By Susan Wiley
Dear Friends,
I spent a Saturday knocking on doors in East Norriton for the Montgomery County Democrats. The experience wasn’t at all what I expected!
To my surprise, folks were there from pretty much all over the Eastern Seaboard: Connecticut, DC, Vermont, Massachusetts. These folks drove in for the weekend, or the month. One fellow has committed to work the next 100 days in Montgomery County. These folks know that Montgomery is one of those purple counties that may very well decide PA and the outcome of the entire election.
We received detailed training from a fellow with a lot of experience doing this work. I downloaded an app to my phone that details the voting status of almost everyone in a particular neighborhood laid out on a map. And then we set out in pairs to knock on doors.
We visited only homes with a record of a registered Democrat. Some were married to Republicans or Independents.
I thought we were there to register folks to vote. During the day, the team must have knocked on close to 200 doors. There were only a small handful of new registrations. A larger number of people completed an application for mail-in ballots. Initially, I felt disappointed.
But this was only a small part of the story! We TALKED to people. We asked them what they were thinking about the presidential contest. These were regular people. A lot of undecided people. Old and young. A Sunday school teacher and a millennial covered with tattoos. Latinos, black and white folks, too. These people are different from the folks I hang with. They have different backgrounds and perspectives. We asked them what they care about, and they were happy to talk about it, even to uninvited strangers! Many of them seemed to enjoy our visit. Many of them thanked us for our visit and the work we were doing. One woman, a registered Republican, stuffed a bag of home-baked cookies into our hands!
I was intrigued and astonished. There are a lot of good people out there who are still undecided about the issues. Some of them are not clear that their opinion matters. We asked questions and listened to their points of view. They felt seen and understood. And what I thought was impossible occurred: There was connection!
This work is not for everyone. You need to be genuinely curious about the views of others. You also need a sense of humor! It helps to not take yourself too seriously. And then what happens is really magical! Strangers open their doors, tell you their ideas about important issues, entrust you with private information like their date of birth, and how long they have lived at this address, and thank you for coming. They feel connected. I don’t know if we changed anybody’s mind, but the connections were made. I can’t help but feel that this meeting of minds makes a difference. This is democracy!
Canvassing is an opportunity to meet other voters, talk about the issues they are concerned about and make a connection that will touch you and those you meet. If this work interests you, please join me and other volunteers for canvassing in Montgomery County by clicking this link. Then put on your sneakers, bring a hat and a bottle of water and off we go!
As Kamala said, “When we fight, we WIN!”