I turned a one-way pen pal for democracy in 2018, writing letters and postcards to strangers within the lead-up to that yr’s midterm elections.
I had spent the months earlier than marching for girls, science, immigrants and Muslims. Then I made a decision marching wasn’t sufficient. I wanted to interact particular person Individuals about electing politicians who shared my values.
In order that September, I attended a grassroots occasion to study volunteer voter outreach hosted by a Los Angeles group known as Civic Sundays. We might select to learn to knock on doorways, name and textual content potential voters or write postcards to interact individuals.
I’d by no means heard of writing postcards to strangers as a approach to encourage them to vote. However I used to be charmed by the considered an analog technique of saving democracy. Civic Sundays and different organizations, a lot of which sprang to life following the 2016 presidential election, provide volunteers with lists of names and addresses of registered voters. The writers provide penmanship, stamps and typically the postcards themselves.
I joined a big desk of individuals with seemingly professional-level glitter and Magic Marker abilities. Whereas their postcards regarded like illuminated manuscripts, I painstakingly struggled to make mine legible. A fourth-grade trainer as soon as advised me my writing resembled a hostage taker’s ransom notice, however thankfully, I didn’t need to take a handwriting check to get a seat on the postcard desk (some organizations do really require one).
I discovered the work relatively healthful, however I wasn’t bought on the concept of making an attempt to interact a inhabitants that couldn’t be bothered to vote.
The extra postcards I wrote, the extra I began to marvel: Who had been these rare voters? Why weren’t they doing their civic obligation? If I regarded their deal with up on Google Maps, what would I see? Unmown lawns? Gated mansions?
I turned racked by a want to know who precisely had been these shirkers of civic accountability. However we’d been given clear directions: Don’t personally interact the recipients of your missives. As an alternative, we adopted a transparent and concise script of only a few sentences.
I participated in one other postcard-writing marketing campaign for the 2020 presidential election. This time, I particularly requested names from a swing state, Michigan. As I wrote to those strangers, I turned more and more annoyed, imagining them having fun with their weekends with no scintilla of voting guilt whereas I agonized over whether or not they is likely to be offended by a postage stamp with a cat on it.
After I talked about these frustrations to a cynical pal, he advised me to learn the Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s well-known 1966 “Letter to a Young Activist.” I ought to have been suspicious, seeing as my pal could be the final individual to write down a postcard to a stranger. Positive sufficient, Merton’s phrases didn’t reassure me in regards to the destiny of my postcards. “[D]o not rely upon the hope of outcomes,” he wrote. “When you’re doing the type of work you have got taken on, primarily an apostolic work, you might have to face the truth that your work will probably be apparently nugatory and even obtain no consequence in any respect, if not maybe outcomes reverse to what you count on.”
After studying Merton’s letter, I spent some months not writing the scofflaw voters of Michigan, Georgia, Arizona or wherever else.
However when the 2024 election marketing campaign began up, with the way forward for the nation as soon as once more on the poll, I requested for one more postcard listing.
This time one of many selections was to write down to individuals in my very own state, California. This felt extra like writing a neighbor than somebody distant and completely unknown. As soon as I had my listing and began studying the names and addresses, I spotted a few of my postcards could be going to individuals who lived close to the city the place I work.
After which it occurred. I acknowledged a reputation. The Gen Zer who wanted a nudge to vote was one among my considerate, succesful college students.
I lastly had a solution in regards to the individuals I used to be writing to. They had been identical to the remainder of us: single singles and matriarchs of massive households, individuals who drive electrical automobiles and individuals who drive massive vehicles, charming individuals and worsening individuals and neighbors who performed their music too loud however had been candy with their youngsters. Folks so busy main their lives they generally forgot or opted to not vote.
Recognizing only one identify made me sure I needed to preserve penning these epistles of democracy, to maintain reminding others, even when they didn’t hear or need to hear it, that their vote mattered. With new perception into Merton’s well-known missive, I needed to put my belief in, as he put it, “the worth, the rightness, the reality of the work itself.”
Melissa Wall is a professor of journalism at Cal State Northridge who research citizen participation within the information. This text was produced in partnership with Zócalo Public Sq..
