Post Carding and Early Voting               

It’s been an active month or so of post carding with a group of optimists, organized by Simon Rosenberg and the Hopium Chronicles Community. We gather Thursdays in the late afternoon on zoom as a growing group of 300 to 500 members to phonebank and post card. (When did postcard become a verb?) The Hopium community is now more than 120,000 subscribers on Substack and I know that I wait for the daily updates and interviews with Democratic candidates and campaign leaders that he brings to us as the days of the campaign roll on.

In the remaining month of the election, we have been encouraged to continue writing postcards outside of the framework of these weekly meetings and to not leave anything on the table heading into the election, and I have been writing a lot of postcards. Yesterday, I was continuing to write to folks in the Lancaster and Palmdale area on behalf of George Whitesides (CA-27), who is running for Congress in that area.

Post carding is a remarkably Zen activity. You become aware of the flow of your pen on the card, the ink globule that seems to be forming on the left side of the pen nib threatening to mar the tidy flow of printed entreaties to Vote Early and Up and Down the ballot for Democrats; the remarkable strength of your hand and when it flags; ridiculous things like the size of the address numbers on streets that otherwise sound bucolic and tiny.  I found myself wondering about what the street looked like that had a number like 44376 as a street address but was still called something like Bumblebee Court. Where was this person? How far did they have to commute to their job? Were they even going to be receptive to my pro-democratic encouragement? What were they doing as they read my unique two-minute scrawl in the batch of shiny campaign flyers in their mail that day? So remote from me and yet no doubt dealing with the same kinds of considerations we all face heading into this election. The vital importance of reclaiming power in the house of representatives. Through this process, the act of reaching out to our fellow electorate has been profoundly humbling and gratifying. When I get slightly numb, I’ll turn over the next card and say brightly, “Hello, Henry!” before turning down the face of the card to continue writing the message.

I started with a patriotic card, even before Democrats were aspiring to reclaim that brand from MAGA Republicans. I wondered if those early recipients of my cards thought it would be a republican message and might have been surprised to see my pro-Democratic message when they flipped it over.

I’m sure that other more artistically inclined post carders at Markers  For Democracy, for example, are decorating their cards with whimsy and flourish that is beyond my artistic skills. I hope that the folks receiving my plain cards with highlighted candidates’ names and instructions to vote early can tell that my entire soul is in sending them that message. I have sat with complete concentration (no tv occasional music) to share what I hope comes through as civic engagement and care. I absolutely believe in the Markers for Democracy  slogan: Saving our Democracy One Postcard at a Time. Their representatives are there for every Thursday with the Hopium cohort to support and train newcomers to the writing campaigns.

It is moving to be in the zoom room with the other Hopium folks on a Thursday night to occasionally look up and see people furiously scribbling away in their own boxes, and to listen to the uplifting and encouraging Simon Rosenberg as he shares polling updates and talks us down from the negative red ledge in so many of our minds. I truly appreciate his positive take on the polls and his refusal to succumb to doubt. Whereas in some it might seem naïve, with his vast strategic experience and depth of knowledge about how polling works, it feels fortifying and optimistic.

Today I took a break from writing postcards to deal with some life issues – filling out my mail in ballot so that I can deliver it to the LA Library dropbox for ballots tomorrow on the first day of voting in LA, signed up for Insurance to supplement my upcoming switch to Medicare, and other assorted but less important tasks. Tasks similar to many the recipients of the 80 million postcards that Democrats have written to folks in the battleground states. When we write, we win!

This evening, however, I joined a new Monday group to post card for Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown. “This year, the Buckeye State is at the center of the battle for control of the U.S. Senate. Ohioans must re-elect Senator Sherrod Brown, a champion for workers and the deciding vote on critical legislation. Voters there will also have the chance to change the makeup of the Ohio Supreme Court, make gains in the state legislature, and defend three battleground congressional seats.” Since I’d been writing for Congressional candidates, I decided I’d throw my ink into the fight for a Senator. I had a lovely time meeting the hosts of the zoom, and wrote about thirty postcards for Sherrod Brown.

At this point, I’ve done some forensic accounting, and all anyone will be getting from me is post cards. Yikes, it was a big year for donations!

Just a word on the importance of Voting Early: when you vote, the GOTV (Get out the Vote) rolls each day get the information about who has voted (not how you’ve voted, just if you have). Knowing that allows campaigns to utilize their resources to remind others to vote. So get out there as soon as you can for early voting ballot drop off starting tomorrow in Los Angeles and other parts of California! Back to the cards!

And if you aren’t already a subscriber to Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles Substack, I heartily recommend a dose. As Simon says, Do More, Worry Less. 29 days to go friends.