Main Street

The Conversation

By Lynne Bolton — Minnesota

This is not going to be your typical blog story. I’ll tell you right away that the woman I was talking with signed down as a member and made a contribution. In a way, this story isn’t about her, it’s about me.

I came to this work like so many of us. I needed a job and I wanted to feel I was making a difference. And I know that I have. Over the last year and a half I (like every other canvasser) have heard the heartbreaking stories of job and health care loss. I’ve helped someone write a powerful letter, or listened as they made their first ever phone call to an elected official. These are wonderful moments, and for me at least, it’s sometimes easy to get lost in them.

The woman I was talking with didn’t need me to give her an impassioned argument for health care reform. She knew it was a moral issue, that our country desperately needs it. She wasn’t worried about paying more to get it. Her concerns were different.

You see, she and her husband owned a small business. They’d worked hard to make it profitable, and more importantly, they’d worked hard to find health care that would actually care for their employees and not bankrupt them. They’d finally found it, and she was afraid that her employees would lose it.

And so, I explained the public option to her, that that wouldn’t happen, and of course she got involved. As I was leaving, she thanked me for the work we do, but also for giving her the information. Because she and her friends talk about health care, and none of them understood how the Public Option would work, and now she could tell them.

It didn’t hit me until much later that this is, in some ways the most important thing we do. We connect people in their communities together – not just though membership and checks, but through the conversations that go on long after we leave.