I'm carrying you with me as I make these phone calls.

They're making calls to Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Virginia and New Mexico today. These are all key races.

Pitch in ASAP at environmentalvoter.org

It's not too late to pitch in! They give you a quick training, and the calls are easy to do (even from bed). Also, you can do it in short bursts to pace yourself if you need to. I find it kind of addictive, honestly. I get a rush when it seems like someone really may vote because of my call.

Because turnout is likely to be low, in Georgia turning out just a few environmental voters can have a BIG impact.

Also, if someone votes once, it's much more likely they'll keep doing it, so this work changes the electorate over time.

I've mostly been making calls for the Georgia Public Service Commissioner election, which is soooooo important and sooooo under the radar. Few people even know what the PSC does and why it matters! But it's critical to cost of living, to climate change, to the economy...

In less than an hour, I've reached several people who didn't know where their polling place was and were happy to get help to find out. I can't say for sure that such folks will follow through and vote, but chances are a heck of a lot higher now!

Aw, this makes me so happy to hear!

If you have even an hour, you can log in and make calls from home. Volunteer here: environmentalvoter.org

One voter who thought he couldn’t vote said to me:
“Thank you for spending your Sunday evening doing something really worthwhile.”

It’s not too late to help with this Tuesday’s elections—EVP has phone-bank shifts for key races in Georgia, New York, and New Jersey.

Others I called might not have needed that info right away, but maybe the reminder mattered.

I’ll be honest: calling strangers isn’t easy. When people hung up, I felt bad for bugging them. But it’s worth briefly bugging some folks if it means someone gets the information they need to cast a ballot.

In my hour of calls, I reached two registered voters who were convinced they couldn’t vote.

Both were so grateful when I explained that yes, they can—and gave them their polling info.

EVP finds registered voters who care about the environment but don’t always turn out—and helps them navigate the voting process.

They don’t tell anyone who to vote for, just when, where, and how.

In my hour of calls, I reached two registered voters who were convinced they couldn’t vote.
Both were so grateful when I explained that yes, they can—and gave them their polling info.

EVP finds registered voters who care about the environment but don’t always turn out—and helps them navigate the voting process.
They don’t tell anyone who to vote for—just when, where, and how.

But most of the time, victories are small, fleeting, incomplete.
Both in illness and in climate work, the discipline is the same: Keep going, even when the realm of action is far smaller than necessity demands.

Read the full essay here: jrehmeyer.substack.com/p/two-system...

And sometimes, it works. Sometimes ME patients improve or even recover.
Sometimes climate action does too — like when Johnston and other activists in kayaks delayed Shell’s Arctic drilling rig, and months later Shell gave up the project entirely.

Hope isn’t a reliable ally, just as it isn't for fighting climate change. Most of us became severe only after years of treatments that failed.
So we practice a kind of hopeless action — trying without expectation, because trying itself is a form of faith. A muscular type of prayer.

ME punishes exertion. It can make even thought or touch unbearable.
Many spend years motionless in darkened rooms because light and sound are excruciating.
It’s a collapse, in miniature.

In the community of those with severe ME, we ask versions of the same question every day.
What does it mean to love this life, when so little life is available to us?
What does it mean to love anyone or anything when we can barely engage?