Biking on a Tightrope: the Balancing Act of the 2024 Election
Salomé Lipták ‘28
Photo by Salomé Lipták
“Let’s all go around and give one word to say how we’re feeling.”
The first person to break the silence admitted, “terrified.” The next ignored instructions and offered: “Strangely, I’m hopeful.”
I was sitting in a circle with 11 other student volunteers in the walk-in closet of an Airbnb somewhere in South Philly. We had just listened to the Sunrise Movement staff discuss strategies for post-election action. After hearing the anticipated risks of every outcome, a lengthy pause seemed to reverberate around the room, someone’s shallow breaths echoing in the small space. The discussion leader led a grounding exercise.
Without thinking, I answered their prompt with “gravity.”
Before this, my impression of Philadelphia was limited to one visit to the Franklin Institute when I was 7 years old. I can only recall one of the exhibits: “skybike,” a bicycle semi-stabilized by a hanging weight, teetered on a tightrope over a net in the museum’s lobby. For only $2 a ride, one could learn a high-stakes lesson on gravity, balance, and counterbalance—all of which are necessary to keep the bike pedaling, and reach the other side safely. This image suddenly came back to me, confirming the aptness of the word. Gravity—from the Latin “gravitas,” meaning weighty, heavy or serious—undoubtedly described the air in this room.
The other student volunteers and I had spent all day canvassing neighborhoods in different parts of Philadelphia, going door-to-door to speak with voters about the issues that impacted them and their communities. In the morning orientation, the Sunrise staff gave us a loose script to follow, encouragement to connect personally with voters, and stacks of “lit” before we were assigned “turf” to canvas.
I had only signed up two weeks beforehand, after I saw a post that mentioned free transportation for a minimum number of canvassing shifts. I filled out all the waivers, booked the tickets, and attended the Zoom training; I did not, however, fully internalize that I was going.
And yet, on Saturday, Nov. 2, I found myself in a random park pretending to be an undecided voter so my friend could practice convincing me that Kamala Harris was our best option. Shortly after, I was knocking on my first doors.
The vast majority of the roughly 150 doors I knocked on over the two days were unremarkable—people weren’t home, were committed to pretending not to be home, or told you directly they didn’t want to talk.
There were other, more uplifting conversations. I was able to use my knowledge of French to help a new citizen validate his voter registration and find his polling place for his first election. At another house, a little girl answered the door. Her mom followed her down the hall yelling “I know why you’re here!” Before I could begin to panic, she yelled again: “He can’t touch this!” gesturing to herself with a shimmy and a wink.
Talking with people requires holding multiple truths at once; you work to inform voters about the policy issues while also empathizing with the wariness and despair. A lot of these voters felt rightfully let down—on local and international levels they didn’t see enough of a difference between parties. What they did see, as citizens of a swing state, was an influx of outsiders during presidential elections, promising changes that they hadn’t felt in their daily lives.
The philosophy of choice in this election was incredibly complex—people were tired of voting for what felt like only the lesser of two evils. One of the first houses I canvassed had an “ARMS EMBARGO NOW” sign in the yard, with a Palestinian flag hanging from the highest window. While waiting for someone to answer I noticed the mezuzah on the door frame. The woman who came to the door listened while I introduced myself, and answered, “I will be voting on Tuesday. I won’t be voting for Kamala.” She continued, “I do understand why you’re doing what you’re doing.” All I could do was repeat the same sentiment, and as I turned to go she offered me a bouquet of flowers from her pollinator garden.
We were all balancing on this tightrope. We teetered between hope and fear, reform and revolution, anger and understanding. In that walk-in closet, the uncertainties of the following days and weeks settled where stories had been exchanged excitedly just half an hour before. We fully felt the gravity of our situation for the first time that day, having looked up from our address lists long enough to remember the amorphous future coming after this election.
However, gravity was also our grounding force. The gravity of the situation brought 14 young people from both Sarah Lawrence and Bard College to Philadelphia. Our connection to our Earth and fellow humans gave us a reason to continue despite the cold weather, the long days and our looming midterms.
I wrote the first part of this article back in my dorm room, also in a circle on the floor, as my friends and I huddled around a laptop and watched CBS live election coverage. I could feel myself dipping in and out of the weight of it all, but I also think some part of myself believed she just had to win. I went to bed before results were called, expecting it to be several days before we’d have an answer.
In grappling with the loss this morning, I keep thinking back to the conversations I had in Philadelphia. I think about how different each and every person was: the issues they cared about, who they were voting for, why they were even voting at all. People who agreed on the same issues chose to vote very differently. All of those people each got flattened into one filled-in bubble that doesn’t show the why.
That’s what I wish I knew. As we lean in our rightful fear and anger at these results, I try to remember the feeling of being in the meeting with Sunrise—that we can and must balance all of these things. I am afraid, and I am hopeful. I am angry, and I try my best to understand the realities that direct people to vote differently. I am so, so disappointed, and we can keep fighting for what needs saving.
The Sunrise meeting ended with a call-and-response adapted from Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem.” The final lyric gives us another dialectic to balance our bike upon:
“There is a crack in everything…”
“...that’s how the light gets in.”