September 24, 2020

There’s something about a personalized piece of mail that stands out in the daily delivery of advertising fliers and bills. And when it’s a handwritten postcard with a retro design and an original message signed by the sender, it’s bound to get a second look.

That thinking is the inspiration behind a campaign by Indivisible Cortland County in which several UUP Cortland members are participating. Indivisible is a national political advocacy group that has long favored postcard campaigns to voters. But this year, said Anne Wiegard, a participant in the Cortland County effort, get-out-the-vote postcards have a special significance because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We haven’t even considered door-to-door contact,” said Wiegard, a longtime adjunct and delegate at Cortland who is nationally known as an activist for adjunct rights. She also serves on Indivisible Cortland County’s steering committee, along with statewide UUP Executive Board member Rebecca Bryan, the membership development officer at the UUP Cortland Chapter, and another postcard volunteer.

Wish you were here … in the voting booth

Indivisible Cortland County is sending 1,150 postcards to registered Democratic voters in the 22nd Congressional District who did not vote in the last two national elections. The postcard has a colorful, eye-catching retro design, reminiscent of one that your grandparents might have sent from a road trip in the 1950s, and bears the slogan, “Greetings from your neighbors in New York’s 22nd Congressional District.” On the flip side, recipients will find a handwritten message, unique to each postcard and signed with the first name of the volunteer who wrote it, which encourages a vote for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot in the upcoming presidential election.

“Postcards are a neighborly gesture,” Wiegard said. “There’s something about getting a personal note in the mail that is a real gesture.”

Bryan agreed.

“It personalizes it, so it doesn’t feel like it’s coming from a campaign,” she said. “It’s a way to say, ‘Hey, I’m your neighbor, and we live in the same county.’”

The district’s congressional race has drawn national attention for its rematch between the Democratic incumbent Anthony Brindisi, and his Republican challenger, Claudia Tenney, whom Brindisi unseated in 2018. But the postcards do not promote any one candidate; instead, Wiegard said, “We’re just asking them to vote Blue.”

UUP members have stayed the course

The organizer of Indivisible Cortland County’s postcard project—one of many such efforts in the state and around the country this year—is Jane Hall, a founding member of the group and a member of its steering committee.

Born in England to parents who had been young adults during World War II, Hall grew up steeped in stories of how the United States saved England, first with its shipping convoys of supplies in the face of an expected German invasion, and then with its D-Day invasion alongside British troops. /p>

There have been times in the last four years, she said, when it has been difficult to reconcile that earlier version of her adopted country with the divisiveness and xenophobia, she has seen in the last four years. A number of early members of Indivisible Cortland County who joined when the group formed in 2017 burned out with that effort, but Bryan and Wiegard have been among the stalwarts who stayed.

“I think the union people I know in this group have been very dedicated,” Hall said. “We have to keep going; we have to keep trying.”