WILDFIRES AND CARAVANS IN TRUMPWORLD

Let's see if I am understanding this. Trump has sent >5,000 soldiers to the border with Mexico, where they are sitting around doing nothing in order to keep the Caravan of people from crossing the border. Meanwhile, thousands of people are homeless as a result of the California wildfires, and many are camping in a Walmart parking lot.

In a rational world, the POTUS would send the 5,000 troops to California to build high quality temporary housing that would be warm and dry, and also some community service facilities. In fact, if needed, they could recruit skilled and unskilled labor from people in the caravan heading towards the US/Mexico border!

But Trump World is not a rational world.
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TRAVELING TO FLORIDA TO GET OUT THE VOTE

Lakeland, Florida is about halfway between Orlando and Tampa Bay. Six of us in our family, five from Portland, one from Lewiston, Maine, traveled to Lakeland to volunteer for a couple of Democratic party campaigns. Sounds like a crazy thing to do, but we all felt it was an important thing to do. Nephew Ken did the research, and determined that Florida is a key swing state, and this specific location is a key location. Democratic candidates had chances to unseat or beat Republicans for the U.S. Senate and House, for Governor, and for state Senate and House seats. 

We spent the three days before election day canvassing for Bob Doyel, candidate for Florida Senate, and Kristen Carlson, candidate for the U.S. House. We also left information and talked to voters about Andrew Gillum, the Democratic candidate for Governor, who had a good chance of becoming Florida’s first African-American Governor. There were many other races, and ballot measures for voters to consider, but focusing on one or two candidates gave us the opportunity to talk about voting Democrat all down the ticket and supporting worthwhile ballot measures. 

I’ll be honest, this was hard work. We Pacific Northwesterners are not acclimated to very hot and very humid weather. Several times a day we sat in our rental vehicles with the air conditioning blasting, just to try to cool down our bodies. And yet, we persisted!  The experience was gratifying, and we felt that we were helping take back our country - making America good again - MAGA! 

All of the neighborhoods in which we canvassed were either mixed demographically or majority African-American. We worked from voter lists of people who have voted Democratic in previous elections, using MiniVAN, a canvassing app for mobile phones that pulls up lists of addresses and voter names, age, gender, and other information. The information collected is uploaded to the database in real time, allowing canvassers to see which addresses, or “doors,” have been visited and what response was given. 

Over the course of three days, I estimate our group knocked on more than 1,200 doors. Many knocks went unanswered, in which case we left a campaign flyer, but many resulted in talking to people. We had many interesting conversations with people on their doorsteps. In middle class and working class neighborhoods we met kind and friendly people, many who started the conversation with some form of “we need to take it back.” In my experience, all of the older people I talked with had or were planning to vote. I also talked with a number of people who don’t vote, and they were mostly younger. As one African-American “neighborhood grandma” told me, these kids don’t understand the history of black folks not being able to vote, and the importance of every vote. 

We canvassers had interesting debriefings and discussions over beers, wine and bourbon in the evenings. We all feel that we made a contribution to the political process, and even convinced some people to vote who otherwise might not have. Grandson Max might have flipped a Republican voter - his wife is the Democratic voter in the household - to vote for Bob Doyel, the Democrat running for Florida Senate. We helped some people find their voting location, helped arrange free rides to the polls and gave one woman a ride to her polling place 30 minutes away, answered questions about the process (as best we could) and about who was on the ballot. 

We also understand the flip side of the political process, and how democracy in America is endangered not only by the political party currently in power, but by the inability of the process itself to change. We had a discussion at dinner one night, five very tired people (Eric had to fly to Chicago that day for business), about what needs to change if and when the Democratic Party gains control of the Congress and, hopefully in two years, the presidency. So many of the issues our country faces today have been growing issues for many years, under Republican as well as Democratic administrations and Congresses. The Democrats, too, have a hugh burden of responsibility for not addressing these issues and solving them. We understand that the goal is not, and should not be simply to put politicians whose names are followed by a D in office; this is partisan politics for the sake of partisan politics. However, and this is a big however, it was critically important for the 2018 election to vote for every Democratic candidate on the ballot, in order to apply the brakes to Trumpism. 

Our candidate, Bob Doyel, lost his bid for Florida Senate, as did the other candidates for whom we campaigned. We went to Bob’s election night party to watch the returns, and although sadness filled the room, Bob remained upbeat and proud of the the successes of his campaign in a sea of Republicans (he challenged the Republican incumbent for the Senate seat). He praised the work of staff and volunteers, many of them young, energetic and idealistic, and stated emphatically that his campaign was the beginning, not the end, of a change in Florida politics. Interestingly, the very high profile contests for U.S. Senate and Florida Governor are, as of this writing, still too close to call and ballots are being recounted. Florida is changing.

There were many successful outcomes for Democrats, and in my opinion for democracy, in this mid-term election. In Florida, a very important ballot measure, Number 4, passed. This will allow nearly 1.4 million ex-felons to vote in future elections. Bob Doyel and I have been conversing by text and email since the election, and Bob is looking at possible ways to work to get ex-felons registered to vote and informed about their newly won rights (rights that should never have been taken away). 

Democracy is a messy process, and for the Portland Six it was also hot and humid! Our experience reminded us of how complex our system is, that many people feel disenfranchised or simply uninterested in the process (one man shouted to me through his window that “I’m not political”), that too many young people, including people of color, don’t vote, and that partisan politics supported by big money is truly counterproductive to democracy. 

Onward to 2020. 

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AMERICA THE BRUTALFULL