After No Kings

canvassing, and some greats from Vance County, NC

It’s hard to know what to say. We appear to be in another senseless war, driven by the president’s ego and capriciousness, entered without consultation or authorization by Congress. There are thousands of American troops, including active duty Marines, on the ground in Los Angeles against the governor’s wishes. Masked ICE agents are arresting and detaining people with protected status. The defense secretary would not say that he would follow a court ruling, or refuse an illegal order by the president. Our family doctor says he isn’t confident there will be Covid vaccines for our kids, or effective flu shots for any of us.

It’s hard to know what to do, especially when life seems to go on as normal, even when things are absolutely not normal. Last Saturday, we went the No Kings protest in Pittsboro, where hundreds of people gathered midday to hear Robert Reives, Anderson Clayton, and other North Carolina political leaders speak out against Donald Trump’s dictatorial ambitions and ridiculous, costly military birthday parade. Veterans, appalled at Trump’s abuse of power, also spoke out. More than 2,000 protests were held across the country. I read that there were a dozen No Kings events in Charlotte, and thirty protests in Asheville. Our friend Liz organized a sizable protest in the small town of Oxford, NC. More than a thousand people demonstrated against Trump in rural, deep-red Ashe County.

In Pittsboro, we gathered at the county courthouse, but protesters also lined the streets around the historic courthouse, holding signs and flags and waving to passing cars. At the main event, I was especially glad to see and hear from Anderson Clayton, who is the youngest state party chair in the United States. Anderson is from Roxboro, a small city in rural Person County. She graduated from Appalachian State University, where she served as student body president and studied journalism and political science. She has a twangy North Carolina accent and a truthtelling, down-to-earth speaking style.

“Elections got us into this [mess], and elections are gonna get us out of this [mess],” Anderson said (she didn’t say mess). She praised and thanked us for being there, but also encouraged folks to get out do something more: canvass, register voters, run for office, and encourage others—especially young people—to run too.

So yesterday, after spending a few days in Virginia with Mamie, the girls and I joined about thirty other County to County/Neighbors on Call volunteers to knock on doors in a GOP “accountability canvass” in Vance County. We didn’t know about the war then—only the possibility of war, and the instability of life now.

This canvass was billed as a chance to hold Republican legislators accountable for the harmful things they’re doing, especially their theft of five billion dollars from NC taxpayers. Over the next ten years, that money will go to private schools, funding students from families of any income level to study in unregulated, mostly religious schools and draining resources from the public schools most of us rely on.

Canvassing on a 93-degree June day doesn’t sound that promising for a Saturday activity. Would people even answer their doors? Would they be confused about why we were there, since we don’t even have a slate of Democratic candidates yet for 2026?

It turned out that for several locations we didn’t even have to knock, because people were out in their yards, cleaning up debris from Thursday’s powerful storm. These people could have been annoyed to be interrupted, or just frustrated by the work and the heat, but they each stopped what they were doing, listened, and shared what they were most worried about.

“Democracy,” the man above (pictured with our friend Cat) answered. “People’s right to vote.”

“Absolutely not!” another woman said when I asked if she wanted her tax dollars spent on private schools. We also talked about pecan trees.

It was one of the better canvasses I’ve done, in part because we weren’t pushing any specific candidates. Just the idea that people should have a say in what happens in our names, with our tax dollars. Just the common belief that our voices and votes count, and that we’re in this together.

I think people were impressed to see children out canvassing. Before the canvass even began, Bea and Harriet decided to work on a speech Harriet would give to interested parties. Here’s what they came up with, which Harriet read at many of our stops:

Please don’t support Trump. He wants to take away our funding for schools and healthcare. He’s doing bad things to the world and he hurts my feelings. Please don’t support him. Have a great day!

“I think I saw a tear in that woman’s eye,” Cat marveled after we left one of our first stops.

I loved the preparation that went into this C2C/NoC/Vance County Dems event. Most C2C/NoC volunteers are from solidly blue counties and districts, like Orange and Durham, canvassing in neighboring counties that can help flip Republican-held seats in our state legislature. We don’t pretend to be from the counties where we canvass, but instead make common cause as North Carolinians concerned about the same things: healthcare, the economy, education, affordable housing.

The coordinators of this event knew that it helps to learn about the counties where we’re volunteering, so they’d stapled an information sheet to the brown paper snack bags they’d put together for us.

Vance is a majority Black county on the Virginia border. Some of Vance’s notable people include Henry P. Cheatham (1857-1935), one of only five Black Southerners elected to Congress during Jim Crow; Ben King (1938-2015), an R&B musician and lead singer of the Drifters (as a solo artist, he co-composed and sang “Stand by Me”), and James Arthur “Boo” Hanks (1928-2016), a blues guitarist and singer, known as one of the last Piedmont blues musicians. Boo Hanks bought his first guitar with money he earned selling garden seeds.

Another Vance County native I want to mention is Dr. Samuel Merritt, Wyatt Outlaw’s great-great grandson. Dr. Merritt is a retired epidemiologist and former director of the North Carolina State Laboratory of Public Health. He lives in Raleigh, but still vividly remembers visiting Nancy Outlaw Williams Green, his great-grandmother, daughter of Wyatt Outlaw’s son Oscar, in Henderson. Oscar was only five when his father was killed by the Klan, and grew up an orphan. But his people, including his grandmother, were brave, hardworking, and hopeful, and Oscar became a successful barber and homeowner after moving to Henderson. Sylvester Allen Jr. and I tell a little of Oscar, Nancy, and Dr. Merritt’s story in The Legend of Wyatt Outlaw, which will be published next January.

Like Boo Hanks, Dr. Merritt attended Henderson Institute, a historic “colored” school founded in 1865. And like some of the speakers at No Kings, Dr. Merritt is a veteran. He was drafted to serve in Vietnam after college in Virginia, fought in the Tet Offensive, and went on to study microbiology, public health, and epidemiology at Michigan State and the University of Michigan. He was an adult before learning the true story of his historically important ancestor, which came in the form of a letter from his great-uncle, Oscar Outlaw Jr. It was an honor to learn about Wyatt from Dr. Merritt, and to learn about Dr. Merritt’s story too.

I’m not sure why I tell you all this, except to say that these amazing stories of courage and endurance are everywhere in our state, and in our country. Things are very bad now, but they have also been worse, and people have come out of the other side to do great and wonderful things: to serve the public, to raise families and gardens, to sing and play music and dream that life will get better for their kids and grandkids.

Here is Boo Hanks performing “Picking Low Cotton,” recorded by the Music Maker Foundation:

Boo Hanks was a descendant of Abraham Lincoln on his mother’s side, and though he played music all his life only made his first recording at age 79. Before he died he performed at Lincoln Center, in Belgium, and across the Southeast. He also performed with Patti Smith, the author of the quote in the first photo in this post: “People have the power to redeem the work of fools.”

There are more canvasses coming up with County to County/Neighbors on Call, and even if you’ve never canvassed before, they make it fun and easy. You’ll be great.

Because we can’t let a spoiled, ignorant, violent two-bit dictator be the end of America’s story. We just can’t.

How are you holding up, Frog Troublers?

Here is the Mattaponi River at sunset on the solstice:

And Harriet blowing bubbles in Mamie’s yard: