How Can I Return?

[bruorton]

For months -- about 8 months out of the past year -- I canvassed for Warren in NH. I'd never done that before, not for any Presidential candidate: knocking on the doors of strangers, trying to figure out how to assess in about 2 seconds what sort of approach might keep them from shutting the door on me, could just maybe interest them in opening up and considering what I had to say.

Most of the time, the doors stayed closed. No one was home, or at least not answering. (This is what writers call "a metaphor.") And every time that was the case -- every single time, I am not kidding -- this introvert who felt deeply uncomfortable about doing this at all, would feel a little rush of relief, followed by a surge of guilt at my own relief.

And when the doors did open, it was rarely to a warm reception. They didn't want to be bothered. They didn't want to discuss the topic. They just wanted the primary over, so they could vote against the President. They were supporting other candidates. They liked Warren, but believed the country just wasn't ready to elect a woman. And so on. In all that time, I can count on one hand the number of genuine, open-minded conversations I had with actual undecided voters. By and large, it felt like an exercise in futility. Almost every time I returned to Warren HQ concluding yet again that I was terrible at this, and baffled as to how it could be truly helping in any way.

But it was what the organizers needed volunteers to do, so I kept doing it (often asking myself why I was still doing it) month after month, taking time off from work to do so. In a blizzard in December, I was the only volunteer to show up that day, because that was the day I drove my carpool during the week, so that was the only day I could come volunteer. I walked a trailer park in the snow, my fingers getting so cold I could hardly record the data in the canvassing app on my phone.

I'd like to say I kept at it because I was so inspired by her, or because I believed so deeply in the mission. In the abstract, sure. But day to day, I just don't think that cuts it.



In the last few months of this time, I listened to pretty much nothing but May Erlewine's last two albums while canvassing, Mother Lion and Second Sight, in the short stints as I drove from one cluster of target doors to another. There's a lot in those albums about grief and change, of many sorts; in the latter it is linked explicitly to the heartbreak of what is happening in our country. (One of the songs is actually dedicated to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.) Those songs kept me going through the last month or so, and especially in the last week before NH voted, when I knew that the race was already lost, and that I was acting simply to see this thing through.

One of those songs, the last one on Second Sight, is "Afraid," and it felt a little like an anthem for Warren's campaign: "I won't be afraid to believe/show me a future that I want to see." If I had the skill with video editing today, I would have put a slideshow together in memoriam of her campaign set to that song: of her proclaiming "I am not afraid" and asking others to take the same leap of faith; of the huge crowds of the people who did; of the selfies and personal calls she made to supporters; of Bailey (of course); of the young girls Warren pinky-promised with, that they would remember that running for President is something girls do; of the teenager in tears asking an unprompted, apolitical question about wrestling with identity and Warren's instinctive response: "give me a hug."

Can you tell I've thought about this a lot? I've thought about it a lot. I wish I had that video-editing skill. I wish I had a gift for canvassing, too. I've learned a lot about it, but I'm still not good at it.

So why did I do it? Why did I keep doing it? The truth is, the closest I can come to a reason is in another song from that album, "How Can I Return." That song is about a lot of things; alienation, the loss of innocence, the realization that there's no going back to a more simplistic, rosy-colored view of America, that the only way out of the darkness is forward, and through it.

But there's a line that always catches me short, right at the beginning: I am pledged to the broken dream. This country has broken its promise in a billion different ways to at least as many people since it was formed, but it is because of countless people of good will and persistence that we have come so far in pursuit of its dream. As I said to someone this morning, I worked to help make Elizabeth Warren President despite my doubts that my country could elect someone like her, because I would be damned if I was not going to do something to help build a country that one day would. Because as Rebecca Solnit has said, hope has to be something that moves us to action, because to act in hope is the only thing that makes living in this present bearable.

And as Warren has now said, that fight will go on, because this cause was obviously always much larger than her. This fight goes on because it must, because it is about our survival, and about all of our futures. Even when the end of each day feels like a defeat, even when we're uncomfortable with the task we are given, or are not very good at it. Because to keep fighting is all that makes the present moment bearable.

In the darkness, we wait for the change. But we will fight for it, too.

 

Comments

[kaph]

I don't know that I read this at the time, but I love it.