Today, Yesterday, Tomorrow

Illustration from Cleo Wade

Today

“Oh, before we get off - do you have one more second?” my friend Hannah asked as we wound down our video chat. “Sure!” I said.

“I’ve been polling people. Do you know what you’re doing on November 6?”

“Election day?” I asked, thinking she wanted to know whether I was planning to volunteer with a campaign. “Sort of,” she said. “I’m wondering what people are planning to do that day but I’m especially curious what they’re doing that night.” As in, when results come in.

“Ohhhh.” I thought about it and then told her that in a perfect world, I’d either be at my friend’s Diwali-Election Night party after a day spent volunteering somewhere within driving distance, maybe for Lauren Underwood or Alberta Griffin, somehow having figured out carpools and breast pump logistics, or I’d have pulled a total escapist move, hopped on a plane, and be staring at the sunset with my sister and baby and cousin in Los Angeles. “But what’s most likely,” I said, “is that I’ll have done some phone and text banking remotely, and voted by mail. And I’ll be on the couch glued to the TV and Twitter way too late that night like I was in 2016, and wishing I had done more, only this time I’ll take breaks to run up and down the stairs and feed a baby.”

Hannah didn’t have a game plan yet either. By the time we ended our conversation we’d covered the possibilities of intentional solitude, aka minimizing the distance between the firehose of news to our beds; loud and communal visceral experiences like bonfires and piñatas; and seeking out live comedy or music in the following days, no matter the results. (Life is so different from a decade ago when I lived in DC and all the options would have been election watch parties complete with drinking games at bars or in friends’ rowhouse living rooms.)

I liked the question and so I polled three friends in the days that followed. Each was initially stumped, like I was, but then (I think) sort of grateful to have been pushed to make plans, like I was.

Today I asked my friend who’s hosting the combo Diwali-Election Night party what made her combine these occasions into one. She explained that originally she wanted to host two parties: one for Diwali, because she’s been meaning to make that an annual tradition, and one for election night. “Then I realized that Diwali falls on the day immediately after the election,” she said, “and then I started thinking about how Diwali is about good triumphing over evil…” She said she’s thinking about having some coloring pages, and is checking whether sparklers are legal in Illinois.

Yesterday

In November 2016, I:

• Boarded an early-morning bus to Iowa on the Sunday of GOTV weekend, knocked doors all day for Hillary, encountered very few people and even fewer enthusiastic folks, felt my gut and heart sink.
• Did a LOT of online community moderation for, ahem, Pantsuit Nation. (THAT story will have to wait for another time. I haven’t been involved since December of that year.)
• Took off work on E-Day, donned a blazer and red lipstick, allowed myself a little heart-shimmy as I listened to the friendly poll workers and cast my vote, posted a determinedly hopeful selfie to Instagram, and then went to make calls to swing state voters from the side room at Ann Sather, which had been closed to cinnamon roll-buying customers for the day for this purpose. That night I went to my work-exchange shift at the yoga studio, having failed to find a sub. After class I felt pessimistic about early returns and I remember stopping by Jewel. It was eerily quiet, the fluorescent lights were extra terrible. I was there for cough drops but I spent a long time in the liquor section.
• Went home. Sat on the couch with said liquor and my laptop and barely looked at the TV; instead I read and clicked clicked furiously as thousands of pantsuit selfies poured into the moderation queue. I participated in the mods-only backchannel chats where people’s moods had long since shifted from confident optimism to shock and disbelief and were now moving toward rage, despair, and vows to always love each other and fight for one another. Old friends and I sent emails that were just subject lines: “checking in. everyone breathing?”
• Went to work very early the next day. Wondered who on the train platform had voted for Trump. I worked for an interfaith organization then, one filled with colleagues who were lovely and loving, many of whom held identities that Trump’s base would sneer at, chant threats toward, legislate against, and worse. We held an impromptu support group between our cubicles. When the VPs arrived they asked us to move to the kitchen, then sent an email saying they didn’t expect us to get much work done that day and that they would put the news on in our largest conference room for those who wanted to watch coverage of Hillary’s speech later that morning.

I hadn’t thought about all of this, really thought about it, for a long while, but Hannah’s question opened the floodgates.

Remember SNL that week, with the broken hallelujahs and the skit with Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, and all the increasingly crestfallen white people?

Remember crying in the shower that weekend, composing an impromptu protest song/funeral dirge with a low refrain about how hard we would fight, how we wouldn’t fail to show up? (Um. Just me?)

I remember inviting a big group of folks to a “mini retreat” at my home the following weekend. I remember plotting out and creating signage for different zones: obviously a big “eat our feelings” area in the kitchen, a craft supply pile on the dining table, the guest room was transformed into a nap/meditation room complete with white noise and no light but the glitter of the disco ball, and I had stations for making online donations, writing postcards to Congress, even composing letters to our future selves (which I saved and mailed months later). WOW, was my effort earnest. What actually happened is we all just converged in the kitchen and talked.

I remember that week or two strongly. And then I have a lot of vivid memories from January and February 2017: Obama’s farewell speech, inauguration day, the Women’s March (and on the same day, a huge teach-in about the Chicago Police Department investigation and consent decree), the airport protests…

But what a strange, surreal season that in-between time was. December so often gives us a pass for some hibernation. But I remember a restless, urgent energy, and having a zillion tabs open, and doing a lot of interrogation: What do I have to offer? Who should I be collaborating with, and on what? What are some things that are outside my comfort zone but I need to suck it up and do them anyway? What pieces of responsibility do I hold for all of this?

Tomorrow

So…What are you doing the evening of November 6? What do you need to put in place for yourself for that week? And the days immediately following?

Is there power you hold? Can you make someone’s life easier? Say you’re someone’s boss: can you give them space on hard days, maybe even time off, no questions asked?

Or maybe it’s more useful for me to ask: How are you making the most of these final days before the election? There are SO MANY ways to help get out the vote. I will help you brainstorm if you want.

And then: what longer games are you playing? Can you volunteer with something like this? Should we pre-order this handbook and have a book/action club about life in post-Roe America?

I sincerely want to know. I wish I liked my own answers to some of these questions better.

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