Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I decided to try writing a few get-out-the-vote postcards, because it's a useful thing I can do sitting down, and doesn't involve talking to strangers on the phone. My thigh muscles, hips, and knees have been bothering me for the past few days, even with naproxen and stretching, so I really wanted something I could do sitting in one place.

I asked for four addresses, to urge people to vote for Kristen McDonald Rivet, who is running for for Congress in Michigan. Writing the first four cards went OK, meaning my hand didn't hurt during or after, so I asked the bot for four more addresses. This morning, I wrote three cards, and then felt a sudden pain in my right arm. Adrian suggested that I should stop writing, at least for the moment. So, I have written seven cards, which she has mailed, and I will do the remaining card tomorrow or Tuesday, and think about whether it would be prudent to do more, either for this campaign or another. As of last night, there were two campaigns for specific candidates, and a more general get-out-the-vote campaign for Florida. I still have a bunch of blank cards from the batch when we were living in Belmont, and some postcard stamps.

"Try" because I did a bunch of this in 2022, and then stopped for the sake of my hand.

A Massachusetts legislator is introducing a bill that would coerce prisoners to donate organs and bone marrow:


"Mass. Prisoners Could Choose Between Freedom And Their Organs"

Please, if you live or vote in Massachusetts, write to your state legislator to oppose this bill.

This is what I wrote to Rep. Honan, in case a script would be useful. (As usual, if you live in the same district, rewriting rather than sending the same exact message would probably be more effective.)

I am writing to urge you to oppose HD.3822. This proposed law would pressure incarcerated citizens to donate organs and bone marrow by offering a reduction in their sentences.

We are rightly horrified at news that China is forcing prisoners to donate organs. It would be equally wrong for Massachusetts to pressure them to do so.

Donating organs is never risk-free. Prisoners do not reliably have access to good medical care, and neither do people who were recently released from prison.

Also, this proposal may be a violation of federal law. It's illegal to pay for organ donations, or to offer donors any significant compensation. This would probably include a reduction in someone's time in prison.

(I got this from minoanmiss.)

Posting this here because we can use some good news:

The state legislature has overridden the governor's veto, and the ROE Act, to explicitly protect abortion rights in Massachusetts, and allow 16- and 17-year-olds to get abortions with permission from a parent or judge, is now law. I got email with the good news both from the activist group that has been working for it, and from my state senator, because I'd written to ask him to make sure this got through.

If you live in Massachusetts, remember: Charlie Baker vetoed a bill to protect abortion rights, because he didn't want teenagers to be able to choose an abortion.

I am simultaneously pleased and relieved that Biden and Harris won, sad because my aunt just died, and just plain drained, like so many of us.

The last two days, chez redbird:

I've been keeping an eye on the Resistance Labs text-banking Slack, even after the election. This led to me sending a couple of thousand texts at lunchtime Friday inviting people to "Count All the Votes" rallies the next day. I also signed up to go to the one in Boston.

I was already planning to spend the weekend with adrian_turtle; when I told her I was going to be at Copley Square Saturday morning, she said "I'll come with you. So that part was all right.

Shortly after I got to Adrian's on Friday, I saw email from my cousin Anne that her mother, my aunt Lea, had died. This wasn't exactly a surprise, but as one of my other relatives said, she had been hoping for a miracle. [I posted briefly about this on Friday, by email, which means it was access-only until I got a chance to edit it this afternoon.]

Saturday morning we took the T to Copley Square; this was the second time I'd been on a subway train since March, and the first time Adrian had.

There were only a few hundred people at the rally, which made it feel more important that Adrian, cattitude, and I were there. We were sort-of listening to a speech when someone came over to us and told us that Biden had won Pennsylvania. A bit after that, another stranger said that Fox had called the election for Biden. Then the church bells started ringing, and the three of us decided we didn't need to stay in Copley Square but could go look for lunch.

A bit after lunch, I was sitting on Adrian's couch, reading, when I started feeling cold, and then realized that I was shaking. I went over to where Adrian was sitting, asked her to hug me, and then started to weep, while still shaking.

A bit of time, letting the tears out, and good dark chocolate helped settle my mood. I'm still waiting for word on whether there's going to be a Zoom funeral, or what, and if so when. The people who'd want to attend span at least eight time zones, from London to Las Vegas.

Oh, and my birthday is in a couple of days. I had no major plans, but still.

Yesterday I made a few get-out-the-vote call specifically for the Biden campaign, and some mostly nonpartisan get-out-the-vote text banking., Today, I've sent a lot of texts: a friend posted last night that she had meant to text bank today but her tendonitis is acting up, so she guessed she'd be phone banking. So we agreed I'd text on her behalf, and she'd phone on my behalf.

Nonetheless, I may try phone banking again in a little while, or at least find a specifically Biden/Harris or Democratic text bank, rather than the ones that are hoping that if we get lots of people to the polls who don't usually vote, explicitly including Black and Hispanic voters, significantly more of them will vote for Biden than for Trump. The Trump fans seem to think so, based on their reactions to texts that say things like "I'm with State Voices, do you have a plan for voting?"

cattitude continues to be my support Cat, with sandwiches and tea and
[3100 initial texts, plus replies including to other people's initial texts, as of 1:00.]

I sent a couple of thousand texts, mostly non-partisan get-out-the-vote things, but several hundred on behalf of state-level candidates who Obama recently endorsed. Which is a nice change after having to say "thanks for sharing your views, do you have a plan to vote?" to Trump supporters.

I have also done a little bit of what Swing Left is calling "relational organizing," reaching out to people you know but aren't close to, to ask them to vote. The examples they give include extended family, friends from high school and college, former colleagues, members of parent groups, and social media friends.

With a lot of those people I already know they support Biden [or, at least, dislike or fear Trump enough that they'll vote against him even if they aren't thrilled with Biden).

So far, I have sent a text to Emilie, the personal trainer I worked with when I lived in New York City, and taken a deep breath and written to the person who sends me my freelance proofreading work. As I said, I don't even know what state he lives in--which means he might live in a swing state, and there aren't many people I know who live in one of those states and there's any need to contact them about this.

ETA: Matt wrote back to agree with me about the election, and that he's in Pennsylvania and voted two weeks ago. I just sent email to a family member in Nevada, saying that this message is probably unnecessary, but I voted early just in case and urging her to do the same.

This came in my morning email, and I'm putting it here for my own reference, and in case other people find it useful: a state-by-state chart of when mail-in ballots are counted [probably valid only for 2020].

I got this from Indivisble Acton [sic], which is urging us to vote early in person, if that's both possible and safe,, to minimize Trump/the Republicans' ability to claim victory based on Election Day partial results. (cattitude dropped my mail-in ballot off at Town Hall almost two weeks ago, and it has already been accepted.)

I have pre-ordered tomato and cucumber plants for next spring, from GrowJoy, the company I got my cucumbers from this year. I will be getting Paul Robeson and Yellow Brandywine tomatoes, plus one cherry tomato plant and some cucumber plants that they recommend for container gardening. I jumped on this as soon as they opened for pre-orders, not just because I had trouble finding plants last spring, but because Paul Robeson and Yellow Brandywine are heirloom varieties that I learned about in Washington, which I haven't seen in Boston-area farmers markets.

I have been vaccinated against the flu. I made an appointment after breakfast, for 1:30 this afternoon, and everything went smoothly. They had appointments available throughout the day; I got to CVS a little early, checked in, and at 1:30 a man called my name, told me that the injection site might be a little sore for a day or two, and vaccinated me. I'd filled out the relevant forms online, when I made the appointment, so he didn't have to ask much besides confirming that he had the right person.

We now have a topographic map of the immediate area on our study wall. I ordered it from the US Geological Survey a few weeks ago, it arrived last week, and this afternoon cattitude got out the blue-tack and a level and put it up.

After some annoying back-and-forth, I have confirmed with the Registry of Motor Vehicles that if I renew my "REALID" state ID card between now and the end of the state of emergency, it will cost $25 instead of $50. I don't know if they'll make me go to an RMV office at some point in the future when that's safe again. (The flyer they sent me was unclear, and the website didn't help, so I sent an email rather than spending $25 now and possibly being charged another $50 later. And then I sent another email, quoting chunks of their flyer to be very clear about what I wanted to know, because the first reply hadn't answered my question.) I will fill out the forms, and give them the $25, tomorrow.

After looking at the latest color-coded state COVID map, with the red blotch at the north end of Middlesex County, I made another donation to Bread and Roses Lawrence. I first donated to them a couple of years ago, after the gas explosion up there, and yes, that's partly because of the name.

I did a bit more text-banking today, mostly following up on conversations started by other people hours or days earlier. It's more congenial work: still at least 85% variations on "STOP" and "take me off your list," but also the chance to answer a few more interesting questions, like the dates for Ohio early voting and (on Slack) what "I'm PEV all the way" meant: that's the Arizona Permanent Early Voting List, which I knew about from phone-banking in August urging people to get on that list. Now they're sending out texts asking people whether they are planning to vote by mail, in person early, or in person on Election Day.

I asked cattitude to lend me a phone headset for today's calls; it turned out he'd bought two, one of which is now mine. Not having to hold the phone was easier on my hand, but the earbud headphones got uncomfortable after a while (as such things usually do). These came with four different-size covers; I started with the largest, at cattitude's suggestion, because those are what he uses, and am going to experiment with the others.

Today's phone banking was to a different location (Broward County, FL) and a different phone list manager/dialer, and the zoom training session dragged a bit. But I was able to talk to a couple of people in between the wrong numbers and voicemail. As with the Maine calls, I can log in and make calls on my own as well as when they're doing an organized phone bank. This script is more about signing people up to vote by mail, whereas the Maine calls are "vote for these candidates, and voting by mail is easy."

SwingLeft, who are organizing these phone banks, say we can call from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern time; I'm not going to be calling people that early, especially on the weekend, but 10:30 or 11 seems plausible.

I'm trying to make at least a few calls almost every day; I'm not going to post unless there's something more interesting than "another day of phone banking, Maine again"

My email this morning included a link to a survey from Families Belong Together, a campaign to reunite immigrant and refugee families, about what sort of activism I would be interested in. The questions included things like whether I'm new to activism; what prompted me to start; my family's story of coming to the United States; which things I've done from a long list, including attending a rally, calling politicians, and voting; and what I'd be available to do. They said the "family story" would be confidential, so I didn't worry too much about phrasing. I did tell them that my mother came here at age 10 without her parents. Under skills I noted that I can turn up for the 2:00 Tuesday rally on a day's notice.

They also asked what keeps me going in activism, and I said it's partly stubbornness--knowing that the right wing wants us to despair--and partly that hope can be an action even if it's not an emotion. I may not be able to believe in spring, right now, but I can make those phone calls, and plant those berries, because if the world ends or I die of COVID, it won't do me, or anyone, any good for me not to have done them.

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The NIH emailed yesterday to say they don't need me for their coronavirus study, having recruited enough other people. I'm vaguely annoyed that the subject line was "COVID-19 study acceptance" when the actual message is that I'm not accepted.

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I did a little get-out-the-vote phone banking on Wednesday: after about 35 minutes of Zoom training, we spent about the same amount of time calling Arizonans to encourage them to vote by mail, and tell them how to request those ballots. I think, and hope, that I can make more calls through this website without doing another Zoom meeting: I might not have an hour and a quarter of calls in me, but I'd rather make 35 or 45 minutes of calls--or ten--without spending half an hour on Zoom first.

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I took a walk this afternoon, without my glasses because it was overcast. The glasses don't interact well with the COVID masks, and I don't need them to enjoy morning glories or walk safely. If anything, and weirdly, I can navigate better without them, unless I need them as sunglasses. That's the interaction of the cataract surgery and COVID; without a mask, I'll take the glasses, in case I want to read something smaller than a street sign, or if the sun comes out.