I’ll admit it — I am freaking out. Big time. For the past two weeks or so I’ve been obsessively looking at the Five Thirty Eight website and hitting refresh on my Twitter feed so often that I’ve been draining my iPhone’s battery every few hours. Like too many others, I can’t wait for Tuesday to come, but am petrified of the results of the election one way or the other. In my life I’ve never had any doubt about the stability and strength of our system of government, but now for the first time, I’m scared for the future. Watching the country’s slow motion slide towards fascism -- yes, fascism -- has filled me with dread and a sense of helplessness. Last week, I took matters into my own hands.
First of all, I stopped -- ok, greatly reduced -- watching the news and checking my Twitter account, save for posting about matters unrelated to the election, like my new podcast, the Amen Corner. More importantly, I decided that if we’re going down, I’m not going to do it passively. My wife and I started to phone bank from home, making hundreds of calls to potential voters around the country. This was a good start, but I wanted to do more; so I made plans to take my sixteen year-old son and a friend of his to Pennsylvania – much more of a battleground than my home state of New York -- to canvass on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
Early Saturday morning, three days before Election Day 2016, I drove myself and two teenagers 140 miles west, to Hazelton, PA, not too far from Wilkes-Barre. I spent the ride listening to the two kids talking about their classes, friends and teachers, but also thinking about how proud I was with their engagement in the world around them. At their age, I wasn’t nearly as aware and attuned as they are; it makes me a little more optimistic about the future. When we arrived at the local campaign office, we were quickly trained in how to go door-to-door and dispatched to the little town of West Hazelton, home to about 4,500 people.
Walking around this small town, I can see an America that is invisible from my home on the Upper West Side, the America that has been left behind to fend for itself. Over the past decade and a half, this once almost all white, blue-collar community has undergone a demographic shift; now nearly 40% of the population is Hispanic, mainly Dominican. Here, in these small, rundown houses, long subdivided to accommodate greater numbers of families, old-timers and new arrivals live cheek to jowl. From my outsider’s perspective, the coexistence feels fragile. Houses with Trump signs in front sit a few feet away from pro-Clinton ones; I can only imagine what the political discourse sounds like between the neighbors. If they talk at all, that is.
The whites we encountered were mixed in their support, but the clear majority is backing Trump. These are the people who want “their” America back; people whose parents used to work in Pennsylvania’s coal mines and factories and who now look at their new neighbors with a combination of suspicion and anger. I instinctively felt that any white person I saw there was automatically a Trumpster, which may be unfair, but it’s closer to true than not. In our travels, we encountered a young woman in her 20s, smoking a cigarette on her back stoop and looking mildly out of it. When I asked if she’s registered to vote, she replied that, “the government doesn’t know I exist.” She explained that she had two different names and while they know how to find her so she can pay her taxes, she hasn’t been able to straighten out the confusion in order for her to register to vote. “Maybe one day,” she said, but I didn’t get the feeling that this was a high priority for her.
We only had one really negative encounter, with a white man who must have been in his early 50s. When he spotted us walking on his block, he asked us what we were doing there. “Canvassing,” I told him, “making sure people get out to vote.” I could see that this agitated him and then he asked me what I thought of Donald Trump. They had told us in the campaign office not to engage in debates with people, so I was cautious in my response. “Not a fan,” is all I said. This set him off a bit more and he said, “Well I’m for Trump and you know what? I’m gonna help him build that wall.” With that, I hustled my two charges away and wished the man a nice day while wondering what his neighbors must think of living next to someone like this.
We went only to the doors of registered Democrats, and most of the families we spoke to were Dominican. We met families with small children, older couples and multiple generations living under one roof. When I told them that we were with the Hillary campaign, their eyes lit up and they all said that they’d be voting for her, though some said that they were unsure as to where their polling station was. That’s where we came in, to help explain where and when they could vote. I got the real sense that they all understand how high the stakes are. Trump’s talk of deportations is directed at them and their families; their neighbors’ unease with their presence will only be emboldened by a Trump victory.
Driving home, I looked at my son, sound asleep in the passenger seat, exhausted after a long but productive day and smiled. Driving along Route 80 in New Jersey, I saw a handmade Trump sign flutter from an underpass and was brought back to reality. But, for at least one day, I was able to stop just thinking about the election and actually do something about it.