The eyes of history

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about an exhibit of World War I recruitment posters J and I saw at the Museum of Fine Arts several years ago. One of the posters showed a respectable-looking man looking a bit sheepish as the child on his knee calmly asks, “Daddy, what did YOU do during the Great War?” At the time, I chuckled at the not-so-subtle guilt trip the poster laid on viewers. Now, however, the question posed by the poster weighs heavily on my mind.

I don’t have children, so no daughter of mine will ever interrogate me from the quiet comfort of my lap. But I believe the eyes of history will look back on our generation and ask similarly difficult questions.

What did German citizens do while Hitler rose to power and built camps in the neighboring countryside, and what did American citizens do when people of Japanese descent were ordered into internment camps? I suspect both Germans and Americans at the time would say “We did what we were told” or “We minded our own business” or “We kept our heads down and followed the law.” One of the most indelible images I have of the Holocaust shows Allied troops leading German civilians through the newly-liberated death camps, forcing respectable citizens to look at what had been happening in their own backyards. “What could we do,” the blank expressions of these villagers seem to say. “We are just ordinary people.”

One of the most powerful moments in Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was Divine, a slim but devastatingly powerful novel about Japanese internment, happens after an unnamed Japanese-American family returns from the camp where they were held, only to face the stone silence of the neighbors who watched the evacuation orders go up and Japanese-American citizens disappear without nary a peep of protest. Are we really so well-conditioned that we would look the other way while injustice happens to someone else?

This week, I wrote a quick thank-you know to former First Lady Laura Bush for her Washington Post opinion piece decrying the Trump administration’s cruel immigration policies; I also contacted my members of Congress, helped distribute a weekly checklist that helps ordinary citizens be more politically active and engaged, and continued writing postcard after postcard in support of Democratic candidates. I can’t do everything to fix the predicament our country is in, but I feel compelled to do something. Trump and his base aren’t listening to the likes of me, and they aren’t listening to Laura Bush, either, but that won’t stop me from speaking.

What did you do during the Great Resistance, the next generation will ask. Did you turn away and stay silent, or did you do whatever you could to fight?

 

Activism for introverts

Last month I started volunteering with Postcards to Voters, a nationwide grassroots network that sends handwritten get-out-the-vote postcards to registered Democrats across the country. Since I joined, I’ve written postcards to voters in Utah, Virginia, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama urging them to vote for Democratic candidates in local, state, and national elections: a friendly, handwritten reminder from one citizen to another.

I’m not new to postcarding: ever since the 2016 Presidential election, I’ve kept plenty of postcards and stamps on hand, as writing a postcard to an elected official is easier than writing a letter. I sometimes refer to postcarding as “old school Twitter” since you have to condense your thoughts into something that can be succinctly stated on one side of a card: no room for rants. Even if a particular member of Congress isn’t moved by my or others’ input, there’s a certain satisfaction in imagining bags of mail arriving at a Congressional office. If nothing else, other postcard-writers and I have left an impression on the hapless mailroom clerks who have to sort through it all.

When it comes to campaigning, postcarding is my preferred mode of communication. Some people volunteer to make phone calls while others knock on doors, but writing postcards from the privacy of my house is more in line with my personality and proclivities: activism for introverts. In many ways, postcarding is a perfect fit for me. I like to write things by hand and have neat, legible handwriting. I love stationery and stamps, and writing postcards to voters gives me an excuse to buy lots of pretty postcards and colorful pens.

I find it relaxing to write postcards: Postcards to Voters provides both talking points and addresses, and once you’ve written one postcard, you basically copy that message and format to the others. It’s a small, tediously mindless thing, but it feels both helpful and hopeful, like I’m part of a positive movement focused on connecting (albeit anonymously) with people whose values I share.

I like the personal, handwritten aspect of postcard-writing. With each card, I try to imagine someone going to their mailbox and finding something handwritten and pretty among the usual bills and junkmail. A postcard is a small, tangible thing: a nicety from a simpler time. Nobody is going to change the world by mailing a single postcard, but a postcard is a simple way of staying connected and sending hope and well-wishes from one locale to another.

I also like the grassroots nature of the effort. Postcards to Voters consists of individuals who buy (or make) our own postcards, pay for our own postage, and spend our own time on a collective task sandwiched between our other responsibilities. It makes me feel part of a larger movement to see social media posts tagged #postcardstovoters. Thousands of men and (mostly) women across the country are writing postcards along with me, and we belong to a community of writers who might never meet in person but who share a simple faith in civic outreach in the service of the public good.

Often when I’m writing postcards, I think of the secret group of volunteers (including a woman from Framingham) who addressed envelopes for Jackie Kennedy after her husband was assassinated. Jackie wanted to thank every citizen who had sent a card or letter of condolence, so she had thousands of thank-you cards printed. Not having the time or energy to hand-write addresses on every envelope but believing every card deserved a personal response, Jackie enlisted a small army of women with good penmanship to address envelopes. It was a tedious and time-consuming work, but the women who participated were heartened by it. At a time when the nation was grief-stricken and feeling helpless, there was something–a small but specific task–these women could do to be helpful.

As I write postcard after postcard to voters I’ll never meet for candidates I previously never knew, I feel a similar kind of satisfaction. Regardless of whether any candidate I’m writing for is elected because of a postcard I send, it feels good to send them out: a small but hopeful act.

They say that many hands make light work, and Postcards to Voters is always looking for new volunteers. At the moment, we’re focused on sending postcards in support of Doug Jones’ Senate race in Alabama: the list of Democratic voters is long, and the election is near. If you’d like to send a handful of postcards (or more), please CLICK HERE to join.

 

Hope for the future

On Friday night, J and I went to see Senator Elizabeth Warren hold a town hall meeting at Framingham State. It was inspiring and encouraging to see a smart, articulate legislator working in her element, answering questions from an attentive and engaged crowd.

Watching Warren move around the stage as she answered questions and explained policy, I imagined how wonderful she must have been as a law school professor. (When the crowd roared at a mention of Glass-Steagall, Warren gushed, “I love a crowd who cheers for bank regulation!”) Running for Senate, Warren insisted, was never something she dreamed about: “It wasn’t on my bucket list, grocery list, or any other sort of list.” Instead, Warren’s childhood dream was to become a teacher–as a girl, she lined up her dolls and lectured to them–and even now, Warren’s inner-educator is still apparent.

When asked by an audience-member what concerned citizens can do to effect change in the Age of Trump, Warren urged everyone to stay informed and active, citing the failure of “Trumpcare” as proof that Washington does listen if people mobilize to speak out. Warren said that even though Democrats are not in control of the three branches of government, they still have their votes, voices, and values, and those Democratic values are what the majority of Americans want. (Hillary Clinton, after all, decisively won the popular vote.)

The most inspiring moment, however, was when Senator Warren asked who in the crowd was planning to run for office. About a third of the college-aged folks in attendance raised their hands, and everyone else cheered. Hope for the future doesn’t stand on a stage and lecture; hope for the future is sitting in the seat right next to yours. Trump’s election woke up lots of complacent citizens, and if that leads to a whole new generation of young public servants, that will be a long-term silver lining.