Biden--a middle of the road Democrat, the candidate I didn’t want.
Being involved in the election in this way was like telephonically slicing through a cross-section of America. The calls were pretty much representative of what we saw on election night. We knew that Trump won some of these precincts by very slim margins in 2016. Sometimes by just a handful of votes. These calls felt like they mattered. We had a lot of older folks on our lists, so even though we were supposed to move quickly through strong Trump voters, some of these elderly folks, who had been isolated in their home for months, just wanted someone to talk to. None of the campaigns were visiting these places and we were probably their most direct contact with any candidate. Though I saw Trump supporters online and often read their misinformed perspectives, it was quite another thing to talk to them and hear them nearly parrot the talking points Trump had been spewing the whole election season. Some voters really thought Joe Biden was a communist. And adding Kamala to the ticket really put people over the edge. She was the worst communist of them all! But over time, there was a noticeable shift. In the last month before the election, there seemed to be more undecided voters. Because they were surrounded by so many Trumpers, they really had no one outside their home to process these thoughts with. People hung up in my face less and actually wanted to have a conversation about their options. Some volunteers reported staying on calls for up to an hour. The shift was clear after the debate and after Trump got COVID. One caller stayed on the line with me and just wanted to talk about how both her parents just died of COVID that month and she was also sick. She wanted to vote, but couldn’t leave her home because she had to quarantine. Sounding resigned and a bit regretful, she let out a sigh and said that people didn’t take COVID as seriously as they should have. I hope she got better and I’m happy she gets to have a different president.
But mostly, I’m happy for the kids. I really felt that when Van Jones said it was going to be easier to be a parent that morning--that character matters. The Trump presidency has taken up a good percentage of our children’s lives. For most kids, he’s the only president they remember. They’ve learned that when you’re rich and white, you don’t also have to be smart or kind or qualified to hold the highest position of leadership in this country. Yes, the new president will also be rich and white, but I do believe he does genuinely care about what happens to the American people. I’m looking forward to a president who understands when you appoint people to cabinet positions and task forces they should have actual experience in that field. The kids know they are living in near-isolation because of Trump’s denial of science so I’m excited Biden is making moves to create a proper coronavirus task force. One that is not headed up by Mike Pence, a man whose involvement in addressing the pandemic is tantamount to that of a cardboard cutout. It will be a joyous day in this house when my kid can actually experience her first year in high school and I can go back to working my one job instead of also being the teacher’s aide, tutor, hall monitor, and lunch lady.
We won big. We defeated Trump! We got our first POC and woman VP whose parents are immigrants! But we still have a lot of work to do. We’ve learned what we can accomplish with mass mobilization. We’ve learned what it looks like to be there for each other when our government fails us. WE won this presidency and now we are going to make it work for us. So when Biden says things like, “I will support the African American community that supported me.” We have to say, you fucking better.
Signing off till next week! Shout out to my subscribers for joining me on this new endeavor. Connecting with you all right before the election was my medicine!
~j9
On the theme of the election:
My daughter Io, 10 years old, experiencing the beginning of the Trump presidency.
Halloween. October, 2016.
Some pre-election sentiments. March, 2016.
At Self Help Graphics preparing for The Women’s March. January, 2017.
The Woman’s March. January, 2017.
Me campaigning for Bernie during the primaries. It doesn’t even feel like it was part of the same election.
Our VP-Elect with her family.
Kamala Harris’s ancestral village in India offers prayers for her victory.
This victory speech by Cori Bush, Representative-elect for Missouri's 1st congressional district.
I was really moved by Mistah F.A.B’s freestyle about his skepticism of a new presidency.
No doubt this election was won because of the work of black folks and grassroots community organizers. This victory belongs to the people!
Stacy Abrahams’s fight against voter suppression in Georgia flipped the state and solidified a Biden presidency showing us how black women continue to do the heavy lifting of upholding our democracy.
We are not done. In order for Biden to get anything done he needs the Senate. There are two run off races in Georgia we need to support. Donate now to elect Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff and help Democrats take back the Senate.