Rain Perry

Planner

Until I get the official version of this being designed by the talented Kayleigh Morrison, please feel free to use plain paper for daily tracking. Doodle around the edges if you like!

This is not a checklist at which to fail or succeed -- it's a touchstone to use as you like. It's worth keeping filled-up pages in a box or a binder to review later for inspiration and pride.

From Hopelessness to Hope

It's so easy right now to feel hopeless. The shape of the potential destruction -- of government agencies, of norms, of communities -- being planned by the new administration is becoming clearer, like a hurricane as it gets closer to land.

I can feel myself protecting myself. I'm careful how I consume news -- watching it on TV is too much. I don't have it in me to react to each outrageous nomination, each foreshadowing of the chaos to come. I'm uninterested in debates about whose fault this all is. I find I have no appetite for nihilism or blame. I've seen posts like "here is a list of every bad thing that's going to happen next." What could I possibly gain by reading that except paralyzing fear?

I need hope. And I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that to get through whatever is facing us, I'll need a regular infusion of it. Not false optimism, not a distraction, but practical hope.

I keep coming back to that famous quote by Congressman John Lewis.

I always loved it, but until these past few weeks I never really understand it. To be optimistic in the face of despair is a radical assignment, from a man who saw the worst of America -- got his head cracked open on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, spoke at the March on Washington when there was no certainty the Voting Rights Act would ever pass -- and went on to live a life full of purpose and joy. He danced, he crowd-surfed (7:30 mark), and he worked tirelessly for justice, gaining the nickname "the Conscience of the Congress."

So how to get hold of a little of whatever John Lewis had?

Well, I've started and stopped this missive about seven times, and now I'm ready to post it.

First, here's a video from just over a week after Trump was elected the first time, of a Chuck Prophet and Stephanie Finch house concert in my living room. I want to invoke the power of music and community, because those will get us through this. (You can click the video to watch it.)

Hello!!

Since this is a "weekly, unless a topic becomes timely" email, here you go with a few quick updates.

Do yourself a favor and listen to at least the first few minutes of the Simon Rosenberg/Tom Bonier zoom "Why the data makes us optimistic." It's so great. You'll see why these two guys kept me sane in 2022 when everyone was flipping out over the polling, and they were spot on.

Data for the 2024 presidential election are starting to come in -- actual data of voter behavior like registration rates and early voting trends. So I'm thrilled to let you know that starting next week, you can visit the TargetEarly website and track all of it. This will help you internalize the calming mantra "watch the data, not the polls; watch the data, not the polls; watch the data, not the polls."

I'm always talking about the "Thirteen Keys" presidential election prediction model. Well, Professor Allan Lichtman made his 2024 prediction yesterday which debuted in a video report from the NY Times. Their reporting is cutesy and a little condescending, but it does give Lichtman a chance to explain his thinking on how each of the keys are playing out in this election. Make of the whole thing what you will, but his track record of correctly predicting, early, nine out of ten of the last elections (the outlier being Bush v. Gore) indicates that this oddball is on to something.

Hello activists!

It truly feels like a month since the last email, which I sent the night before Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz as her running mate. And what a week. Thrilling, packed rallies in the swing state cities of Philadelphia, Detroit, Eau Claire, Phoenix and Las Vegas, buoyed by a growing coalition: Black women, Black men, Latinos, White women, White dudes, AAPI, Republicans, Rural Americans, Latter Day Saints, and more. Comics, too (including my fave, Trae Crowder). I'm aware of a "Fiber Artists for Harris" zoom in the making.

Hey everyone!

We've got some new folks here, so I'll take an opportunity to say hi and introduce myself. I'm a songwriter and performer from Ojai, California. I'm not a TV talking head, nor a party strategist. But I've spent a lot of time doing political work as an organizer and volunteer, and I've learned a thing or too. So welcome! Thank you for signing up.

This email was intended to go out weekly, but things are happening so fast, I'm adapting that schedule to "whenever a topic reaches critical mass!"

Hope

First off, go Tennessee!

That's the kind of data we should be paying attention to, not polls. In election after election since the Dobbs decision, voters across the country have been trending more blue, often dramatically so.

Hey there!

Quick update, since several people have asked about whether the GOP could just refuse to certify the 2024 election. I was going to wait and address this next week. But things are moving so fast, who knows what we'll be needing to talk about next week?

This issue came to the forefront this week for two reasons: an article in Rolling Stone and a piece on the Rachel Maddow Show. The gist of the worry is summed up in this, from the Rolling Stone piece:

"If local election officials nationwide decide en masse to refuse to certify election results this year, it could slow the certification of statewide tallies crucial to determining the next president — and create chaos."

What if the election is sent to the Supreme Court? Will we have a repeat of Bush v. Gore?

Before I could vote, I stood outside a Safeway getting signatures for a petition about the Nuclear Freeze. I was arrested in college protesting investment in South Africa. I wrote letters to voters from the bleachers at my kids' sports practices. Political activism has always a part of my life.

In 2018 I was in Texas working on my album Let's Be Brave and went to a Beto O'Rourke rally. A friendly volunteer signed me up to text voters from afar, and by Fall I found myself in Houston for the campaign.

Beto HQ Houston, Team Dinner, Saturday before Election Day 2018

I'm in this picture somewhere.

If I could pick one word to describe the folk music world, it would be "community." In fact "The Folk Community" is pretty much how everyone  describes it, because we are a group that values musical connection and giving our time to causes and supporting each other in times of need. My music doesn't fit neatly into a genre called "folk," but in terms of values and approach, this community of people is my people.

So it was distressing recently to learn some ways in which our community is not living up to its ideals.