Those of you who are regular
readers of my columns know that when it comes to bringing about change know
that there is the divide between the activist and the politician and that I've
always believed that the latter will be more effective. You might also know
from previous columns that in the past few months I've begun doing volunteer
work for Mary Peltola's campaign in Alaska because I wanted to do more in that
field.
What I've been doing has been as
difficult as I expected. But it's also given me firsthand experience of what
the difference between the two really is and why I can understand at a certain
level why so many people would prefer activism.
I've more than aware how
frustrated and upset people are that America of today and how so many people
could feel helpless and what to do something, anything, to bring about change.
So taking what I believe is the one thing that will get be the least pushback
from my position as a white cis male, let's say you decided to attend a No
Kings Rally.
I've done much to deride them over
the past couple of years but in a way I do understand the appeal. You go on a
website where one in your region is being held, you design some signs or
T-shirts and then you go. You spend the better part of a Saturday there, you
spend time with people who complete agree with you, you get to express your
contempt for the President in a loud and unfiltered way. You're covered by
certain TV stations who share you point of view, you get a lot of coverage on
social media and then you go home, thinking that you've struck a blow being
part of 'the resistance'.
My personal feelings aside I can
get at an objective level why people would want to do this. It's an outlet for
your genuine feelings of frustration; the amount of effort you have to put in
is relatively little (I'll get to that) and you immediately get the dopamine
hit of feeling like you've achieved something because you see it on TV or the
internet. You haven't actually accomplished anything – Trump is still
President – but it feels like you've done something important and for
all my criticisms of that approach I understand why that would matter to a lot
of people. It does satisfy the immediate idea that you've accomplished
something and the fact that you've spent the day surrounded by people who agree
with everything you say makes you feel that you are part of something.
And that's the difference between
activism and politicking. In activism, you are always surrounded by people who
are in lockstep with your point of view and there are clear differences between
who's on your side and who you're against.
The activist has a very binary view of the world and there is a comfort
in that. But that is the very thing that
almost always limits any good the activist can do. As long as there is your
side and their side and you're the one who can permanently define the other
side as the enemy you can spend your life in activism and never have to leave
your bubble. I don't deny there's an appeal to that; in my own life its always
been very hard for me to leave the safety of my comfort zone in almost
everything. But as a way of making the world a better place, it's only going to
feel like you're changing things. You're never going to actually change them.
Now the last month or so I've been
working the phone banks for the Peltola campaign. At this stage of things we're
mostly trying to call former Democratic voters in Alaska who may not have voted
in an election or two and get them to come out in the fall. This is harder then
it sounds and in the few times I've done it I can assure you it's not that
easy.
I've joked to my friends and
family that this experience has given me a respect for telemarketers that I
never had. And that's what working the phones for a campaign is like. You're
cold calling from a list (or the
campaign is doing it for you in a sense) you wait and see if someone will pick
up (a lot of the time it goes straight to voicemail) and if they do you have to
read from a script to see if they'll talk. In most cases they will hang up on
you very quickly. And while I've had several people say they will be
voting for Peltola for all I know its just something they're saying to get me
to leave them alone. Some have actually said they want me to take them off
their list and I've talked to more than a few people who've moved to other
countries. This last week I talked to someone who'd moved to Costa Rica a while
ago.
By contrast to being an activist
where you immediately get the feeling you've accomplished something if you're
working for a campaign you have to deal with rejection far more often. And I'm
doing this from the comfort of my own home on the other side of the world. I
have immense respect for those people who are leading the campaign in Alaska
and have uprooted their lives to work for this candidate. (I've met a few and
in a different article I'll probably discuss them.) These are people who will
have to spend a lot of time organizing campaign events and voter outreach
events in the biggest and densest state in the Union, never mind just how
horrible the weather is on most days. It's difficult enough for me to make
these phone calls; I can't imagine what it will be like to travel to Nome or
Anchorage in September or October.
And even the successes you achieve
as a campaign worker are in a sense more ephemeral than the activist. In all
the sessions I've done so far I think at best I've convinced maybe ten people
to vote for Peltola in November. I'm not denying every vote counts in an
election, especially one that by this point every political website is ranking
as a toss-up. But even in the best case scenario I'm not going to know if I
made a difference to the campaign unless we end up winning in November – and
the thing about politics is that nothing is carved in stone.
This is something I'm aware of.
Alaska may be more of a purple state then we try to say it is but it's still
going to be an uphill fight to get Peltola elected. A lot of it will depend on
the grass roots efforts on the ground but I'm fully aware that Dan Sullivan has
the advantage of incumbency in a state where Democrats have a difficult time
winning elections. Mary Peltola has proven that it is possible for that happen –
she has won elections twice in a district Trump carried – but there's a
difference between 'possible' and 'certain'.
Even from the relative comfort of
my home in New York I have no illusions how difficult the work I'm going to be
doing is. And this is just trying to win over former Democrats. In the weeks
and months to come I'm going to have to try to win over Independents and
Republicans and try to convince them to vote for a Democrat. That's not going
to be fun and it will have less rewards.
But that is the very reason why
the political approach is the one that is necessary to building real change. As
an activist you can easily torch anyone who might even have questions about
your approach and being undecided makes you as bad as the opposition. The
politician doesn't have that luxury. Their job is to build coalitions, not just
when it comes to getting voters to elect you in a ground game but if you
actually want to bring about the lasting change that so many activists demand
but almost never get for their efforts.
As we've all become more painfully
aware in the last decade in particular bringing about lasting reform is a
never-ending marathon, a race you can never stop running because the opposition
is just as determined to keep tearing down all the victories you thought you've
achieved forever. It is understandable that many people would feel overwhelmed
and lost – indeed I've talked to quite a few Alaskans who said they would vote
for Peltola because they genuinely do feel that they're drowning in bad news. And
I get the impulse that so many people, particularly the young have, that they
need to do something, anything. But there's a difference between doing
something immediately and doing something that's actually constructive.
The former makes you feel good in the moment but nothing has actually
changed in society afterward. The latter takes far more time and effort, almost
always has more negative experiences on a daily basis that positive ones and at
the end of the day, there's no guarantee of success.
It's for that reason I have
immense respect for the people in the Peltola campaign – and not just them. The
ones working for Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Josh Turek in Iowa and James Talarico
in Texas. All of them are going to be fighting uphill battles in climates that
have a long history of being unfavorable to the kind of reform America needs.
If you've read my articles about them over the last several months or know
anything about politics in general, you know exactly why this is the case.
There are rarely moments of glory in the work they'll be doing in the last few
months and very little of the media attention that the anti-Trump rallies have
gotten and will continue to get. But if they succeed, they will have played a
part far more important in bringing about the kind of long-term change
activists desire but never do with their marches and rallies.
As for me, I will keep doing the
work. To paraphrase a former President I choose to work for Mary Peltola and do
the other things not because it is easy but because it is hard. That's the real
difference between activism and grass roots politics. It's a lot of work but if
you do it right the rewards are significant and glorious even if you never know
for sure the role you played.
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