The Mamdani campaign’s volunteers knocked on the doors of New York City voters 1.6 million times, which led to 247,000 conversations. The campaign re-discovered the old magic of a good heartfelt talk. “Hello, how are you today?” might seem like an echo from the 1950’s, but after the surprise landslide victory in New York, talking-and-listening is being called “the most sophisticated media.”
Those compassionate conversations found the door to door campaigners and the voters agreeing that the city should assure the basics – food, rent and a way to get to work. The phrase AFFORDABILITY was brought into American life. This idea proved so popular – it might have won the election by itself. The candidate knew that families were eating cheaper, less healthy food and that rents were so high that people couldn’t stay in neighborhoods they grew up in. And the buses weren’t showing up.
Twenty-six billionaires, among them hedge funder Bill Ackman, Michael Bloomberg, also the founders of AirBnb and real estate and construction companies that would need to influence the city, plus wealthy families like the Waltons and Lauders raised about $30 million (this figure from NPR) to defeat the 34 year old Moslem socialist. (Mamdani’s average donation was $88, but his small donations went all the way up to the $8 million election cap for matching funds.)
The billionaires rained down attack ads in the streets and subway stations, on the sides of buses, ads in social media and all media, radio, television, everywhere. The city was electronically wall-papered with fearful messaging. It didn’t work. Something about those 247,000 conversations held strong.
How could something so ordinary become so extraordinary? Let’s review. A knock on the door starts it off. At the first greeting with the canvasser and the voter in the doorway look into each others’ eyes. Let’s consider that moment. This sounds like the stuff of a million love songs but let’s dive deep into that first glance.
If we stop the two people in this first “I see you, you see me” moment, a powerful and magical series of physical events are underway. The simultaneous eye contact brings the two people visually through the other’s thin veil of tears that coats the outer surface of their eyes. Behind this are the eyes’ front window, the cornea, and colorful iris controls the amount and intensity of the light entering the eye’s interior. A rounded lens broadcasts the image onto the light-sensitive back of the eye, which signals the color, shape and motion to the brain. And two people do this and begin their talk.
The two people talk about “living in New York.” Now we have eyes and ears engaged and we have that bonding, that sharing of experience too. Something is happening beyond the agreement on the issues. There is empathy in this compassionate common cause that proved to be stronger than any opinion. It is so strong that we can call it physical.
How strong? How deep? Our species has evolved over time the empathy critical for mutual survival through bonding and cooperative action. Scientists find million-year-old evidence of this in higher mammals. The bond for mutual survival that developed from the front-door conversations had, it would appear, that level of strength.
And many of the voters in the doorway were so engrossed by this doorway chat that they became volunteer canvassers themselves, until by the election there were 100,000 going door to door!
The Earth makes appearances in New York City’s densely populated 9 million souls in mysterious ways. There is the presence of the Earth in our two talkers. They share the magical dark-rooms of the eyes, the vibrating tiny bones in the ears, and their gestures and emotions. Like most people in most cities we don’t think of ourselves as representatives of the general life of this planet. But yes, here and everywhere people are the Earth. Our 8.5 million bodies are made of the material of the Earth even while we live in this crush of glass, stone, pavement and honking cars…
If we’re calling people the Earth, then we got a lot of it. The single block where I lived for a long time at Bleecker between Bower and Lafayette, has more people than entire towns where I spent my youth in Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. This density means that we run into each other a lot, in hallways, stoops, at the subway. We share the story of that person from Zorhan Mamdani who buzzed my apartment and left me buzzing. We are a densely populated ecosystem.
The new mayor was and is not considered a politician with a Green New Deal in his briefcase. And yet he excited something in us that is born in the Earth. Sometimes that bond and cooperation from our evolution needs to be re-established, and that’s what happened with this election.
The Earth is in the 30th month of a global heatwave, the temperatures rising everywhere. We are getting to the point where the Earth is turning our culture and economy upside down. Extreme climate events will accelerate with fire and flood, drought and the extinction of species.
Very soon, even in New York City, where we think of ourselves as so far from the natural world, even here nothing will happen without the Earth’s crisis driving the plot. This time we couldn’t see past our usual human boundaries. We didn’t see the Earth’s role supporting Mamdani and the billionaires angrily retreating. But more and more, over the coming years, writers, producers of language in media, the chattering classes – will report the Earth’s presence in our lives.
Throughout our culture and dreams and efforts at safety and escape from danger – we will explain our experience by way of the language arriving in the storms…. In this election, we looked into each others’ eyes, listened to our speaking, and in our wild Earth we evolved a way to live.
Rev. Billy