Want to come with us to Sherman County, Oregon? According to this handy mapping tool from The Washington Post, that’s the nearest county to King County that voted the opposite way we did — 21 percent of voters there went for Clinton, and 74 percent went for Trump.
“What should you do with this information?” writes the Post’s Philip Bump. “You should drive to the place that voted differently than where you live and make some friends. Hear people out. Do your part to eliminate the divides in American politics.”
It’s a 4.5 hour drive in good traffic. Road trip, anyone? No, seriously. E-mail us if you’d like to join: [email protected].
In post-election work that’s closer to home, reader Nora Coghlan was at Sunday’s ConcreteActions: Neighborhood Organizing Kick Off and reported back. The event was for Seattleites who want to work with their neighbors to support communities that feel targeted post-election.
Her Ballard group is meeting next week to start fleshing out some of the ideas they came up with, like asking local businesses to speak out for inclusion on Inauguration Day and taking steps to support immigrants, particularly in more rural parts of the state.
“Overall I found it really energizing and connected with a couple cool people,” Nora wrote.
Want to get involved? Participants from other neighborhoods have been sharing their notes on the event’s Facebook group, and there’s a website, too. Check it out.
Many of our readers have managed to take all the post-election @$%#! and turned it into something powerful. — whether it’s a commitment to support something you believe in, a drive to keep working through the issues, a way to express how you see things and why it matters (2016 Washington Teacher of the Year and reader Nate Bowling wrote this and is currently reading this book) or even a resource to create for others around you. On that last note, here are two readers whose work you might really appreciate:
Scott Berkun spent three weeks reading history, all the commentary and even some of the Constitution. Then he wrote this thoughtful and pretty darn comprehensive “2016 Post-Election Sanity Guide” that takes 10 minutes to read and suggests what to do “if you are concerned about the impact of a Trump presidency.” “Writing, and the process it demands, helps me process the world,” Scott wrote us. Check it out, and if you see better resources out there, let him know and he’ll update the doc.
Mollie Wogg was putting together a list of local events she wanted to attend post-election when she realized other people might be looking for the same thing. So she turned her list into “Fight the Good Fight Seattle,” a digital calendar of categorized things to do that speak to her interest in social justice. “If the time I spend maintaining the website allows dozens of other people to do some good in their community, then that’s a huge win,” she wrote us. Got events to add? Leave a comment on her site.