Jesseca Kusher

In early 2020 I canvassed ~100 hours in South Carolina for my then primary pick, Elizabeth Warren. The following story is one of my memories from many months ago.

I walked up to a house, windows blacked out with something that looked like contractor bags and a large posted sign on the door that warned against trespassing. It was my final house on the street, I just needed to knock on the door and hope that someone answered. For the love of God, it was depressing when no one answered. My knocking pattern echoed, lonely; my knuckles sore from all the frozen storm doors.

Don’t tell my mom, but I was alone. The election was days away, and I had two side streets left in the packet before I could return to my car for a snack. It was a chilly February morning, but I was warm from exercise with my so-so sense of direction and the winding streets of the back of the neighborhood. I was canvassing midmorning in the middle of the week unbeknownst to my Liz-Warren-hating boss. I had taken time off from work to reportedly celebrate-my-birthday when in fact, I was spending 7 hours a day canvassing for Elizabeth Warren.

Knock, knock knock-knock-knock. Knock! Knock! Like always, I would count to thirty in my head waiting for someone to answer the door. Although, maybe with the houses’s frightening accessories I should make it half that?

Twenty seconds passed as I waited, examining the street. The sky was an overcast gray and yellow grass in a neighboring yard was freckled with fake red carnations in the garden beds. My Grandma Florence had decorated the patio of her condo with silk flowers like that when I was small and she was still alive. I smiled. Connecting in whatever small way I could to the people of this neighborhood made me feel less alone.

The neighborhood was solidly middle class, but damage from the past few years of tornados left many homes in tatters. When a tree that large falls through the middle of your home I’m not sure how any family could recover. Certainly if you could afford insurance they’d cover it — but I had the sense that for some of these people, that was extra money they couldn’t spend. Besides, we weren’t exactly in Tornado Alley, just a small southern town with poor luck the past few years.

The morning had been fairly fruitful, although perhaps troubling. My canvassing partner had gotten in a fender-bender on our way to the neighborhood. So I made by own friends: waving at cars that sped past me as I walked on the curb, laughing with the mail person that their daily route was also my route that day, and for the most part just leaving Lizerature at the many unopened doors of workers who were (quite understandably) at work.

I unclipped a flyer from my clipboard, yet again no one had come to the door in my half-minute wait. I hung the Elizabeth Warren pamphlet on the door and turned to walk away slowly. Another street down, perhaps I’d have better luck talking to folks on the next one.

“Hello?”

He called back out to me before I reached the sidewalk. A Black man stood at the doorway to his home. I tried not to feel guilty that I might’ve just woken him up from a nap as I turned back around — relieved and almost giddy to have someone to talk to.

I quickly toned it down from my most excited smile to just a grin and recovered my most sorry-to-bother-you southern, polite posture. I was in his yard, and I had entered even though I could see the “No trespassing,” sign. I had, with the most severe naivety, assumed my privilege as a young white woman kept me safe and immune from such a sign. Ultimately, I was right, the man did not mind me being there — yet, I hadn’t checked my privilege on the sidewalk. I was an intruder in his neighborhood.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? We young, white, grassroots organizers –no matter how woke our undergraduate liberal arts college was — we forget the privilege we cary. We might be able to intellectualize about it on end, but what that in-person, on-the-ground, knowing-your-candidate-isn’t-a-panacea sort of real world experience isn’t something you can teach in an upper level anthropology course. The neighborhood I was walking in had been ravaged by tornadoes and abandoned by both their local community and the federal government — if there had ever been any funds to help people rebuild, they seemed to have been forgotten. Sure, I held steadfast that Elizabeth Warren had practiced active listening and had created plans that would directly help communities of color like this one — but for someone living in this neighborhood my messages might have felt as weightless as the missing February sunshine.

The man listened to my spiel and took a pamphlet as I asked what issues he would be voting for. He folded the flyer, put it in his pocket and shook his head.

“They will say it’s either this way,” he pointed to the right, “Or that way,” he gestured passionately to the left, “But it’s here,” he looked toward the sky and pointed, “Or there,” he shoved his hands aggressively toward the ground.

I nodded my head, unsure of how to respond. Was he was trying to make this about ethics as a whole or Christianity’s heaven and hell?

“I understand that,” I lied, “That’s why I’m out here canvasing for Elizabeth — I really think she’s going to bring us together and help us do what’s right-” but he cut me off.

“It’s either [up],” he pointed to the sky again, “Or [down].” His thumbs down were thrown with so much passion. It struck me that he didn’t say if it was heaven or hell, right or wrong, or up or down.

He left those words out. Did he mean that the politics would divide us more, and drag us down? Or lift us up? He repeated the gesture one final time as I registered how ridiculous I must look. A young, chipper, Girl-Scout-esque canvasser bounding around the neighborhood waving at people and laughing with the mail person. In my mind I was doing all I could to fight for the candidate who could help the most people, and these folks were still waiting to be seen by local politicians. Or maybe not — maybe they were fine not being seen and instead just hoped for unity beyond a country divided. Either way, I was not offering a cure.

The man looked at me with the kind passion of a teacher hinting at the explication of a poem without giving it away. I nodded more sincerely this time, and shrugged that I though the pamphlet was okay, but not as good as Elizabeth’s website. I’m pretty sure he shrugged too as I wished him a good afternoon and turned to walk away. He waved as I went — somewhere between a goodbye and a good riddance — and I frowned for the first time that day. He had given me a riddle to mull over for weeks and months to come.

Our issues run so much deeper than electing a president to unite the country. Sure, this election was about defining our ethics and choosing a relative good over a typical selfish tyrant — but who will lift up the people, really? Especially the people on that street — the people whose homes were still marked with blue tarps to keep the rain out of their living rooms weeks after the damage had been done? Perhaps the answer would be found in electing more empathetic politicians on a local level — or perhaps the answer was so much more complicated than that. The answer wasn’t right wing or left wing but up or down — and no campaigning that chilly February morning was going to bring about immediate helpful change. Like all change, I supposed, that would take time.

This blog is part of a series on Jess’s interactions with voters and nonvoters during the 2020 election cycle.