For the past four days, I spent my time canvassing and volunteering in rural, suburban, and urban areas surrounding Des Moines, Iowa. Despite the fact that it was a lot colder than expected for my Californian roots, it has been a surreal and inspirational experience meeting Yang Gang from around the country and the world. Our individual stories of how we came to realize that Andrew would be our next president came from different spectrums of political, economic, and social reasons. Some of us were aspiring entrepreneurs while some were stay-at-home moms looking to change the world for their children. Whatever our background was, we all were unified under Andrew’s vision for a better country — a country we could leave for our future generations.
As I reflect on the experiences of meeting the Yang Gang, I keep reminiscing about one interaction I had with a man in his forties whom we met in a rural county near Des Moines. To his surprise, we were one of the first people to ever knock on his door for the eight years that he lived in that town. He felt isolated and helpless because he lost his manufacturing job and was barely scraping by with food stamps. Back in 2016, he told me that he voted for Trump with the original promise and glimmering hope that he would get his job back. In addition to his financial insecurities, he lived without nearby access to specialty care physicians, which was a struggle for him because he had Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD), which causes severe leg pain whenever he walks. I handed him a pamphlet about Andrew and explained to him how the Freedom Dividend and telemedicine would benefit his health and financial struggles. At the end of the talk, he agreed to do some more research on Andrew, a candidate who he’s never heard of in his life. Beyond that, I felt like we planted a seed for hope into a man who was given broken promises by a president who failed to address the needs of the American people.
This one interaction was one of many unique and awe-inspiring stories of everyday Americans I’ve met who are struggling to survive in a society that values the markets over what matters to us all like mental health, freedom from substance abuse, and childhood success rates. An America that values the markets and profits isn’t the America we should live in. An America that creates compassion, understanding, and bridges the gap between the left and the right of the political spectrum together is what we need to bridge together a divided country. As canvassers, we were there to listen, learn, and share stories from everyday Americans — some of whom were left behind and ignored by our country. Although we had different worldviews and perspectives of the country — me being a son of immigrants from California and him being a third generation Iowan — we connected with each other through our human values. And I just hope the seeds that I’ve planted this week — even if it was a single seed — would blossom into branches that bridge together a nation of White America, Black America, Asian America, Latinx America, poor America, and rich America, into one America: the United States of America.
