A 2024 Philly Canvassing Story
I flew to Philadelphia, PA on Tuesday to knock on doors for the Harris campaign. Therefore i’ve had a week full of stories. But the one that made me happiest was with an Uber driver who I’ll refer to as D.
I’d called for a ride after finished my door knocking on Thursday just before nightfall. My driver arrived and I started up my typical conversation. I was surprised to learn that this young black man was unsure who he’d vote for president, which in his case probing further, meant he was leaning toward [Mr. Orange].
D said, “I don’t know, my coworker says [Mr. Orange] will do better for the economy, he’ll make my life better” etc etc. Those sort of sentiments do shape a voter’s actions. So I asked D if he was willing to talk about it and he micro gestured he was open to it.
What I saw was an honest person open to more information to shape his choice. So I shared from the heart — “Look D, I value your rights because we have to protect all our rights or we all lose them piece by piece.”
“When [Mr. Orange] was president there was a palpable feeling of outrage when black men were harmed and he didn’t much care. I personally felt the way he handled violence and frankly racism in our country was just wrong.” D was engaged a bit. I continued, “Did you know [Mr. Orange] was investigated in the 70s for his company’s practice of putting C for colored on rental applications. His company ended up settling and having to run ads that they would be an Equal Housing Opportunity renter as part of the settlement.”
D said “No way really?” I said, “Yeah, its easy to find on a variety of legitimate news sources not just social media posts.”
Having heard this, D shared a story of his personal experience with an officer following him down the street for minutes in which he had to turn around to confront the officer “why are you following me?”. The officer persisted all the way to his workplace — for no apparent reason, and eventually he had to get the officers name and badge number and his boss had to ask the officer to please leave.
As D dropped me off, he said he’d think about our conversation. I wished him luck and to please don’t make a decision with his vote that he’d regret for the rest of his life.
Days passed, I knocked doors, had many more powerful conversations, nightfall arrived and I called up another Uber. I hopped in and didn’t talk much for the first few minutes.
The driver was a nice soft spoken black man with a beard. He asked me where I was from and I said California. He said, “Do you remember me I drove you on Thursday.” I realized it was D driving me again!
I asked him how he’d been. He said he talked to his coworker and told him about Mr. Orange’s company’s prior practice of putting C on black renters’ applications. His Mr. Orange-supporting coworker was incredulous and said “No thats not true!”.
But by luck, overhearing the conversation, their mutual manager stepped in and said “Yes, that did happen”. The Orange supporting coworker didn’t know what to say and quieted down.
Before exiting the Uber, D said he’d vote for Kamala.
I know no president will fix all our problems, all of us have our work cut out for us. But its worthwhile to talk to undecided voters, respectfully, about historical information to revive sentiment of whats truly important so each voter can make a choice that’s right for them.
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Note: giving a subtle opt-out/opt-in when talking with something as personal as voting preference is so important — many will opt-out and that has to be respected — but its pointless to have a discussion if the other party is not at least hinting willingness to engage. This is one of many democracy-skills I’ve learned by volunteering in our democratic process.
