The weekend after the Presidential election in November 2024, I was seized by the need to meet some neighbors, face-to-face, to be in solidarity with. On a crisp fall morning, I made a sign that said, “Worried about the election? Me too.” and I printed up a bunch of little bits of paper that had the Signal logo and my Signal username and a note to go to Signal.org to download the app. I took a little camp chair and a folding table to a spot in my neighborhood that would get a lot of foot traffic because of a nearby open-air market. I told my spouse that at least I was out of our apartment and in the fresh air and seeing cute dogs, and that I figured even if I only had 5 successful conversations with people it would be a success, and if not, I would have learned about something that didn’t work, and I would have tried.

An hour later, 1 woman had stopped to talk with me. She was so grateful to get to talk with someone about it all. We talked about what we were scared about and what we could do.

40 minutes after that: 3-4 people total.

I stayed out there for several hours. One of the strangers I met told me about a mutual aid meeting later that day; I went. And another was a community organizer who told me about a few local groups, including an Indivisible chapter. I started participating in those.

Then I did the same thing the next two weekends. The second week, I tried out a sign that said: “Vent about the election; Plan for Jan. 20th”. I brought a second chair, so I could invite someone to sit down for a moment to talk, and I brought a few books on politics or organizing that I was finding helpful. A few people sat down to talk. The third time, I tried bringing a bunch of blank stationery and postage and pens, and made a sign suggesting people write a letter to a friend or a politician. Nearly no one sat down to write – it was incredibly cold, for one thing – but people stopped and talked, and a pastor was inspired to bring blank stamped postcards to her next service and ask her congregation to use them.

In those three weekends I had probably 30 meaningful conversations with neighbors I hadn’t previously known. A few were hostile or frustrating, but those experiences were far outweighed by the substantive and useful conversations I had and the connections I made. What are some likely risks? What specific things can our households do to prepare? What specific actions can we press our local and state governments to do to mitigate risks to us? And, emotionally, it was so nourishing to me, and to the people I spoke with, finding someone in person who also felt some mix of scared/wary/angry/sad/determined/grimly laughing/tender and sharing our spirits with each other.

I stopped tabling for a while, and then in March I decided to start it up again, even though it was still really cold. By now I was in some local activist groupchats, and someone from one of them brought her own chair and came to sit with me, and brought flyers about some local issues – I think right from the start she brought Don’t Rank Eric or Andrew for Mayor (DREAM) lit to hand out. And she saw my setup and I found out she had a way better folding table at home, and a better sign, so she went and got those, and we chatted in between outreach conversations – she’s been doing this sort of thing in this neighborhood way longer than me. We started to become friends.

And then we just kept going. Most weeks. Sometimes just me, sometimes both of us, sometimes some other folks from the Indivisible chapter or other groups. We have been out there in the freezing cold and the rain and the heat. I get a very few antagonistic passers-by, but mostly people who stopped to talk wanted to share their support, to ask what they can do. I started making a weekly flyer that told people about stuff they could do now, including upcoming events and protests and volunteer opportunities in the neighborhood. Issues to call Schumer and Gillibrand about, things they could do in their own workplaces and professional organizations and schools to use their power, to organize to defend our values. Every few weeks I got a little better at using LibreOffice to design it.

I started seeing canvassers for the primary election because they came to the same block. I bought a huge bag of mini candy bars for cheap and brought some to the table, and sometimes gave some to the canvassers – it’s hard work, being on your feet for hours, trying to start those conversations. My table wasn’t affiliated with any particular candidate’s campaign, but we handed out Working Families Party brochures (which mentioned Mamdani alongside Lander, Adrienne Adams, and Zellnor Myrie) and “how ranked choice voting works” leaflets. If I asked “who are you ranking for mayor?” the most common answer became “Zohran” with a smile. And we got into a lot of “who else are you ranking?” conversations. The fact of ranked choice made things so much better - less fighty, more “tell me more! maybe I’ll switch up my ranking order!”

I noticed that a lot of people welcomed advice and info about the downballot races that got less news coverage, especially the judicial races, so some weeks ago I did about 30 minutes of research on the judicial elections on my neighborhood’s ballot, and wrote up a personal endorsement for the flyer. At the table, when I shouted out “Do you know how you’re voting on the judges?” the same thing happened over and over: the don’t-bother-me body language in a passer-by changed once I said “judges,” and they came over and said: no, I always mean to research the judicial races and then I get to the ballot and I don’t know who to vote for, and I offered recommendations, and they said yes, please. And I explained who I personally endorsed and why, they were grateful and interested – and then maybe we talked about other stuff too, comptroller, mayor, other local issues and upcoming events, how to get more involved.

It has been so so so good for me to have several hours a week where I’m doing this. Many of Mamdani’s 29,000 canvassing volunteers had similar experiences:

After his first time canvassing, the experience on the Upper East Side has left Sani more energized than when he began. “I look at my past self, and I see someone who watched John Oliver, watched The Daily Show, watched Hasan Minhaj, and I felt politically active — but when I look back, I did nothing,” Sani mused. “I was angry all day, but nothing happened from that anger.”

“Now, I do not watch John Oliver, I do not watch The Daily Show, I do not watch Hasan Minhaj. And I’m a thousand times more politically active,” he continued. “And then I can go to bed at night, and I’m not stressed existentially about it.”

I remember an older woman who said she was going to her first protest ever, in her life, and asked for advice on sign-making. (I gave her some - plus advice on safety.) I remember talking with a Jewish guy who was preparing to host a Passover seder by himself for the first time, figuring out what he could manage. I remember bursting into tears, seemingly out of nowhere, while talking with a guy who does tenant organizing, saying “sometimes it feels so bad,” and feeling comforted by just being around people who understand that – and a street vendor coming over to comfort me, and telling me about her family’s experiences in Yugoslavia, and telling me not to give up. I remember talking with a young environmental lawyer, in quiet despair over the seeming futility of her work, and telling her what I had gotten from Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark that has helped keep me going – and the next week she came back to get info again. I remember giving election recommendations to women in hijabs and a burka, saying goodbye with salaam aleikum and getting back wa-aleikum salaam. I remember comptroller candidate Mark Levine coming by and talking with voters in several languages, fluently, and responding to my question about whether the city should prefer to build or buy software by saying he leans towards “build” and that one reason is to have union labor doing that work. I remember the people who spontaneously decided to buy me food from nearby street vendors to thank me for my work – and the first-time vendor whom I lent a spare chair (across a language barrier), and the vendors who gave me free desserts and flowers.

I remember an older woman who said to us, plaintively, “Do you have hope?” And we said: yes. And I asked: “do you want to borrow some of ours?”

And I gestured with my hand, as though I was pulling something from my heart and offering it to her, and she reached out her hand to take it from the air and press it into her chest.

If you want to do this too, you can join Indivisible or start your own chapter – I’m not in DSA but you could do that too. And/or, you can just show up. If you live someplace where there is a regular place a lot of people go on weekends or evenings, like a farmer’s market or a popular park, maybe there is something of a fringe or liminal area where sometimes people set up folding tables and sell stuff or campaign. Girl Scout cookies, petition signings, and so on. If you want to meet likeminded neighbors to be in solidarity with, and you think there are some of those in your neighborhood, you could drag a little folding table and folding/camp chair out to that spot this weekend, or tonight, with a paper sign. Mine was just on 1 sheet of printer paper.

You can start now.

[originally posted as a comment on MetaFilter]