It's complicated how to figure out what I want to talk about online, so the rule I try to keep to is: either be funny, or be giving someone an action item. I find that when things are bad, being surrounded by other people's rage and despair, flattened by a screen and minimized to 240 characters, almost always makes me feel worse. I don't begrudge them those feelings, or the right to express them, but when I think about how I want to be online, I have decided that I want to be offering solutions, or at least suggestions. (Then I bring my rage and despair to my friends, because I find it better soothed by people whose voices I can hear, either in person or imagined when they text.) 

But then I feel like an asshole sometimes, offering all of these level-headed suggestions without acknowledging that I am feeling terrible and hopeless, and that sometimes the hopelessness is paralyzing. That I'm walking blocks and phone banking and writing postcards now, but in the run up to the 2016 election I didn't lift a finger. I'm not sure I donated, not even $5. I could explain the circumstances of it but they aren't that interesting or unique. I didn't do the things I should have, and now people are suffering for it, and I am trying so, so hard to do better. (I am also trying not to dwell in guilt, because suffering isn't solidarity.) 

Anyway, I thought I would talk a little bit this week about the things I'm doing, and why. Maybe they're old hat to you, in which case, x out the tab and see you later, but if you've been trying to figure out some ways to get involved, here's what I've been doing, and what I've learned doing it. I hope it makes you want to do stuff! If it doesn't, again, stop reading at any moment. The point is to try to be helpful, so if it's not helping you, fuck it, you know?

Canvassing seems like the scariest option-- going up to people's doors and talking to their faces!!!-- but it's actually my favorite form of interpersonal political interaction. Phones are weird! I find at the end of a round of phone banking I often feel sort of depleted by all of the answering machines and hang ups, but when I'm done canvassing I feel satisfied, if exhausted.

I'm trying to write about this without falling back on dumb cliches about like, boots on the ground and human connections, but there is something distinct about the intimacy of walking through a neighborhood, and getting to know it door by door by door. I think maybe it helps me zoom all the way in: last time I did it, for instance, I had a couple of Republicans who told me with defiant pride that they would never vote Democrat, and then I had their neighbors-- like, two houses down!-- telling me thank you, clasping my hands in theirs, saying it gave them hope to see people care about their neighborhood and this election. It's like, oh, right, the world is full of people who don't agree with me, but it is also full of people who do. It's not as overwhelming as it feels when you try to take on everything and everyone at once.

Canvassing also has the added benefit of cleaning data for the campaign. Phone banking does this, too: unlike lower-touch stuff like textbanking or postcarding, you're passing on feedback, such as: don't have anyone waste time coming here again, this person is a militant Republican. Don't have anyone waste time coming here again, this person is a solid Democrat. This person moved, changed their number, or sometimes-- and this is always the really awkward one-- died. Whenever I have a hideous interaction with someone, I think, well, the good news is, he's off the list now, and no one else has to have that hideous interaction with him ever again.

But you can't always be out there marching around, and when I'm not doing that, I like postcarding very much. You can, as I did last weekend, sit around with friends and sip mimosas and eat pastries and copy scripts; you can do it while you watch TV instead of scrolling through Twitter. Like I said, it doesn't clean data for anyone, but there's some very preliminary evidence that when it gets to the right people it works, which is fucking cool.

If you're in LA, honestly, sign up for Bake America Great Again! Bring brownies and cookies or vegan dog treats (sorry but that is a real thing we really sell, and people love them), or spend an hour selling delicious baked goods to people on the streets. Some of them will get excited about the cause and spend $20 on a slice of banana bread, which is great, and also some of them don't care at all but will still give you a couple of bucks for a cupcake, and then you've taken money that was never going to be a political donation and made it into one, and that feels pretty good, too. 

(If you don't live in LA, you can totally still organize a bake sale to raise money for a candidate or cause. Lots of stores will give you permission to set up on their sidewalk space, and then you just need folding tables and bakers and probably some stuff to make signs with. It has to be donation-based, because otherwise you're technically "selling food" and the health department wants to regulate it, but as long as it's just "we suggest you give us money if you're going to take a pastry" you're good.) 

If there's nothing going on locally that you're super excited about, I'd highly recommend seeing if there's a Sister District group near you. I've been volunteering with them for a couple of years now and I think their strategy is really smart, especially if your neighborhood tends to be on the super-liberal side and you'd rather be taking your energy elsewhere.

If you'd like to come with me on some LA-adjacent canvassing adventures, I've got one scheduled every weekend until the midterms. Reply to this email and let me know. 

I saw someone I respect on Twitter this morning saying she couldn't believe anyone was naive enough to think we were gonna win the midterms. I wanted to say to her: I don't believe fucking anything. I know that there is work for me to do, so I plan to do it. That's all. 

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And speaking of neighborhoods, here's an excerpt of an interview I recently did with a young actress named Dominique Fishback for Healthyish:

“Eating would be the worst part of my day,” Dominique Fishback says. It’s a sun-drenched Thursday morning in Los Angeles, and, in between bites of a gloriously runny egg sandwich, the actress is recalling growing up in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York in the early ’90s, when her options were limited to bodega bites and fast food.

“I knew that I wasn't eating well,” she continues. “I wouldn't eat for a while, then I'd get so hungry I'd be like, ‘I'm just gonna go get a Philly cheesesteak,’ and I’d crash into what I was trying to avoid.” 

The dearth of culinary options in minority neighborhoods is a systemic issue that Fishback addressed in her one-woman show, Subverted, in a segment on imprisonment. “To be imprisoned isn't necessarily being behind bars,” she explains. “But in these neighborhoods, you have a certain radius that you go about, and these are the food options: Chinese, the corner store.”

The Hate U Give is about a young black girl named Starr (played by Amandla Sternberg) who witnesses a police shooting of a close friend, so it’s no wonder that Fishback has the opportunities of the larger black community on her mind these days. She’s grateful to to have seen so much more of the world, but she looks back with frustration at what her neighborhood used to look like, and how it’s changing as more affluent and white folks move in. “Now there's a Planet Fitness, like we ain't never wanted to get fit before,” she says. “Now there's a VisionWorks. You don't think we needed glasses before?”