These Women Mostly Ignored Politics. Now, Activism Is Their Job.
CONNEAUT LAKE, Pa. — The next stop on Kathy Rentz’s mission to rescue American democracy was the Pizza Hut on Route 322. In a drably lit room in the back, more than a dozen people were already gathered, huddling over cheese sticks, pitchers of Diet Pepsi and maps of state legislative districts.
The subject was how to end gerrymandering. The meeting opened with a brief talk about how parties in control — Republicans, in Pennsylvania’s case — draw districts to lock in power. But it quickly turned to political tactics. Should they hand out fliers at the upcoming food festival? Better to go to a stubborn lawmaker’s office in shifts or all at once?
Ms. Rentz offered her counsel. “I think,” she said, “we’ve got to pester the life out of these people.”
For most of her 74 years, Ms. Rentz was a mildly attentive Republican; since retiring eight years ago as a high school French teacher, she was content to spend her time gardening, knitting and spoiling her grandchildren.
Now she is the kind of person who writes “Not For Trump’s Golf Trips” across her federal tax return. She leaves a plastic bin filled with canvassing paperwork outside her front door in case fellow activists are looking for something to do. At candidate forums in V.F.W. halls 45 minutes from her home, there in the back sits Ms. Rentz.
“I’d really like to go down to Philadelphia for my grandkids’ piano recitals,” she said. But all this, she continued, “is now my job.”
At regular intervals this past year, the scale of the grass-roots fervor on the left has been on full display. Thousands take to the streets for another national protest; another record is broken for the number of candidates running for Congress; another special election ends in a shock Democratic victory, like the one by Conor Lamb in a Pennsylvania congressional district that Donald J. Trump carried in 2016 by 20 percentage points.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/us/democratic-women-campaigning.html