It’s November 5th, and I’m filled with nervous anticipation. After doing a few gardening chores in preparation for the winter months, I decide to do one last canvassing for Christina Bohannan, the Democratic candidate for our U.S. House seat.

In this work, I’ve felt a joy that comes from acting with a sense of purpose – whether helping University of Iowa students register to vote or knocking on doors for Kamala Harris and Bohannan, those two smart women who would strive, in my opinion, to make our country a better, more peaceful, more equitable place. For every person who has closed their door before I’ve finished introducing myself, for every student who has walked by, willfully ignoring me as I try to engage them – “Excuse me, have you registered to vote for this fall’s election?” – there are two, even three others who have gone out of their way to tell me how much they appreciate the work I’m doing. I have fond memories of moments shared with strangers…

*

The 79-year-old man slow to answer his door. A flag waving from his porch told me he was a U.S. Marine Corps vet. After I rang the doorbell a second time, I heard a faint “I’m coming, just be patient.” A full minute later he opened the door, leaning on his walker, wearing an oxygen cannula. I felt terrible about putting him out, but we conversed congenially. Yes, he’s voting because “we have to stop that man.” A friend will take him to the polls on election day. As I prepared to move on to the next address on my list, we thanked each other for our service.

The staff person at the front desk of Legacy Pointe, a senior living community, told me that of the four names on my list, only Ellen would be mentally competent enough to vote. I walked down the hallway to room 126 and knocked on her door. When a voice called, “Come in!” I entered, glancing around the apartment as I introduced myself, looking for the source of that voice. Through the open door of the bedroom I saw Ellen lying in bed. She beckoned to me, pointing to the wheelchair beside her. “You sit here. Now tell me your name again.” After I did, she said, “Your ancestors must be Swiss.” Indeed, my grandmother’s parents were Swiss immigrants, and my grandfather Duer immigrated from an Austrian town on the Bodensee a few kilometers from the Swiss border. Ellen had assumed she wasn’t eligible to vote, but I assured her she wouldn’t be on my list if she wasn’t a registered voter. She was excited to vote for Kamala, and I promised her I’d let staff at the front desk know she’d need a ride to her polling site.

All my experiences were not positive, but they gave me the chance to view the world from someone else’s perspective for a moment. I couldn’t see through the screen door into the darkened living room, but when I knocked, a rusty voice responded, “Whaddya want?” As I started to explain that I’d like to ask him a couple of questions about the upcoming election, he cut me off, “I’m not voting. We’re fucked either way.” Walking away, I tried to imagine what he must have gone through to become so embittered and cynical, how it must feel to live with that bile eating away at him. At another door I spoke with a young man who was frustrated by his voting choices, unwilling to vote for Trump but angered by the Biden-Harris administration’s support of the Israeli government as it rained hellfire on the Palestinian people. I sympathized with his dilemma, but offered that Harris had a better chance than Trump of brokering a ceasefire that would honor the rights of both sides of that awful conflict.

*

By eleven o’clock on Election Day, I’m heading over to the East Side Dems’ volunteer staging site on Ginter Avenue, where I pick up two packets of North Liberty addresses, about forty households. These are registered Democrats who haven’t yet gone to the polls, and my task is to encourage them to do so before eight o’clock. On the list are the names of a half dozen eighteen- or nineteen-year-olds, first-time voters. Although I don’t get to speak with any of them, I do talk to their parents or older siblings, and I’m inspired by the care taken to ensure those young people get to exercise their right to vote. “She and I went together to the polls early this morning.” “He’s driving down from Coe College this afternoon to vote with me.” 

When a hard rain at noon halts my efforts, I drive to the Bluebird Cafe, sit down at the altar of the all-day breakfast, and join the communion of diners. A few minutes later, my friends Barb and Del, also canvassing and taking a break from the weather, come through the door and join me at my table. We trade stories over sandwiches and omelets. 

An hour later I’m back at it. Israel is sitting in his pickup in his driveway. When I ask him if he’s had a chance to vote today, he gives me a thumbs-up and flashes a big smile. I’m knocking on doors in one of those housing developments that have sprouted up, seemingly overnight, around the fringes of North Liberty. The streets have been dubbed with the names of English cities and counties, as if to bestow on them some instantly classic traditions – Berkshire Lane, Canterbury Street, Lancaster Avenue, Radcliffe Drive. The last two houses on my list are on Yorkshire Street, which ends at the edge of a cornfield. Walking down the street, I’m surprised by a scene – ten kids between the ages of seven and eleven, boys and girls, White kids and Black kids, playing a game of street football. As I pass by and one team gets ready to kick off, I ask the score. “14 to 7 – they’re ahead.” I try to fire them up: “Okay, you kids got this!”

As I’m heading back to my car, still charmed by the sight of kids playing outside without adult supervision, a light rain begins to fall, even though the western horizon is blue sky. The late afternoon sun projects a rainbow on the dark clouds to the east. In Genesis, we’re told, the rainbow is a sign of God’s covenant with us, a promise to never unleash another Great Flood. I take this as a hopeful sign for the election. But during the night I dream of desperately trying to rescue two blue Tupperware tubs of ballots left in the parking lot of the First Mennonite Church polling site. And by the next morning, I realize that, for many of us, the rainbow was no harbinger of favorable outcomes.

*

The next few years will be dark times for these United States, but I won’t forget the uplifting experiences I’ve had these past few months. For me, the lyrics of a Fleet Foxes song by Robin Pecknold resonate: “I’d say I’d rather be/ a functioning cog in some great machinery/ serving something beyond me.”

Trump has crowed of a “landslide victory,” but we should remind ourselves he received 49.9% of the popular (i.e., actual) votes. (More people voted “not Trump.”) A victory, yes, but not a landslide, and certainly not earning him a mandate. As Trump attempts to form his cabinet of sycophants, people with little to qualify them other than their blind allegiance to him, as he backpedals on his promise to bring down grocery prices,[1] as he spitefully seeks retaliation against his political enemies,[2] I will resist in whatever small ways I can. The game isn’t over. Vice President Harris, in her concession speech, urged people “to organize, to mobilize, to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together.” 

Rather than dwelling on the endless post-election post-mortems, I’ve turned to and been heartened by two insightful activist historians. In his November 7th podcast interview with Heather Cox Richardson, Jon Stewart asked her to compare 2024 to 2016: 

I’m much more hopeful, [she said,] for in 2016 we did not have yet … any real systems of community and resistance, and those are now millions of people strong, and they’re not going to go anywhere…. We know what happens next, we know how to deal with it, and it’s not what we hoped for, but we’re not alone. 

I’m equally motivated by Rebecca Solnit’s message, from her book Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power: 

Your opponents would love you to believe that it’s hopeless, that you have no power, that there’s no reason to act, that you can’t win. Hope is a gift you don’t have to surrender, a power you don’t have to throw away.

During this season of electoral politics, I’ve questioned the motives and methods of many of our political leaders, but not those of the American people. I believe that if we can persuade ourselves to lay down the burden of our fears and apprehensions, we’ll recognize each other as people of goodwill and good hearts. I believe that if we can hold onto hope, others will leave the darkness and find us waiting for them in the light.

*

On a warm mid-November day, I’m planting a long row of garlic, knowing I’ll be able to harvest scapes in late spring and the garlic heads themselves by mid-summer. I’m also digging up dahlia tubers and canna lily bulbs to store indoors and harvesting seeds from purple coneflowers, cardinal climbers, milkweed, and the little orange-yellow zinnias I like so much – all to plant in new locations next spring. For me, gardening is one way to exercise my hope, to keep looking forward, to not give up. 

As dusk approaches, I’m on my roof, cleaning leaves from the gutters. I’m suddenly distracted by a steady chek-chek-chek overhead, loud enough to set the neighborhood dogs to barking. I look up to see a river of red-winged blackbirds, then another, and another and another, all heading west. My heart is lightened by the beauty and virtue of nature, and I hold onto that. It can sustain me.

Footnotes

[1] In a Time magazine interview published on December 12, when asked if his presidency would be a failure if he doesn’t reduce the price of groceries, Trump answered, “I don’t think so. Look, they got them up. I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard.”

[2] Already, Trump is suing pollster Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register for her inaccurate polling results, a thinly veiled act of intimidation against “mainstream media.”