5 days left: protect your mental health by doing something

“Each time I see a poll that makes me nervous, I just think of the faces of the voters I met who never get included in polls”

If you haven’t yet talked face-to-face with someone at high risk of not voting this year, do yourself a favor.

Yes, you are doing the voter a favor, too.

Yes, you are helping save the country from Donald Trump’s cruelty, bigotry and lies.

But in addition, you won’t wake up in a week feeling ashamed you did so little when the danger was so great.

It’s not too late. Sign up here to help in Philly: https://www.mobilize.us/ctc4progress/

If you’re uncertain, listen to one of our newer and most inspiring canvassers, Gabe, telling you what he discovered this year when—for the first time—he got more deeply involved.

Dave:

What were you feeling before you got involved?

Gabe:

In the first half of the year, I felt very conflicted and also extremely anxious. I was trying to not be involved.

But in June or July, I had to do something, so I thought, I will do the easiest thing: "I will write letters." I at least felt I was putting pen to page, and that eased a little bit of the anxiety. But after the debate and then the first assassination attempt, my head was full of cotton, brain-dead. I think it was the way Trump turned the assassination attempt into this fight thing, a sign of his bravery, a photo op. And watching the polls was the most anxiety-inducing. I couldn't really think about what I was doing day to day, I was feeling a little bit of panic because in my internal dialogue I noticed, "Ok, Trump has a very good shot at getting back in the White House."

I thought, “What am I really doing?” I knew that letter writing was good, but not nearly as good as having conversations with people.

Dave:

No one wrote you back, right?

Gabe:

No one wrote me back, not at all.

Then I started canvassing in July with Swing Left, but they didn't have canvasses every weekend in Pennsylvania. So I needed more canvasses. As I was looking around, I found The Philadelphia Citizen’s review of Changing of Conversation, which then led me to the impact report and realizing just how cool it was to see the data behind this. With other outfits, I just would give voters this information about down-ballot candidates, but I was very uncertain about the impact. Being able to see numbers and that impact report was like, "Okay, this is something."

And I also really liked the empathy aspect. Learning how to connect better with people was very attractive to me. When I was growing up, I felt insecure about my ability to make friends or to have deep and meaningful relationships. The whole idea of talking to strangers felt good, especially if I was going to relate to them on a deeper level. CTC’s deep canvassing spoke to that part of me that wanted to be better at that.

Dave:

An awful lot of people have the same fear that they’re not so good at connecting, that understanding other people can be hard—and that finding friends in adulthood is harder than they thought it'd be.

Gabe:

Yeah, totally.

Dave:

What you’re reminding me of is, when I was a boy—did you ever read comic books?

Gabe:

A little bit, yeah.

Dave:

DC had a comic called The Legion of Superheroes, it was quite a pantheon. And the one I really wished I could be was Saturn Girl. She had the ability to read minds. And when I was a boy, that's what I wished for, because I knew there were big gaps in my ability to understand other people. I don't know if that's exactly how you felt, but I think so many people wish they were better at connecting; but then they self-select individual achievement activities that ensure they never have to get better at it.

Gabe:

This is very true.

Dave:

Yet it's really not that hard to select activities where you will get better at connecting with others. It turns out human beings are good at learning how to do this.

Gabe:

Yeah.

Dave:

So going back, you tried letter writing, you tried canvassing, and then you wanted to try more canvassing. So did you sign up to come canvass with us not knowing anybody at all at CTC?

Gabe:

Yep.

My first time out deep canvassing with CTC, I met a guy named Noah who had just graduated high school and was like, "I'm going to vote for the first time and I'm excited." And I met two others who were about my age, one who we registered to vote, and both we signed up for vote by mail.

Dave:

What I'm getting from you though is it sounds like the very first time you went out, you did what we asked you to do, you liked doing it, and you had really wonderful conversations and connections.

Gabe:

I was shocked. As we talked and got to know each other, each person sat down and wrote down their information on a voter registration and vote by mail form in front of me. I realized, "There is a different level of trust that exists in this conversation." I've never experienced that before. And it was clear why: in both cases, we talked about people we love. One guy told me about some of his kids, and I shared about my sister.

Gabe:

I especially liked it because it reduced my anxiety. I realized, "A lot of these people are not going to show up in the polls I read. These are people taking actions towards voting—or now they are voting—and they are people who will not show up in the polling data." So each time I see a poll that makes me nervous, I just think of these voters’ faces, their stories, the conversations, in some cases the hugs they gave me. This is a lot better than me over-analyzing the polling breakouts and trying to read the tea leaves and obsessing about other equally uninformative things that make me want to cry.

That was when I realized, "Okay, I really want to do this every weekend in October."

Dave:

When you think back on all the conversations you've had with voters, what percentage give you hope that we're going to get past this crisis; and what percentage increase your anxiety about this crisis?

Gabe:

The vast majority, I’d say 90%, give me confidence that we can move out of this time of the country embracing authoritarianism. There's 5% where I couldn't get a clear read and another 5% is that occasional Trump supporter.

Gabe:

I've read a lot of Timothy Snyder this year, and one of his-ideas is, "Talk to your neighbors." Because in authoritarian societies, the point is to rip each other apart and keep each other separated. That's how authoritarians win. They remove the people's ability to build a coalition and trust each other.

In June, I moved into a new place and I started to talk to my new neighbors in my elevators. I would say hello to people I passed on the street. I had longer conversations with my deli man. And each time, I felt, "This is what we have to do to stop authoritarianism." So when I saw what CTC was doing, I was like, "Okay, these are the conversations, this is how we stop the bad guys. We talk to people."

Dave:

You're putting your finger on the single most important thing we do. When we talk and make ourselves vulnerable, it's easier for another person to see us, and then to trust us enough to talk about what really matters to them. And then we’ve connected.

I don't want to be too grand about it, but being able to increase connection and trust with other people might be a crucial part of the antidote for authoritarianism.

Gabe:

Yes, doing this reminds me: I have a voice; and I can use my voice to help others recognize that they have a voice of their own. There's no way out of this mess unless many more of us are speaking up together and coming together in communities and coalitions.

And speaking out online is not enough. Speaking face-to-face is the most powerful way in which we can find our own voice and tease out the voice of others, and to build a community where the fascists don't win.

Dave:

And why is face-to-face so different when it comes to doing this work from your own point of view? In other words, it's inconvenient for you to be in Philadelphia.

Gabe:

Yeah, it is.

Dave:

Yet here you are so you can be face-to-face. Why does face-to-face matter so much?

Gabe:

Because I've done a lot of phonebanking and letter-writing. Oh God, that was a cluster F.

Dave:

How come? Explain why.

Gabe:

When I am face-to-face with someone, I can smile and they can see that. I can ask them about their pet or their children who are running around. I can ask, “Are you coming back from church, and how was that?” These are the moments where I can see the person, and they start to see me.

Or when I'm at the bodega talking to my bodega guy and being like, "Hmm, we have 30 seconds, can we begin to connect? I wonder if I can elicit a story out of him right now?" It feels very fun. It’s almost a superpower, doing that mind reading, Dave, that you were talking about.

Dave:

I can tell you want to be Saturn Girl, too.

Gabe:

Oh, I would love to be Saturn Girl.

Dave:

Yeah, you can bring this to everyone you spend time with, from  family and friends, to acquaintances and to strangers.

Gabe:

And that's massive, because helping a non-voter turn into a super voter, that's how we start to create a structural difference in the electorate. So I love talking to folks on the street, especially for this election. Because this could be our last election if it doesn't swing towards Kamala Harris, and that would be really terrible.

Photo: Last weekend we had more than 400 volunteers come together to deep canvass. 200 were filling the church basement at this moment—many more than I could capture with my amateur camera skills, but hopefully you get the general idea.

Gabe:

And on the other hand, this could be the beginning of a new kind of hope, where all of us start talking and listening—where we keep changing the conversation. Because that’s the way we come together as a community, and as a country. It’s the way we realize how lucky we are to have each other.