Beyond November
Seeing ourselves as a movement, not just vote casters.
I was sitting in a bar in Wilmington last week when the conversation turned to politics. It was a conversation between men, friends of each other, and I mostly sipped my High Life and listened, too tired from swimming, the sun, and staying up late. I sat on the bar stool still in my bathing suit, my skin a little crisp from the sun, my hair gathered up wet under my ball cap.
“Sorry to put you in the middle of our debate,” laughed one man, acknowledging that they were leaning across me to talk. They didn’t know, of course, that drinking beer and talking politics is typically my preferred state of being.
As I sat there listening, I thought to myself that it wasn’t much of a debate they were having. It is funny that we characterize our conversations about politics this way. They sparred, gently, over small things, while one was arguing that voting for Biden was an obvious choice while the other argued that Jill Stein or (oddly enough) Ye seemed like a good ticket, but they were both really saying the same things. They were worried about their wages and the local economy, they were worried about their communities, they were worried about how and if we, the regular people sitting in bars in our bathing suits at the beach, could have a say in the direction of our country and life.
More people joined into the conversation that evening: A man who had come in with his dog, a woman from up the street, the bartender, my friend I had come to the beach with, and, sometimes, me. Some fretted over the disastrous presidential debate the other week, the age of the candidates, some about Project 2025, one mentioned Bernie, the bartender brought up how absolutely nuts Mark Robinson appears to be. We all nodded along. Because I work in politics, none of this was not new to me, but I was interested, happy for others to do the talking and the fretting. They were smart, compassionate, concerned.
But the whole while I wondered: How do we think through November? How do we think past election day, beyond electoral politics?
How do we see the power that we already have? How do we write the full story of us, our country, and who we are?
It struck me that the conversation we were having was incredibly national. I’m always amused that we talk here in North Carolina about the “border” as if we are hell-bent on keeping South Carolinians out. I thought it odd to talk about Joe Manchin in West Virginia, when right here in New Hanover County the schools have just, in a misinformed backlash against queer families decided children can’t draw or put up pictures of their families in schools (the whole fear-ridden policy bans displaying of student art and any flag that isn’t the US, NC, or county flag). I don’t know how many people around that bar were parents besides myself, but I do know that this local decision hurts children more than the “crisis at the border” ever can.
No doubt fueled by beer and emboldened by being on vacation, we all talked in circles for hours, sometimes agreeing (Stephen Miller looks like a ghoul and has the personality to go with it) and sometimes disagreeing too (tax breaks for big corporations bring jobs versus are a welfare handout that doesn’t prioritize workers). But none of it felt invigorating.
No one was excited about the election. No one felt passionate. It was as if America was a movie plot unfolding in front of us but we were never cast as characters. We all sounded resigned just here to sit and watch.
Because it’s my job to think about these things, I have always had a bone to pick with the phrase “Your vote is your voice.” Not only is it trite a worn-out phrase we all just skim over, but it feels dishonest. Our voices are our voices, like these ones around the bar tonight, laughing and fretting and mixing together with stories about our families, our jobs, the surfboard fin mistaken for a shark this morning, causing mothers to pluck their children from the curl of the waves.
Voting should be part of our strategy, for sure, but we shouldn’t mistake it for our voice. We all have much more to say than that.
We have left political strategy to people who don’t know us instead of understanding it’s ours to grab. We’ve dumbed down politics, essentializing it as solely electoral, and reducing a regular person’s contribution to merely voting. If people feel this election is transactional and reductive, it’s because it is. While I didn’t exactly agree with anyone at the bar, I could see they each were smart and capable. They were hungry for more conversation, deeper details, ready to tackle harder problems than who to vote for. But we were all stuck in our circular conversation loop because what we have been offered feels like it’s not enough. Because it isn’t enough.
It isn’t just that the candidates aren’t enough, or that our votes don’t count enough, it’s that the way we think of politics isn’t enough. The way we understand our own power isn’t enough. We have been removed from understanding that we are the political strategists, that we are the political actors, not just the vote casters; not just the recipients of bad policy and, sometimes, bad people.
At that bar, I thought about the work that local residents in Cabarrus County recently did to get their County Commission to add an affordable housing line to their local budget– essentially taking charge and shifting local priorities (and their tax dollars) towards a community-identified need. Or the work folks in Pitt County are doing to pressure their local government into expanding public transportation. Or the organizing Johnston County residents have been doing to weatherize homes and reduce electrical bills to offset climate change.
While all small, these examples are politics. They are the politics that impact our daily lives — they invest in the housing stock so our rents go down, they give our neighbor a way to get to the grocery store, they hold government responsible to their constituents– responsible to us.
Realizing that if people who reflect us– people come from the places we come from, have struggled to pay the bills as we have — were elected that we could move the things we need more quickly, our movements have tried to course-correct our organizing by investing in electoral politics, so not to leave power on the table. I learned that lesson myself, and I learned it rather late in my organizing. But I worry that we have now have over-corrected in a way that doesn’t allow us to actually see our power– to see ourselves as active characters in this movie, as participants in our own stories.
We need to understand ourselves as a movement, not an electoral cycle. See ourselves as a people, not as parties or organizations. But we shoot ourselves in the foot, forgetting to plan ahead, forgetting to think through, forgetting to build beyond, because the moment always feels so pressing and because it is true, there is always more we can do.
Like everyone at the bar, I found the presidential debate depressing. I find the political headlines overwhelming. I find Project 25 terrifying. I don’t feel empowered when I cast a ballot. I don’t feel strong or safe when red or blue is winning.
But I do trust the people around me, even these tipsy and blustering sunburnt strangers. I trust us because we all need the same things.
We can, and should, knock on doors this election season. We can phone bank. We can run ads about the candidates and write fiery OpEds. We can vote. But what we can’t stop doing is seeing our greater, collective power. We can’t stop unionizing our workplaces, we can’t stop pouring over the budgets of our local government, we can’t stop calling our neighbors together to organize against the power company, we can’t stop hanging out with strangers and talking about politics in the bars. We have to organize through the election, not for it.
We are selling ourselves short when we write the talking points at the expense of telling our story.
