Seeing the news every day can lead to outrage fatigue, and worse — depression, even despair at the daily onslaught. Fortunately, its primary season, and walking the streets for candidates gets you in touch with local committed dems.
Yesterday I hit the streets for the first time in a few months, walking for Victoria Steele, Pamela Powers-Hannley and Bruce Wheeler here in Tucson. The nice thing about walking for the primary, is you’re knocking on doors of registered democrats who typically vote in primaries, so pretty committed and positive people.
Here in Tucson it was already over 100 degrees out, which gave us excellent street cred! It wasn’t bad though, as we were doing a foothills neighborhood with spread out houses, and in a pair we drove to the foot of each driveway, then one of us hopped up to the door. We were in luck, and almost a third of the residences had someone home. One woman raised her arms and exclaimed “Hallelujah!” when I said I was walking for Democrats! It felt like meeting compatriots in a war.
Another kind homeowner invited me in for water and a chat, and we took time to talk over what issues were important to her (civil liberties, and bank regulation) and to talk strategy — she followed politics and read a lot, but didn’t know the ground strategies being used, so I was able to explain how the VAN works.
I also ran into a young woman with a bruise on her eye who looked like she had just been crying. I didn’t think quickly enough what to do, and just talked kindly and respectfully about the political issues, but then saw her out on the phone shortly after and offered her a ride. She didn’t need one, her brother came out to pick her up, but it made me realize that I should probably have offered help earlier. When going out knocking on doors, you have a chance to connect to people at an individual level, and maybe will find concrete and immediate needs as well as talking about the bigger issues.
While talking politics and handing out literature, we also had with us petitions to Outlaw Dirty Money here in Arizona. We have the “honor” to be ground zero in this fight, apparently there is more outside money being poured into Arizona to influence our elections than any other state. We are in the middle of a big push to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot to enforce transparency, which pretty much everyone can get behind. A few people who initially brushed me off were willing to sign the petition when I quickly explained what it was, including an Independent guy who couldn’t vote in the primaries.
At the end of the two hours we were out, I felt happy and more hopeful than I’d been in a while. Usually I connect here or at Civ.works (where we focus on practical policy initiatives) but being out on the asphalt instead of online really gave me a boost.
Would love to hear others’ “front lines” stories if you’d like to add in the comments! This is the tactical midgame, and finding ways to keep going strong is essential right now.