A granola bar of a post, dense with electoral nutrition

Quick and impactful stuff for 3 weeks left.

I know we all know this, but AI is insane.

I’ve decided to break this post up into three “ingredients”: protein, fiber, and superfood. The superfood is pretty wild; be sure to make it to the end for my most unconventional proposal to date. ✨

The Protein: Relational Organizing

As you all know, I’m a hard core believer in canvassing—especially deep canvassing. In fact, I’m writing this from the street outside of a coffee shop after an afternoon spent having impactful, memorable conversations in Commerce City, CO, where I developed a much-needed spring in my step just knowing that my presence moved the needle for a number of people, which it definitely did.

Yay! This is, again, in CD-08, one of the two most toss up House districts in the country. Every single vote could prove decisive.

I’d now like to add to another, largely untapped approach to our collective toolbox that could make all the difference in this election, and we can do it from home: relational organizing (a fancy way of saying “mobilizing people you already know”).

If you don’t know about Micah Sifry’s newsletter, you should. He’s amazing. Sifry has done his homework. In a recent post, he recommended a few relational organizing apps, and I spent a bit of time checking out one of them — Reach — which is awesome but too cumbersome for me. I don’t think it’ll work with my network.

But the second one, SwipeBlue, is f-ing AWESOME. I’ve been testing it as I write this, just to be sure it’s worth sharing.

SwipeBlue is insanely easy to use, and — by all accounts — effective. (I sound like a toothpaste commercial). It pairs up your phone contacts (don’t worry! they’re not shared with anyone! No data changes hands!) with the voter database — including party affiliation — and pre-populate texts for you that you can then customize (or even rewrite from scratch) according to the nature of your relationship with that particular person. You can choose to sort friends in a variety of ways: those who live in swing states, pro-choice friends in states where people are fighting abortion bans, or even just letting people all over the country know that you voted early. It’s really amazing.

It can be casual and personal, but still targeted. The app keeps track of the number of conversations, and that kind of gamification really helps. Rather than one of the incessant and interchangeable texts from every campaign known to man, your contacts will see a friendly, encouraging text from YOU pop up, causing them to pause for a beat. I’ve just texted the first three people on my list; to be honest, I can’t quite remember who they even are. But screw it: if there’s a chance they’ll read the text because they remember ME, then maybe they’ll take an extra minute and make sure they’re all set, voting-wise. Maybe they’ll even sign up to do the same thing with their network.

Relational organizing is a powerful, underutilized tool. It really could make the difference.

Let me know in the comments if you’ve decided to try it! :)

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The Fiber: Yard Signs

(It’s “fiber” because it’s paper!) If you’re anywhere near Evergreen, CO and want a Harris/Walz sign, I’ve found the mother-lode of yard signs and picked up a whole stack of them. Let me know and we’ll arrange it!

Even if this isn’t real, it’s fabulous.

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The Superfood: Actually visualizing a win (stay with me here, LOL)

A screenshot from the Chobani commerical I talk about nonstop, a “nostalgic look towards a new era of agriculture, with beautifully crafted backgrounds, delicate animation and a completely unique score by long-time Ghibli composer (and absolute legend) Joe Hisaishi.”

This one is a bit nutty, but I am going for it because it’s going to take everything we’ve got and I see no point in demurring.

The MAGA folks are laser focused: they are like a kid with a mirror, harnessing the power of the sun to fry a bunch of ants on the sidewalk.

The Dems, however, feels a bit more, well, dispersed. I’m not going to get into specifics; I think you probably know what I mean. In contrast to the ant-fryers of the world, our vibe — outside of hard core politics — seems to tend more towards those essential oil diffusers. The Democratic “community” (at least as it feels in the day to day world) feels less targeted, more atmospheric, if only because it’s such a big tent that’s ideally capable of containing us.

I remember hearing about this crazy study when I was doing yoga and meditation training (I’m still doing both; just not training!), promoted by a Harvard physicist: the tl;dr is about the “measurable effect on the levels of crime” in Washington DC that were observed over a period of concentrated meditation by 4,000 practitioners.

The physicist claims there’s evidence to support the contention that crime went down by 18 percent as a result of their efforts.¹

I am not here to defend a 30-year old study. I just believe that we should try anything and everything. Especially because I fundamentally believe that in trying to imagine a better world and really connecting with how it feels, we have more energy to bring it about. My one-person experiment (me!) proves it. When I’m miserable about all of it, I do less, and what I do, I do rather poorly. But when I have even the smallest jolt of hope, I do 10x. That’s the entire recipe for me.

Here’s what I’m thinking: keep doing everything we’re doing. Knock doors, make phone calls, write postcards, and work this phenomenal SwipeBlue angle I’m discussing above.

But also.

I think we should organize a worldwide network of people to tune in — at the same time, every day — for at least a minute of

silent meditation

prayer

visualization

whatever-you-want-to-call-it

imagining a Harris/Walz win and the generative, regenerative potential that such a win makes possible (or, at the very least and as I see it, does not preclude).

Clean oceans. Clean air. Healthcare for all. Ceasefire in Gaza. Safe, robust schools. Abortion rights. Healthy soil, nutritious food. Inoculation against misinformation (which is different than censorship!). Main streets filled with humming small businesses. Prosperity. Human rights worldwide. A reinvigorated and accountable media ecosystem. Time to spend with family and friends around the dinner table. Live music. Peaceful coexistence. All of it and more! Whatever YOU imagine when you dare to dream that we are not, in fact, circling the toilet bowl but rather preparing to invite in a more just and healthy society.

I think we all spend far too much time worrying and dreading and far too little time dreaming, imagining, and building. Maybe we’re scared to dream and be disappointed, like Charlie Brown with the football. I get it. But I know that my entire day is changed when I work from a place of creativity and imagination rather than stress, angst, and horror, even when I do the exact same things.

[Note: I am WELL AWARE of the fact that many believe that a vote for H/W is a vote against Palestinians and for continued war; I understand, but I do not agree. I think Pinchbeck did a wonderful job outlining the problems with that argument, as have many others who point to the fact that Netanyahu wants a Trump win. It is my view that we need to elect Harris/Walz and then work like hell for the rest of our lives to end this war and revitalize our democracy in all the ways (as in, not go to back to our normal lives after voting them in).]

A final point before making it concrete: I remember only one bit of wisdom from my mountain biking days: focus on the rocks, and you hit the rocks. Focus on the smooth path between the rocks, and your tires sail right through. It never failed.

So my proposal is this:

At 8am EST every single day from now until at least the election (but maybe forever), set an alarm and focus for one minute on the direction you WANT our country/the world to take. Picture it in your mind; smell the clean ocean breeze, visualize a seamless Inauguration, picture money flowing away from the creation of bombs and towards the care and education of children. Whatever sounds good and right to you. Don’t worry if it feels hokey (and maybe get curious about why it feels that way in the first place, which it definitely does). Who benefits from that message? Not us.

I checked with good ol’ ChatGPT and 8am EST will capture the greatest number of people at the least intrusive moment.

There is so.much.power in collective, coordinated human attention. Throwing a hopeful thought towards the universe alone is one thing; knowing that at the very same moment, all over the world, people are doing the same thing at the same time, that’s chills-inducing. I am convinced it can matter (even my Rabbi said he liked the idea; we carpooled to an incredible church gala last night!).

And by the way: the preacher at that gala brought down the house with his phenomenal sermon about “putting ourselves in position” to receive the blessings that are coming to us. It was powerful: as a former wide receiver, his entire point was basically, “You can’t catch a ball if you’re standing in the wrong position.”

If we’ve got one hand working to win but are biting our nails off the other one, we’re in no position to catch the ball.

So: if you’re willing to put yourself out on a limb and share this idea (however you want—with this email, in your own words, whatever) with the people you know and love, and tell them to do the same, I think we will feel something; I’m so convinced, I’m willing to throw caution to the wind and write a pretty uncharacteristically “woo-woo” message to all of you. It’s not my normal way, but these are not normal times. So fuck it.

I am not suggesting that things will miraculously transform overnight, but I think we will create the conditions (our own energy) for those transformations to take place.

I think it’s time to lean into the parts of ourselves that have been buried under a mountain of data and rationalism. It definitely can’t hurt! There are about 1,300 subscribers on this newsletter, just so you know; it can snowball pretty quickly if we wanted it to.

See you at 8am. I’ll be starting tomorrow. So that’s one. ❤️

PS: For inspiration, I just love this Chobani commercial. I’ve probably posted it before, but it really does help me to imagine a world in which high technology and our natural, human values can coexist. :)

1. Here’s another study from 1981, housed in the DOJ Office of Justice Programs.
I think these are compelling portraits of a potential phenomenon worth exploring, even if people can disagree about the methodology and interpretations.