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| THE SHIT GOT REAL |
The Cavalry
As the early results curdle, I text my father three
words - This Is Bad. Like thousands of others, I’ve spent the last year
volunteering and working to elect Hillary Clinton. The long fight. The good
fight. The first fight I’ve truly thrown myself into, again and again. Election
Night finds me in southern Virginia, a ramshackle campaign office held together
by duct tape, off-white cracked paint, and five other community organizers.
Growing up, the evening news was my family’s sacred time. Six years old, I watch
a Palestinian child dive behind wreckage as gunfire crackles. Peter Jennings’
lullaby voice informs us that the child is unaccounted for. My father responds
to my text with two words - I know.
Hour
ago a packed office, trusty volunteers using an auto-dialer to rapid fire call
as many inconsistent voters as we can. After polls close in Virginia,
volunteers shuffle out. Well-wishes. Hugs. These aren’t my volunteers. My
volunteer team is two hours to the east, forty plus strong. Knocking on doors,
making calls, driving mini-sedans down dirt roads and into ditches. I love
them, unconditionally. Contact and register voters, recruit more volunteers so
they can contact and register yet more voters. That’s the job.
Before 2016 I had never
knocked a door, registered a voter, or cold-called registered democrats. The
vast majority of my volunteer team could say the same. On Election Night they
text me, celebrating our work and urging me to get some rest. We are a support
system. In twenty four hours our network
of activists becomes a network of grievers. “This fucking table,” a co-worker
says. To his left sits a card table covered in call sheets, pamphlets,
spreadsheets. Florida is called. He paces to the back room. Three minutes later
he strolls to the table, slamming it end over end. Paper flies like confetti.
He bends down, calmly propping up the table and returns each item to its proper
place one by one.
We
absorb the news differently. For a few hours we have the luxury of making calls
to the west coast states, absentmindedly dialling numbers as we crack jokes and
reminisce. Then we wait. Two co-workers cuddle on the couch, long past the
point of caring about subtlety. When the numbers start to tilt CNN reports that
the youth vote is disastrous. “Well,” I say. “They fucked us. Like they always
do.” A co-worker not even twenty screams back “This is not on us! Fuck you!” We
embrace in the backroom, wordlessly apologizing. Her eyes well. “I don’t want
to be crazy again. I can’t. My healthcare.” I hold her best I can, my arms
feeling entirely inadequate. “Me too.”
2010
was a big year for me. I graduated college. I moved abroad. I accidentally
overdosed twice. Severe depression, self-harm, a titch of anorexia thrown in
for good measure. Any serious depressive learns how to paper over their cracks.
Inventing convoluted cover stories to hide that they can’t or won’t stand up
and say “I am wounded, this hole cannot heal, I am tapped out.” When I mustered
up the courage to seek treatment I called up every health provider in
California. Some pitied me. Some laughed at me. Every single one rejected me.
Pre-existing condition, they said. I fell backwards. Years later, I steel up
the courage to dial a number to seek treatment.
Now that the Affordable Care Act has kicked in, the first provider sets
me up with an affordable plan within ten minutes. A month later I am properly
diagnosed as Type 2 Bipolar, mood stabilizers granting me normalcy again.
I was always a liberal. President Obama made me a
Democrat.
The morning after
Election Night I wake up, roll over in bed and immediately post a picture of my
medication on social media. “Pry These from My Cold Dead Hands,” I write. We
imagine political campaigns as a viper’s nests of careerists, striving to
accrue power with political voodoo. And while there are strivers and movers and
fake smiles, each and every campaign staffer has a story like mine. A Muslim
best friend bullied. A 9/11 Firefighter’s lungs slowly torn to ash. A girl
unaware she’s undocumented until she applies for college financial aid. I entered the Hillary Clinton campaign office
a cynic. I leave it an optimist.
I spent Election Night
quietly pacing, mumbling a single word over and over again. Brexit. Brexit.
Fuckin’ Brexit. I spent two years in England. I was not a fan. But in June, my
father finds me in front of the TV, watching Britain’s results roll in city by
city. I sob. This is it, I remember thinking. Trump’s blueprint. Resentment
over reality. The Culture Wars are done and buried. This is different. This is
intoxicating. The mythical unicorn of The White Working Class striking again.
Never doubt the capacity of people to fall in line. A shame they did not fall
in our line.
I do not blame those that
voted for Trump. I do not even blame those that enthusiastically cheered him
on, their own wrecking ball through the establishment. They did exactly what I
expected them to. My mistake was expecting that our voters would show up. That
in the face of such raw hatred they would rally. They did not. We did not. I
talked to disaffected Bernie Sanders supporters, who grew up without the fires
of the George W Bush administration. For me, Obama’s presidency was life
changing. For them, they wondered why their life had not changed enough. They
did not reach out to us, and we did not know how to reach out to them.
It is too easy for me to
be brought low by bitterness. We spent a year telling America that the building
was on fire. Liberals bickered about the color of the fire truck or the size of
the hose. And now that the fires burn bright, those same folks stand up and
have the courage to say that they are against fire?
The toughest day since
Election Night was last Saturday. Privately, former campaign staffers were
debating whether to attend the Women’s March. Some argued that there was no
time for dissent or despair, that we needed to welcome each and every new
voice. Others argued that those same voices abandoned us in November, when the
chips were down. That wound too raw, too congealed to even begin triage. I
thought about all those democrats who railed on facebook about the tyranny of a
possible Trump presidency but could not be bothered to volunteer. “I help in my
own way.” “I have a dinner party.” “This is all the free time I have.” but then
I thought about all of those who stepped up and stood with me. The volunteer
who texted me that he had to miss a phone bank shift because his wife was in
labor. Who came in the Saturday before the election clad in sweatpants and a
smile. His new-born daughter was six days old.
So I
marched. I drove to North Hollywood and parked over a mile away from the metro
station, a sea of pink hats and protest signs already in formation. I wear my
Clinton-Kaine shirt because I am stubborn and grieving (and it’s also a comfy
shirt). A middle aged woman with a
“Pussys have power” button hugs me on the train. She tells me that she’s so
happy to see young people involved, that her daughter is also “super” involved.
When I ask how, she tells me that her daughter attended four marches since the
election! I ball my fists, nails digging deep.
I stood in a crowd hundreds of thousands strong. The
cavalry had arrived. Standing against hate and bigotry. Failing to stand for
the first female president. Because emails. Because Benghazi. Because Bernie.
Because they didn’t know why but they just couldn’t trust her (Hint: she lacks
a penis). Despite that, I am swept up in the pageantry. My organizer mind
wonders where the clipboards are. The rest of my mind is humbled by the display
of solidarity. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll be okay. The crowd roars THE FUTURE IS
FEMALE. I roar back. A friend next to me takes off his sunglasses to wipe off
tears. We hug. We embrace. We stand together.
And then the crowd breaks
out into a chant of WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS. My legs shake. Hillary’s
message, the literal phrase she championed, echoed by so many of those that
slagged her name for the past year. Nationwide, the same voters that let her
down. That sat on the side-lines. That refused to volunteer when asked. That had
Better Things to Do. Her words on their lips. This feels like a violation.
Walking back to my car, I pop into a Walgreens and find a bathroom. I sob, deep
heavy chest wracking sobs. Someone asks me how they can help. I tell them to
get a goddamn time machine.
Eight
years ago we had the gall to elect a black president. Now we would pay the
price.
And
then, the cavalry really did arrive. My Dad, not one generally given to
sentiment, watches the news and tells me we will be okay. I ask why. “Because
when I grew up they were sending my friends home in body bags and shooting our
leaders. We will be okay.” A politically dormant friend mentions she’s making
five calls a day to congressional leaders. Her husband looks up dates and times
of town hall meetings for the republican congressman who represents his
hometown. Another friend attends a community event held at a mosque and meets
her local congresswoman. Someone asks me how they can help. I tell them how.
Election
Night. The results are official. Donald Trump will be our President. My
President. My 21 year old college intern sends me the electoral map of Virginia.
He’s circled in yellow our county, a blue blip in the southern Virginia sea of
red. He’s pledged to be an organizer in the governor’s race, fighting for
progressive causes. I know he’ll be better at this than I ever was. After a late night call, we lock up the
office and a few of us stay together. We drink cheap beer in a cheap motel.
A
co-worker leans back in his chair, the stress of tonight laced in his face. He
laughs until his sides hurt. “On the plus side,” he says. “In a messed up way,
I now know what I want to do with my life.” We clink half-drank PBR cans.
Let’s
go to work.
STEVEN TIMBERMAN is a graduate of KINGSTON UNIVERSITY, UK, and a writer based in America.
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