division // theoretically
By Elizabeth Nawrocki
In 2020, I was so deeply invested in the presidential election. I volunteered, I led trainings, I canvassed, I watched every debate– I was moving and shaking and talking for months on end. The 2024 election was a different story. I still cared deeply and had strong opinions, but was withdrawn, uninvested, uninterested in the theatrics of establishment candidates. I couldn’t rally the same energy I had 4 years prior.
After a season of separation from politics, I found myself at an Erie City Council meeting on a dark November evening. A friend of mine had posted a call for support for the Erie Spiritual Coalition’s proposed Tenant Bill of Rights. This group of incredible people had put in the work of listening and petitioning and organizing around the city, amplifying the call for housing justice in the City of Erie.
When I showed up to the meeting I quickly recognized friends new and old who have been organizing in the community for years– people I admire, who I share values with. I caught up with a few different groups of people before the meeting, all here to voice support for the Tenant Bill of Rights. This was coalition and community building at work. I felt the energy and movement and excitement that had animated my political work years before. This is how we organize. This is how we win.
Then I looked into the council chambers. The energy was different.
The first few rows of seats were filled with folks wearing red baseball hats, American flags embroidered on the side of a few, the name of the president elect across the back of one. This group was made up of folks from around the county who were angered and hurt by a Facebook post made by the City Council President a few weeks prior. Folks who likely sat in a very different political camp than the organizers and activists I had just caught up with in the lobby.
Tensions were high.
Concerned citizens lined up along the wall to take their turn to speak. Comments were split between voicing support for the Tenant Bill of Rights and shouting expletives at the council president to resign in shame for her divisive post. It was clear that the recent election had heightened the walls of separation between many of us.
But there was a peculiar and calm strength that, at times, seemed to unite the divided crowd. When an individual would approach the council to speak their support for the Tenant Bill of Rights, everyone listened. Citizens shared their own stories of renting, the difficulties they faced with shady landlords, the struggle to find safe and adequate housing for their families. And everyone was on board. The individuals who minutes before were shouting at the council were now clapping in support of the powerful message of protecting the renting class. These two groups who have been positioned in opposition to each other by the rhetoric of their own political parties seemed to find common ground in the concrete realities of living in this world.
It’s as if the accusations of racism or wokeness or what have you are never meant to be a productive means of transformation but are instead employed to keep us in the realm of aggressive and theoretical debate. If we are angry enough about the vocabulary choices of our opponents we will forever be distracted from the fact that most of the folks we are arguing with face the same problems in their day to day lives as we do. Right and left, urban and rural, radical and traditional– these manufactured divisions are keeping us in a state of constant agitation, anger, and aggression directed toward those we could instead be working with to build the kind of power that could change lives, structures, institutions.
I caught the tiniest glimpse of the kind of connections that are possible. Connections beyond the binary system of thinking that keeps working class people divided behind walls of political jargon. Connections that can make possible the kinds of strong community we will need to rely on as the world keeps turning. Connections that ensure we are prioritizing the needs of the most vulnerable in our community.
Connections like this will take time to build. There are layers of mistrust and misunderstanding and deep hurt that have to be addressed if we hope to build anything substantial. But good things often take time, and I’m willing to invest.
On January 8th, the Tenant Bill of Rights passed into Erie City Ordinance–a win for all working class people, no matter their political affiliation. This is fertile ground on which to build connections and coalitions that go beyond our simple red and blue divisions.
We can dismantle the walls that were built to separate us–brick by brick.
AUTHOR
elizabeth nawrocki is a bit of an educator, you could say. She substitute teaches in the Erie School District and leads summer camp and other programs at Big Laurel Learning Center in Kermit, WV. If you need a babysitter, entertainment for a child’s party, or a weird and fun assembly at your elementary school, she’s your guy.
Elizabeth’s recommended listening:
Thank you for this piece! It's hopeful and helpful.