What I really know about civic duty I learned from my parents. As young adults, they were Democrats who had worshipped Franklin Roosevelt and in 1948, I’m told, cried when hearing an impassioned civil-rights speech on the radio by an up- and-coming statesman named Hubert Humphrey. I wasn’t around for that speech, but seven-year-old me stuffed mailboxes for Adlai Stevenson. 11-year-old me snuck into the voting booth to pull the lever for John F. Kennedy. (Oops, did I just invalidate his election?) And 21-year-old me registered to vote on that birthday.
There are other forms of civic duty that I practice with some regularity: volunteering; recycling, supporting non-profits (sometimes volunteering to recycle for non-profits). But I think that probably the least effective thing I do is to work in political campaigns. Living in New York State, probably the “Bluest State” there is, much of what I do doesn’t have any impact at all. Al Gore didn’t even campaign on Long Island in 2000 – though I’m sure if he had, somehow my phone calls and stuffed envelopes would have turned the tide on Election Day. I campaigned twice for Hillary for Senator, but just half-heartedly, and darned if she didn’t win both times! So I don’t know if I’m a jinx and a jonah. I just know, it’s my civic duty to pester the citizens of my town to vote, which they promise they will, if only I would hang up the phone.
Sometimes I give my insurance company the willies when I volunteer to drive voters to the polls. Out here in suburbia, if you don’t have a car, you can’t vote. It’s not like it’s a law; more that it’s a huge inconvenience. So I’ll stuff as many folks as I can into my car, and drive around from pillar to poll, hoping that my passengers will do their civic duty and vote for my candidate.
The worst part about participating in political campaigns? Working in cold, unheated, rented storefronts GOTV (getting out the vote) on dreary, rainy First-Tuesdays-after-the-First-Mondays in November. The best part about participating in political campaigns? The impromptu First-Monday-night-before-First-Tuesday-in-November pizza and pot luck parties in those cold, unheated, rented storefronts, bracing for the 24-hour marathon ahead.
I can’t wait till November 3. Thanks, Mom and Dad.
Submitted to AARP Bulletin.
