Thank you!

Greetings to all and best wishes for your well-being and all you love.

Photo Credit: Bettina Arrigoni

This little elf owl expresses how I feel about all that has been going on. I first was going to send out this photo last Tuesday saying “You did what?! Congratulations!” And then Wednesday happened and now I think the little owl is saying, “They did what?! Ay yi yi...you humans!”

I am writing to thank all of you who worked to protect American democracy in its near escapes from death. Fifteen months ago, I vowed to do all I could to work on the 2020 election, in particular for the organization Reclaim Our Vote, which focuses on disenfranchised voters of color. Many of you joined me in that effort--from what I have heard, we sent out at least 25,000 postcards! In total, Reclaim Our Vote generated over 9 million postcards, 1.7 million phone calls and almost 3 million text messages. We can see the difference it made.

From my 23-year-old goddess-daughter, Franki, who, while working full-time and putting herself through graduate school, committed to writing 10 cards--to my dear friend, Marcelina, without whom I could not have sent out my original packets of 4500 cards and who personally sent out 350 postcards herself--to my childhood friend Anna who organized her friends to send 8,000 postcards and so many of you—

WE DID IT!

Every card makes a difference, especially with Reclaim Our Vote—which is one of the reasons I chose them from amongst many excellent organizations. Reclaim Our Vote is led by people of color and serves voters who are not being reached by other organizations. Founder Andrea Miller is a tech wizard who creates brilliant ways to reach them. You can volunteer on their website--or let me and Susan Norton (politicalsusan@gmail.com) know if you would like to be part of my group.

I know many of you worked really hard and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I had thought I would be complete after November, but even though we have made great progress, this continues to be an all-hands-on-deck situation, so we carry on.

I am inspired by my late father Francis “Ike” Iglehart, who, with my mother Harriet, started working in Maryland in civil rights in the mid-1940s. I know he would be cheering us and grateful to you as well. And as we can see, we still have a lot of work to do--just as I saw my father, alongside a handful of others in Maryland, volunteer his time for 60 years, slowly making progress.

A year ago I wrote, “May 2020 be a year of seeing clearly.”

And was it ever--just not in the way I had imagined. Problems that have been festering for decades like climate crisis, for centuries like racism and for millennia like dominator values became even more visible.

So I hope you all continue on--and if you would like to do more, will join us in this essential and rewarding work of protecting civil rights, democracy and of course, this exquisite earth that we are privileged to live on.

I am so grateful to you all.

With deep bows,

Hallie