I Am a White Guy for Harris

Yesterday morning, on my way to my cancer support group, Shannon Watts’ Instagram account alerted me to the existence of “White Guys for Harris,” and, more specifically, the fundraiser/telethon we had last night. The event revealed a strength of the Harris Campaign that the Fake News Media has not learned — it’s about building communities.

I’ll be the first to admit that my impulse to participate was purely selfish. The first is that, after weeks of doomerism, hand-wringing and anxiety regarding Our Lumpiest President’s return the nuclear arsenal; I needed a fuckin’ break. I needed to know that we don’t default to an autocratic, 17th century model of governance and social values. The second was historic: I started following and participating in Obama’s ’08 Campaign in April, 2008. It was exciting, BUT, I quickly learned that I was a late investor, and all of the really cool, campaign-defining Meetup groups and pop-up events died down before I knew about them. With less than 100 days left, the era of “firsts” for the Harris Campaign is closing, and I wanted in. “White Dudes for Harris” is NOT the label I personally would have chosen, but it was an applicable label to me in a way that, say, “White women for Harris” was not. So; I sent in my e-mail contact info, and got a link to the Zoom call. Thanks to some technical flubs combined with technical prowess, I ended up watching it, live, on Youtube, on my television (Thank God for HDMI cables and laptops). It was a revelation, to say the least.

To be very, very clear, this was a telethon — it had speakers come on and exit at preset times, and, while Pete Buttigieg and Sean Astin were there, it was mostly doughy, interchangeable mid-level politicians and celebrities. And, because it was a political fundraiser, the overriding topics were K. Harris, politics, and Hubert Dorpf. That was easily 70–90% of the content. The non-political content was also somewhat political, but it excited me far more than the overt campaigning. We also discussed the awful fact that, as white guys, our collective identity has been weaponized, stolen from us, and used to bolster reactionary politics globally. Again, we only got to work at this topic from the margins, because it was a political fundraiser, but it was enormously uplifting in that it made me feel, briefly, less alone to know that other white dudes want to have calm, rational, civil discussions surrounding our historic identity (as one organizer put it, “Traditionally, when white dudes come togethe to discuss politics, we’ve been wearing pointy, white hats”), and how we redefine “white dudes” so it does NOT connote someone who has too many guns, a drinking problem, and trouble talking to women.

Again, we didn’t spend nearly enough time on that particular issue, and nobody developed any solid solutions, but it felt encouraging that we had that brief time and space to at least touch on the subject. That’s the fundamental strength of Harris’s campaign, I feel. Americans have been subdivided, labeled, and then constrained and identified by those label and nothing else for the last eight years. Possibly longer.

Trump and his band of theocratic weirdos (look, I can go on about how fundamentally dangerous JD Vance’s political views are, but, at the end of the day, that is, somehow, less salient to me than the fact that he is an awful, creepy weirdo that would be in some sort of facility in any civilized country) are relying on everyone to substitute the assigned labels, and voting according to trends. Last night represented an existential threat not only to Trump and the MAGAt crowd, but to Authoritarianism, itself. The guys I saw last night were deeply unhappy with how we’ve been arbitrarily (and cruelly) assigned a political identity, based on our birth certificate; and we want to break free of that. A lot of that ties into identity politics, because Drumpf and Vance will accept only one identity in America, and, for better or worse, that identity does not include the 150,000 men on that call. We’re interested in the freedom to figure out exactly which sort of White Guy we are without government guidelines — are we straight, LGBT+, indoorsy, outdoorsy, literate, sensitive, flannel-wearing, etc. All of the sorts of assumptions regarding identity politics are up for grabs in 2024, and last night represented an interesting statement of intent — “Yes, we are politically active white dudes, and, while that’s been a terrifying thing for most of recorded history; we don’t want that, for ourselves or our sons. We want something better. We want to be better. And the only way we get that self-determination for ourselves is in a society in which everyone has the basic freedom to safely figure out who they are, in society.”

I hope that the White Women for Harris Zoom was just as fun and revelatory, and I hope that every group in America appreciates the new-found freedom that the Harris Campaign brings — the freedom to talk amongst ourselves, and figure out exactly who we are. Again, this won’t happen in a single fundraiser, or even the next 100-odd days, but it’s the start of a campaign promise that will be lived in this campaign — the freedom to discuss, question, and argue about who we are, individually, collectively, and all points in between; without some outside force dictating those conversations or demanding a specific conclusion.

I believe it was Pete Buttigieg who said, “If you look at this movement’s ultimate goal — not only to preserve our democracy, but to strengthen and expand it to people who were historically excluded, we aren’t saving American Democracy. We’re building it.” Goddamn. I’ve heard commentators describe how the most successful political campaigns frames the voters as heroes; this is the very first instance I know of in which a campaign frames the voters as Constitutional Framers, but we live in interesting times.

Nobody was under any delusions — we all have our work cut out for us, and the margins are going to be razor-thin. BUT, as campaign season shifts into light-speed, it’s worth discussing a critical difference between the two campaigns, both of which will use the “F word” (Freedom)(or freedumb, depending on how pro-Orban you are). I would simply ask which campaign is more-committed to that ideal? The campaign telling people that they’re already free enough; or the one that gave 150 K white dudes the opportunity to say, “I don’t really like that label, what do we do about it? How do we be better white dudes?” This white dude already knows the answer. And I pray this campaign inspires other demographics to have wholesome discussions about identity, politics, and identity politics. Because those discussions will be prohibited in Trump’s Amerikkka.