I became a one-way pen pal for democracy in 2018, writing letters and postcards to strangers in the lead-up to that year’s midterm elections.

I had spent the months before marching for women, science, immigrants and Muslims. Then I decided marching wasn’t enough. I needed to engage individual Americans about electing politicians who shared my values.

So that September, I attended a grassroots event to learn about volunteer voter outreach hosted by a Los Angeles group called Civic Sundays. We could choose to learn how to knock on doors, call and text prospective voters or write postcards to engage people.

I’d never heard of writing postcards to strangers as a way to encourage them to vote. But I was charmed by the thought of an analog means of saving democracy. Civic Sundays and other organizations, many of which sprang to life following the 2016 presidential election, supply volunteers with lists of names and addresses of registered voters. The writers supply penmanship, stamps and sometimes the postcards themselves.

I joined a large table of people with seemingly professional-level glitter and Magic Marker skills. While their postcards looked like illuminated manuscripts, I painstakingly struggled to make mine legible. A fourth-grade teacher once told me my writing resembled a hostage taker’s ransom note, but fortunately, I didn’t have to take a handwriting test to get a seat at the postcard table (some organizations do actually require one).

I found the work rather wholesome, but I wasn’t sold on the idea of trying to engage a population that couldn’t be bothered to vote.

The more postcards I wrote, the more I started to wonder: Who were these infrequent voters? Why weren’t they doing their civic duty? If I looked their address up on Google Maps, what would I see? Unmown lawns? Gated mansions?

I became racked by a desire to know who exactly were these shirkers of civic responsibility. But we’d been given clear instructions: Do not personally engage the recipients of your missives. Instead, we followed a clear and concise script of just a few sentences.

I participated in another postcard-writing campaign for the 2020 presidential election. This time, I specifically requested names from a swing state, Michigan. As I wrote to these strangers, I became increasingly frustrated, imagining them enjoying their weekends without a scintilla of voting guilt while I agonized over whether they might be offended by a postage stamp with a cat on it.

When I mentioned these frustrations to a cynical friend, he told me to read the Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s famous 1966 “Letter to a Young Activist.” I should have been suspicious, seeing as my friend would be the last person to write a postcard to a stranger. Sure enough, Merton’s words did not reassure me about the fate of my postcards. “[D]o not depend on the hope of results,” he wrote. “When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect.”

After reading Merton’s letter, I spent some months not writing the scofflaw voters of Michigan, Georgia, Arizona or anywhere else.

But when the 2024 election campaign started up, with the future of the country once again on the ballot, I asked for another postcard list.

This time one of the choices was to write to people in my own state, California. This felt more like writing a neighbor than someone far away and utterly unknown. Once I had my list and started reading the names and addresses, I realized some of my postcards would be going to people who lived near the town where I work.

And then it happened. I recognized a name. The Gen Zer who needed a nudge to vote was one of my thoughtful, capable students.

I finally had an answer about the people I was writing to. They were just like the rest of us: unmarried singles and matriarchs of big families, people who drive electric cars and people who drive big trucks, charming people and irritating people and neighbors who played their music too loud but were sweet with their kids. People so busy leading their lives they sometimes forgot or opted not to vote.

Recognizing just one name made me certain I had to keep penning these epistles of democracy, to keep reminding others, even if they didn’t listen or want to hear it, that their vote mattered. With new insight into Merton’s famous missive, I had to put my trust in, as he put it, “the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.”

Melissa Wall is a professor of journalism at Cal State Northridge who studies citizen participation in the news. This article was produced in partnership with Zócalo Public Square.

President Biden claimed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not doing enough to secure a hostage deal with Hamas terrorists.

Biden made the remarks to reporters before heading into the Situation Room, where he and Vice President Harris convened with a hostage deal negotiating team following the murder of 23-year-old Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin and five other hostages by Hamas on Saturday. 

The meeting was closed to the press, but the White House provided a readout and photos afterward. 

“President Biden expressed his devastation and outrage at the murder, and reaffirmed the importance of holding Hamas’s leaders accountable,” the White House said. “During the meeting, President Biden and Vice President Harris received an update from the U.S. negotiation team on the status of the bridging proposal outlined by the United States, Qatar, and Egypt. They discussed next steps in the ongoing effort to secure the release of hostages, including continuing consultations with co-mediators Qatar and Egypt.” 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken was seated next to Harris during the meeting, one photo showed. Other participants were CIA Director Bill Burns, Biden’s Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, National Security Affairs adviser Jake Sullivan, as well as Jon Finer, Assistant to the President & Principal Deputy National Security Advisor, Phil Gordon, Assistant to the President & National Security Advisor to the Vice President, and Brett McGurk, Deputy Assistant to the President & Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, National Security Council. 

FATHER OF ISRAELI-AMERICAN HOSTAGE PLEADS FOR DEAL ‘WITH SATAN’ BEFORE BIDEN, HARRIS ENTER SITUATION ROOM

Biden had taken questions from the press earlier Monday before heading into the Situation Room. On the South Lawn of the White House, where Biden disembarked from Marine One upon returning from his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, one reporter asked, “Mr. President, do you think it’s time for Prime Minister Netanyahu to do more on this issue? Do you think he is doing enough?

“No,” the president responded flatly. 

Asked what makes him think this deal will be successful in a way that the other proposals were not, Biden said earlier Monday, “Hope springs eternal.” The president said “we’re very close” to being able to present a final hostage deal. He told reporters he was headed into a national security meeting and would be going to Pittsburgh later in the day. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Vice President Harris in the Situation Room. (Vice President’s Office)

“Yes. I have spoken to the American hostage … I spoke to his mom and dad, and we are not giving up. We are going to continue to push as hard as we can. Thank you,” Biden said. 

Before Biden and Harris went into the Situation Room, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, the father of an Israeli-American hostage still being held by Hamas, pleaded for the U.S. and Israel to broker a deal “with Satan.” 

NETANYAHU MOURNS DEATHS OF SIX HOSTAGES RECOVERED IN GAZA, VOWS TO ‘SETTLE ACCOUNTS’ WITH HAMAS

President Joe Biden walks from Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, Monday, Sept. 2, 2024, in Washington, after returning from Rehoboth Beach, Del.  (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Dekel-Chen, appearing on “Fox & Friends,” acknowledged that the United States together with Qatar and Egypt are trying to broker an agreement between Israel and “a savage terrorist organization,” but insisted that Israeli intelligence shows Hamas’ forces are depleted at this stage. 

President Biden talks to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, Monday, Sept. 2, 2024, in Washington, after returning from Rehoboth Beach, Del.  (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

He said Netanyahu cannot offer “an excuse anymore to not complete this deal” to bring the remaining 101 hostages, including seven Americans, taken into Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, home. 

Israel saw a massive labor strike on Monday after demonstrators took to the streets in droves Sunday protesting Israel’s leadership’s failure to reach an agreement to release the hostages 11 months into the war. 

California taxpayers will pay $350,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a former state employee who alleged that Treasurer Fiona Ma, who is now running for lieutenant governor, sexually harassed her.

The former employee, Judith Blackwell, worked under Ma as the executive director of the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee. Blackwell filed the lawsuit in 2021 in Sacramento County Superior Court after she was fired.

The complaint alleged that Ma offered to let Blackwell stay in hotel rooms, and later at an Airbnb, in Sacramento with Ma and her chief of staff to avoid an hourlong commute home after dark. The lawsuit said that Ma repeatedly exposed her “bare rear end” to Blackwell in the hotel room, and once crawled into Blackwell’s bed at the Airbnb while she was sleeping.

A Sacramento County judge last year dismissed Blackwell’s claims of wrongful termination and racial discrimination, but allowed the sexual harassment allegations to move forward. The case was scheduled to go to trial Sept. 9.

“From day one, I said this was a frivolous lawsuit filed by a disgruntled employee who fabricated claims in an attempt to embarrass me in hopes of receiving millions of dollars in a settlement,” Ma said in a statement Friday. “After three years of delay, I have been completely vindicated, and can continue my work on affordable housing, climate action and job creation without distraction.”

Waukeen McCoy, the San Francisco attorney who represented Blackwell, said Ma’s characterization of the case as a vindication was “nonsense.”

“I cannot fathom how she thinks that she’s been vindicated — my client has been vindicated,” McCoy said. “It seems like Ms. Ma does not feel like she did anything wrong. She’s not taking responsibility for her actions, which is unfortunate.”

The $350,000 settlement agreement was signed by attorneys for the state Justice Department and for the state Treasury, both dated Friday.

Ma was elected as the state’s banker in 2018, and previously served in the California Assembly, where she authored legislation banning toxic chemicals and strengthening protections for domestic violence victims.

Ma is a certified public accountant and has also worked as a member of the California Board of Equalization and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.