DailyJim: Keyboards for Kamala and why I’m working with them

Hey everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is Wednesday, October 16th, 2024. And today I want to talk about Keyboards for Kamala and why I'm working with them.

So, Keyboards for Kamala is a project organization that my friend Sahar started with a couple of his friends that used to work at Meta, Facebook, in the civic integrity department. And they have a lot of experience in tech companies working to try to fight disinformation and to try to make politics communication online a little healthier and more unity and so they started this they started planting the seeds of this a couple months ago but it really started ramping up in the last couple weeks and I joined to be someone leading the trainings or leading some of the public public trainings, workshops, that are helping people get better at persuading other people to vote for Kamala, mostly through their online communities, kind of like digital canvassing or...

Social banking, like phone banking, but using social networks. And so it is sometimes very uncomfortable for me to think that I would publicly sign up for something like this. I have voted throughout my life since 18. I have gone to many presidential rallies. I have seen Kamala Harris. I saw Nikki Haley this year. I saw Bernie Sanders. I saw Joe Biden. I saw even Mitt Romney back in the day. And so I have been an observer of politics. And I have been quite active in my beliefs on political issues. But to support one candidate and to dedicate my time to supporting a candidate is something I haven't done before. And many of you might think, oh, that means he really loves Kamala and he thinks Kamala is a superhero and she's the best? No, honestly, I don't. I'm excited about the team that I think she'll bring. There's plenty of other reasons. One aspect is the president hires something like 4,000 people once they appoint 4,000 people. And I much more strongly trust the team that she would appoint and the dynamics that would happen on the team. I trust that the team wouldn't be fully top-down, but people would be able to express opinions and try to resolve conflicts together. Whereas on the Trump team, I don't think it'll be that type of format. I think it would be more top-down. And he probably has a tendency to choose people on his team that he thinks are worse than him or who won't challenge him. And I just think that style of resolving conflict doesn't work very well. It just leads to a lot of hidden conflict and a lot of festering problems.

But, you know, I was thinking about another reason. And...

Yeah, so while I was working on it today, I just went on Facebook to look something up, and I saw that a friend of mine from Oakland, California actually passed away suddenly. And he wasn't a super close friend, but having lived in many different places, some of the relationships I make can feel very deep very quickly. And we spent a lot of time working together out there in this co-working space, running events. and he was just such an enthusiastic man, full of life. His name was Rashad.

And I think about how hard it can be to lose someone.

And I was thinking, should I make this whole podcast episode about that?

But then I was like, no, I want to talk about this keyboards for Kamla thing. I want to talk about what I'm doing. and I really want to get the word out there. And it's not to demean his life. It's not to downplay it at all. It's to say that life is hard.

And it hurts to lose people. I have lost so many people this year. The last couple of years, so many funerals, so many funerals. And it's probably just going to accelerate as I get older in general. But to lose someone who I think was my age, maybe he was a little older, I don't know, he looks so young in his mannerisms.

But to just lose, I lost another guy that was around my age just a couple weeks ago. I went to the funeral in Kenya.

I think whether it's part of the job role or not, or whether we expect it, or we think we expect it of the president or not, I think we looked up to the president to help us get through these times.

We went through COVID. You know how many people died during COVID and we don't talk about it? We don't talk about it at all.

Do I think Kamala Harris is going to come in going to be perfect about that? No. And honestly, I think that's probably my disappointment is I think she's not going to be perfect on that. But maybe I put way too much hope and expectation in the president to do that role. I thought Biden did it quite well, actually. John Dickerson in his book, The Hardest Job in the World, calls it consoler in chief.

The president has to do this for people during COVID. The president has to do this for military families who lose someone overseas. He has to do this for hurricanes. He has to, or she doesn't, sorry, go into different places and just be there for people.

And when I think about this election, it's like, I don't want Donald Trump doing that role. I just don't think he does it well. It's not saying he's a bad person. It's not saying he's evil. It's not saying it's just, I don't think he's learned those skills.

I can imagine him like giving me a really awkward pat on the back, at one of my hardest moments when I just need something to, maybe grab my hands or give me a hug, tell me it's going to be okay.

Yeah, I think I get really vulnerable on these podcast episodes sometimes.

Maybe you didn't expect that about a political episode keyboards for Kamala, I don't know if they're right answers I don't know it's just I have the feeling that, she might be able to pull a team together that can help us get through some of these really hard times emotionally I don't know about our policies I don't know about these things, I just, life is hard, and it's hard as individuals, it's hard as communities, it's hard as a country, and.

I just want leaders politically, but also just leaders emotionally who are going to help us with these things. And this is not really a pitch for Kamala. It's not a pitch against Trump. It's a pitch for the type of leadership I want to see in the world. And unfortunately, when it comes to elections, we kind of have two options. And which option do we want? Which option do we prefer? So again, I'm not saying that I see her to be a superhero. It's more of which option do I think will help me in so many different ways and is more likely to help me in different ways. So I'm dedicating most of my time from now until the election to work on that and bring people to these workshops and help teach people how to express their story and express why they're voting for Kamala, why they're voting in general. Hell, I'd be even grateful if people say why they're voting for Trump. But the real deep why, not this surface level, oh, this policy, tell me emotionally, why are you voting? What drives you deep? Is it because you lost your home in 2008 and you were angry at the establishment that didn't throw the bankers in jail? Is that why? Is it because you had a son that was overseas, and you wanted him back home is that why talk about the real stuff because if we finally have the conversations about the real things then maybe we can come together as a country instead of just blaming each other instead of just talking about theoretical nonsense frankly talk about the real stuff that's happening to you and why it impacts you.

So that's what I'm working on now. I'm grateful because it's helping me challenge myself and challenge how I communicate to others, how I communicate to myself.

And really have the courage to say some of these things out loud. I think it's really hard. I think it's easy to vote in a private ballot box. I think it's really hard to tell people publicly who you're voting for and maybe deal with the backlash of that.

Especially nowadays because it's so it's almost like an identity, for me it's not an identity, I'm voting for her okay, it doesn't mean I'm, it doesn't mean I see her as my superhero, it doesn't mean that I am locked into her cult and I am against the Trump cult, it's like no, it's just who am I voting for, who would I hire for the job, and when I think about hiring her I hire her plus the rest of the team so, oh man I went over 10 minutes again I gotta get better at cutting this down but anyways y'all, yeah so that's why I'm working on this little more somber message than I probably expected to deliver but I hope you all just get out and keep feeling and keep expressing and don't shut this stuff off, keep fighting keep fighting for life you never know when it's going to end keep fighting for what you love keep fighting for the people you love keep fighting for love in general because life is too damn short.

Gonna miss you rachette gonna miss you bud all right take care y'all.