Kansas City > Des Moines

Caravan

Riding in the back seat is such a third wheel situation. I tried to contribute to the conversation a bit, but threw the towel in pretty quickly as lack of sleep caught up with me. I mostly listened to N and S chat, occasionally piping in with something short and juicy.

We quickly fell into fairly intimate conversation, particularly given the fact that before this trip we were all complete strangers. It was immediately clear that we each come from wildly differing socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. This fact may not come as much of a surprise if you have been paying attention to what’s happening in the Yang Gang. Still, compared to the homogeny many of us have grown accustomed to over the years via indoctrination in our divisive, tribal social structures, it is novel enough to feel, frankly, astonishing.

To digress for a moment;

I grew up the child of divorced parents. They were pretty well split by the time I was born, so I never knew them as the loving couple they came together as. As devoted as they were to me and my sister, they could not successfully navigate their personal or marital issues with enough grace or civility to spare us innocents from the fallout of their conflict. Not an unfamiliar situation for far too many people.

Having this conflict as my first neurological imprint struck a hard note. To this day I feel a visceral aversion towards any whiff of incohesion and a deep seeded compulsion to root out conflicts, no matter how small the issue appears or who is involved.

Yang Gang is all about problem solving, and to do that you have to be courageous enough to look at the problems. Many of these problems have been avoided for so long precisely because they are painful to look at, but an ignored problem only becomes more painful, louder, more demanding, and more invasive until it is adequately addressed. Many of the problems we are addressing together today have been festering for a long time, and it can take a lot of patience and empathy to unravel things back to the source.

Our individual experiences build up unique world views and unique preconceived notions that we connect to words or phrases that, while symbolically similar among speakers of a given language, manifest a very dissimilar internal experience for the listener than was the speaker’s intent. This can be understood with a simple example; if I tell you to think of a tree, what comes to mind? A densely packed forest of Redwoods? A single willow by a river? A photograph or painting that made an impression on you once upon a time? No two people will think of the same tree in the same way. The more complicated an idea we try to convey, the more our semantic definitions are likely to diverge. The more we semantically diverge, the likelier a misunderstanding (seed of conflict) is to arise. This is in part why twitter, with it’s 280 character limit, is so fraught with hostilities. It’s difficult to paint a full picture in a tweet.

Now back to the trip;

There were many times in the car with N and S where conversation would flirt with delicate subjects that threatened to disrupt our compassionate dialogue. Yet even as an emotion began to bubble, something about our exchanges battered those divisions back. This is such a novel dynamic, the importance of which cannot be overstated. I’m still trying to understand what factors convey this ability to our group. Maybe the simple act of trying to understand, realizing our own perspectives and symbolic definitions are limited, maybe that’s a good first step.

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Des Moines

A few hours and one gas stop later we pulled up outside the new Des Moines office. All of us giddy with excitement, we hurried up to the building where some folks decked out in Yang gear were waiting to welcome and orient us. They handed out some bumper stickers, took our signatures down, and pointed us upstairs.

One flight up a door opened into the elevator area with a corridor running perpendicular opposite the stairwell. The crowd was spilling out everywhere. We poked around the corner and saw the dense nucleus of bodies at least a hundred feet down the hall at an open office.

Everyone was in high spirits and we all chattered away with our neighbors while anticipation slowly built. Finally after what felt like an hour (but was probably 5–10 minutes) someone from near the elevators loudly announced that Andrew Yang was in the building. Uproarious cheers, laughter, and chanting erupted from the group. We all flushed our backs up against the wall, and someone suggested we all raise our arms angled up towards the opposite wall, forming an arch (“both arms! Not just one!” someone advised to a round of chuckles).

Around the corner came Yang and his entourage. He strutted at a half jog through our arch, both hands up, high fiving many along the way, all with one of the most genuinely joyful smiles I have ever seen on an adult’s face, let alone a politician. He made it to the office entrance, turned in, and the crowd immediately collapsed on the doorway. Evidently he started talking because everyone quieted down shortly after. We were too far back to get a good view or hear much, so we turned back to each other and agreed that was awesome and that we would never wash our hands again.

For a few minutes Yang spoke and the crowd simmered down a bit. Then some of the organizers started herding us along one side of the hallway in preparation for selfies and signatures. The event itself was slated for an hour and half, but most of that turned out to be specifically so he could meet, shake hands, take pictures, and get a few words in with every single person that showed up. I saw Yang four times that day, and he didn’t skip a single person (I personally got in line three times) much to the chagrin of his schedule keepers. Not only that but he was just as enthusiastic, present, and energized with the very last person as with the first.

Yang made his way down the line one by one while N and I progressively devolved deeper and deeper into teenybopper star struck gushing. With adrenaline shaking hands N got his copy of The War On Normal People opened, marker ready, while my own quivering digits fidgeted around a globular melted piece of aluminum about the size of a bead, dropping it in and pulling it out of the inside brim of my brown faux suede flat cap.

Yang Is Nice So We Are Nice #YINSWAN

When he got to me it took a couple seconds to draw his attention to my talisman piece, away from the rapid flitting through the condensed sphere of people and noise surrounding him. Once he realized I was trying to say something though he tuned in and everything else seemed to drop away for the moment. I briefly described what the piece was (more here), and asked him if I could stash it in his new office for good vibes. He laughed, said he loved the idea, and of course I could.

After stashing it, lollygagging around a bit basking in the aura of things, chatting with the new office residents, and nabbing some merch the caravan crew met up outside and prepared to head to the next spot, a local bbq joint ran by a guy named Big Al.

Big Al was not as big as his name might suggest. But he does cook some mean pulled pork. The restaurant was officially closed that Sunday, but Al opened up for us and put out a buffet and drinks. We were part of the first wave to arrive, but soon after all the seats were taken and even standing room became scarce. Whatever the maximum occupancy number was, we had one less than that in attendance.

There was another group of Kansas City Yangsters that had spent the previous night in Des Moines that our caravan met up with at the bbq joint. Everyone was in great spirits and super friendly. We all ate and talked and laughed until Yang showed up again, whereupon the crowd roared, he spoke a bit, and posted up for selfies/signatures. Once I got my second hit of dopamine for the day I grabbed my gear out of N’s car and migrated to the minivan which was headed to the second office opening and town hall on the east end of the state. Everyone else had to go home, so now it was P and T who had stayed over the previous night, ST, who rode up in the other car that morning, and myself.

For the finale, check out (pt. 3)

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