How To Be A U.S. Citizen
A last-minute pep talk -- no matter what happens
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In early September, I asked what you were going to do about the election.
Since then, I’ve been doing it.
I spent a day canvassing with Seed the Vote; I’ve been phonebanking with Environmental Voter Project and other groups; I went to a postcard writing event with ClimateCafeNYC, and downloaded an app called SwipeBlue that allows you to message your friends who may live in swing states or need info on voting. It’s not too late to do this. In fact, the week before Election Day is the most effective time for get-out-the-vote efforts.
I’m not saying this to brag or virtue-signal. I’m simply playing catch-up, because the last two times Donald Trump was running for president, I had a job that formally prohibited me from doing any of these things. I felt so helpless.
At the same time, I’ve always had a complicated relationship to activism of all kinds.
Why activism can suck
It can feel boring, futile, awkward. On the phone and on the doors, at rallies, tabling at events, or even in meetings with elected officials, you are there to talk to people who don’t agree with you, dismiss you, or treat you like an annoyance—which, fair. You are basically interrupting people and being annoying.
Plus, there are no immediate outcomes, and no guarantees.
And yet
This is our work as citizens. This is our part to play, and we do it on behalf of the people who can’t: the children, the non-citizens, the people working endless hours for little pay, the people living in countries with no real elections, the people living in terror right now as American-funded bombs drop on them.
As I was going door to door in Philly, the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel after the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery came to me. “I felt my legs were praying.”
Activism is more like prayer than I realized. It’s a practice, a codified statement of intention. It’s powerful personally and even more powerful in the collective. You don’t expect an immediate result, but it does change the person who engages in it.
I was absolutely delighted to have my 8th grader volunteer to join me on the phones for a bit the other night. To hear them speak so confidently to strangers, and for this to be an activity that’s part of our family culture, where we work together to make a difference.
Most Americans are taught very little in school about how civil society works or the importance of social movements. We get a lot more messaging about our power as consumers than as citizens. No wonder we feel helpless.
No matter who takes the White House, we will have a ways to walk. On the one hand it’ll be pushing President Harris to slow fossil fuel expansion, interrupt the war (and the war crimes) ongoing in the Middle East, bring accountability to the Supreme Court and codify abortion rights, even if it means bending outdated Senate rules.
On the other hand, oy vey. Think Maidan Uprising. Taksim Square. Woman, Life, Freedom.
We need to prepare to gear up and show up in the immediate days and weeks after the election, given Republican plans to challenge any results they don’t like.
I had a baby the day after Donald Trump was first elected. While I was home on maternity leave, I created and offered a workshop called Effective Communication for Active Citizens. I want to leave you with some of the readings I collected for that workshop.
“How Trump and Putin Are Similar And Different, According To Masha Gessen”
“The strength of American civil society. That’s not just different from Russia. That’s different from any country in the world ever in history, right? America has the most independent, the most robust civil society ever…”
“A Yale history professor’s powerful, 20-point guide to defending democracy under a Trump presidency” by Timothy Snyder
1. Do not obey in advance.
2. Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf.
3. Recall professional ethics.
6. Be kind to our language.
9. Investigate.
10. Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.
11. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary social barriers, and come to understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.
12. Take responsibility for the face of the world. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.
Do something. But you can't do everything. By Mikki Halpin
Here is how I would suggest you take a step back and think about how you are going to be a changemaker now and in the years to come.
Think about all of the things swirling around you, all the opportunities you have to do things and act on your values and choose these three things:
One thing to be a leader on
One thing to be a follower on
One thing to make a habit of
It’s Easier Than We Think, by Ralph Nader
When are we going to understand how easy it is to change society? We come up with all kinds of rationalizations: you can’t take on City Hall; you can’t take on General Electric; you can’t take on Boeing. We do it to ourselves. Progressives spend plenty of time diagnosing corporate evil — which is ok; I’ve done it a bit myself — but they end up leaving people with a sense of futility, because they don’t show how little it takes to turn it around.
On at least two dozen issues you’ll find combined Left-Right support from 75 to 90 percent of the population. You’ll find it on breaking up the big banks; you’ll find it on civil liberties; you’ll find it on getting rid of corporate welfare and crony capitalism; you’ll find it on criminal-justice reform. [More Climate action. A ceasefire in Gaza. Some common-sense gun measures. Abortion legal in all or most cases.]
It all comes down to us. One percent or less of the population in Congressional districts around the country could reverse Congress’s position on most of these issues, as long as that 1 percent represents majority public opinion.
To be a serious bird-watcher is a huge commitment — the equipment, the details, the coordination with other bird-watchers. And there are about 5 million serious bird-watchers in the U.S. Can you imagine if we had just a million coordinated Congress watchers? It would transform the country. Just a million. It’s easier than we think.
Does this resonate? Let me know what you’ve been up to this election season.
Some links
My story about the resurrection of the American chestnut tree.
"What they’re proposing, over the next several decades or more, is no less than replanting the entire Eastern forest with a variety of genetically superior breeds, on the scale of millions of trees.
It sounds, at first blush, like a sci-fi terraforming scenario. On the other hand, Leigh Greenwood, at the Nature Conservancy, says every species group of tree in the woods is threatened by climate change. Pathogens are emerging in new territories, trees are stressed by extreme weather, and the coldest winter temperatures, which used to reliably kill off all manner of forest insects and diseases at the edges of their habitats, are getting milder."
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