Taking stock

of national Democratic wins and a meaningful local victory

What a week! On Monday it was warm enough to swim in the river (and Harriet did), the remnants of a hurricane blew through on Friday, and this morning a blustery wind is shaking down fall’s remaining leaves. This year’s copious acorns have stopped pelting our roof, and all but one of our pumpkins have gone soft.

The girls and I have taken up our favorite walk, which we can’t do in the summer because the weeds and grasses are too high. But with the cold snaps and shorter days, last year’s paths are visible again. Bea calls it an “adventure walk” (or “backwards adventure walk” if we go in reverse) because it involves hiking along a stream, leaping over dry creek beds, and walking on and around fallen logs by the riverbanks. We pass the spot pictured above, and examine the fallen tree nearby for new beaver activity.

Sometimes we take a garbage bag for picking up trash, which I suppose we’ll need to again soon. On Friday, we crossed the road to see shredded purple laminate strewn in the weeds and grasses just outside of our neighborhood. “I bet that was one of Del’s signs,” Bea said. “Some jerk tore it up.”

Del Turner is one of our school board members. She is a Black woman—the only African American on the board—and a Democrat. I’ve known Del for ten years; Richard and I did voter registration with her in Siler City in 2012, before we had kids. I can vividly remember the persistant way Del would press young people who said that their votes didn’t matter—“Why do you think that?” she’d ask, her voice inquisitive and challenging at the same time. She never gave up on a possible voter, especially a young one or a poor one, because she knew that their votes mattered the most.

Del won her reelection this week, despite being in a close race with a well-funded “Moms for Liberty” candidate who had so many signs around the county that her young volunteers were hanging them in trees in election day. I’m proud to say that we helped Del win her race, and that her campaign is the most local and personally meaningful one I’ve ever been a part of. Bea and Harriet carried signs for her at an early-voting march (never mind that Harriet’s sign said “<3 HHH”), and on Tuesday, Richard and I were part of a group of twenty or thirty people taking turns working the polls for her across Chatham County. I volunteered in the early morning, and again at dusk while the girls played on the playground with a friend (our polling place is also their elementary school). Talking with voters and alerting them to the importance of the school board made a difference—many people (not all) were happy to have the information as they went in to vote. Del won by a little more than four hundred votes.

The news for Democrats this morning is also good—we’ve kept the Senate! Although our wonderful and highly-qualified North Carolina candidate, Cheri Beasley, lost her hard-fought race, which we also volunteered for and contributed to. I can’t stand that I’ll have to put the under-qualified election-denier Ted Budd’s number into my phone to call his office over whatever dumb, hateful mess he gets us into. But I’ll do it.

I always think my candidates will win. Always! I’ve stood in line to vote in Long Beach, in Brooklyn, in Richmond and Raleigh and Pittsboro and King and Queen County, Virginia. Every time thinking that the tide was turning in the right direction. Something about standing in line with other people doing the same democratic duty makes it hard for me to think, “Oh, we’re definitely headed toward autocracy, racism, and war-mongering.” Even though we often have been.

And yet I was worried this year, maybe the most worried I’ve ever been. This is part of the playbook, as Michael Moore has pointed out. Republicans want us to be demoralized, even afraid to go to the polls. Corporate media wants us following their flawed polls and trackers. The Democrats want to scare the crap out of you and fill up your Gmail with demands and pleas for money.

Mamie, who every year works the Democratic booth in very-red King and Queen County, said she felt apprehensive about volunteering for the first time ever.

But she went, with blankets and coffee and a hula hoop, as she always does. Because she’s a stalwart, like Del.

Did all of my candidates win, or all of Mamie’s? No, unfortunately. But overall, Americans voted against autocracy, election denialism, and fascism. We voted to have control over our bodies, to keep fighting climate change, to make large corporations start to pay their fair share of taxes. In Chatham County, we voted for clean water in the Haw River and in support of teachers and public schools and libraries.

The work doesn’t stop—in the email group I’m part of, many people have said they don’t want to rest for long. Instead we plan to go to the school board meeting this coming Thursday—to show support for Del and the issues that matter to us in our schools and community.

Here are some other, non-election things on our radar:

Bea and I are going to see Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner in Burlington. It’s directed by our friend Sylvester, and we can’t wait.

At NC State, we’re excited about S.A. Cosby’s (free!) reading at Hunt Library this Wednesday at 7PM.

Female octopuses in Octopolis were observed throwing objects at annoying males:

Apparently, bees like to play with balls:

How about you, Frog Troublers? How are you feeling, and what’s on your radar?