The Future is Unwritten

Personal reflection on election defeat and passing the torch.

There is no question Trump’s election win is a terrible, terrible day for our country, democracy, the planet, everyone. (Everyone except Musk, Putin, Netanyahu, et al., the very, very worst people on this earth.)

And yet I have a very odd equanimity about it all, a Vonnegut-ish “and so it goes.” Maybe this is just a coping mechanism, I don’t know yet. Time will tell. 

I’ve been “fighting the good fight” in one form or another since I was 19 — that’s more than 40 years. I’ve tried to retire — or as I have jokingly referred to it, “pre-tire” — from the full-on activist life several times now. But inevitably, with the latest urgent crisis, or next worthy project, I’ve leapt back in. The joke then becomes that I need to “re-pre-tire.” :-) 

The last few years in particular have been very difficult — the Climate Clock broke my heart, then ate my life. It wasn’t until a couple months ago, with a new crew taking the reins at the Clock, that I was able to step back a bit, and find a more balanced life rhythm, quietly working on small individual creative projects (including a book or two that I look forward to sharing with you all in the future). I was beginning to really like this new way of being. I promised myself, “no more” mad undertakings. Never, ever come up with another idea, Andrew, that the world needs, ‘cause then you’ll feel once again like you have to take it to scale. 

Famous last words. Because in early October my good friend and comrade Rae Abileah came to me and said how worried she was about the election (which of course I was too) and how no one was running a vote swapping effort this cycle. With the huge split in our left-center coalition over Gaza and other issues, we were poised to have a lot of stay-at-home voters — unless we offered folks a way to vote against Trump AND cast a protest vote against the Dems at the same time. We should do it, Rae said. Are you in? And I said yes because I trust her and I’d do anything for her and the idea made a whole lot of sense (and it also conveniently solved my problem of how to help out in this election).

So we teamed up with our activist friends Kipchoge Spencer and Emma Schoenberg, and thus began a furious month of building something from scratch that drew in remarkable people - strangers to each other - who almost overnight coalesced into a dynamic team able to take the idea to an unexpected scale: delivering 5,000 swing state votes for Harris, plus countless more swaps “in the wild,” along with many beautiful tender stories of connection and trust built across state lines.

Many times during the effort, I said to Rae, If Harris wins, we’ll get to feel part of this beautiful people-powered wave that stopped fascism at the gates; and if we lose, at least we’ll be able to say we did everything we could. And I guess that’s how I feel right now. We did everything we could. And feeling this way, in spite of the horrible outcome, gives me some peace of mind. 

I wanted to head off into my “re-pre-retirement“ on the wings of victory. So it goes.

Among the folks who stepped up out of nowhere to join the team were two crackerjack 20-somethings Marin Exler and Savannah Oveido. Marin is a pro-democracy organizer and Pennsylvania voter; Savannah, a social media pro at NRDC. They showed up on one of our early zoom calls, took the reins of all our social media channels, and got the word out in a slew of very creative and versatile ways, blowing up our instagram from 27 followers to over 6,000 in a few days, and made it all look easy.

They’re roommates in Brooklyn and I invited them out to the Working Family Party-hosted “victory“ party last night in Manhattan’s meatpacking district. After two weeks of zoom calls and thousands of whatsapp messages, it was great to  finally meet in person. They’re fun; we clicked. And there was a curious mutual respect: I admire them for their energy and heart and digital-native skills, and they look at me as somekinda leader and elder, joking that “in New York the iconic monuments are: number one, Lady Liberty; number two, the Climate Clock.” Ha.

It was interesting to see myself through their eyes. and as the election news grew worse, we wandered across lower Manhattan, to Soho, to another victory-now-defeat party, in a mysterious, multi-floor, Burning Man-ish kind of clubhouse scene with candles and art-altars. By this point, the feeling of the evening had shifted for me into a dark, Felliniesque walkabout… but these kids were still so on fire from the Swap Your Vote project, and all the possibilities of organizing and communicating, and the simple raw momentum of their generation’s destiny - buffeted, yes, by the night’s results, but in no way halted…

As for me, I'm still hanging up my hat. Sure, I’ll stay in the fight, but no more starting or running things. No more mad, mad dashes. Swap Your Vote was my last rodeo of that kind. (I swear it!) Instead, there’s another hat I’ll be putting on: mentor, “movement elder,” grumpy wise old hand, advisor, connector, helpmate to friends and young’uns. 

This month, our gang’s traditional “First Wednesday” gathering conveniently falls the night after the election. And, so, as per custom, we will meet up tonight for happy hour at The Magician bar in the Lower East Side, this time with an abundance of unhappiness to share. But we’ll be among friends and comrades. And we’ll lick our wounds and sift through the election analyses and be kind to each other. And my good friend and former student Sonia, who helped out massively on Swap Your Vote — one of our “yentes”, matching swing- and safe-state voters in the database backend — will be coming down from Westchester to join us. And Marin and Savannah will be swinging by. And I promised to give them copies of Beautiful Trouble and Better Catastrophe, and they seemed very excited to get their hands on those tools. The sun still rises. The next generation steps up. The future is unwritten.

With love and solidarity,

—Andrew