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Walk into Anne Stonehill’s Gramercy apartment on a recent Tuesday night, and there’s going to be a party. Not just any party, but a letter writing party.
Stonehill is plating food, pouring drinks, handing out Harris-Walz pins, holding thought provoking political conversations, passing out “why I vote” letters and kissing her friends hello as they enter. Because as if hosting wasn’t stressful enough, Anne would also like to save democracy.
Stonehill, 78, a retired television and radio producer, decided she wanted to jump into a post-retirement career in politics. She and Elizabeth Sadoff, 70, a professional art advisor, started The Action Group NYC in 2022 to help citizens with voter registration, election awareness, phone and text banking, canvassing, and more.
The pair met at a phone banking event for former President Obama in 2008.
“I remember it perfectly,” Sadoff said, recalling that Anne “commented on the way I was connecting with people. And, that was that. She spots people that she feels respect for and that meant a lot to me.”
Stonehill has hosted nine events at her apartment during this election cycle, estimating that over 6,000 letters have been written, with sometimes more than 30 people filling her apartment at these Tuesday night soirees. They sit on the couches, floors, in the kitchen, her bedroom and sometimes even in her vanity. On a recent night, as I found a spot in the kitchen to watch, people passed chocolates from See’s Candies and Sadoff walked around with a pitcher of water filling glasses as I found myself a spot in the kitchen with more letter writing attendees.
And when I looked around the room, or rooms in Stonehill’s case, I noticed one glaring statistic – it’s a lot of women.
Surprised? No. Neither were they.
“I find that sometimes, men will want to run the groups,” Sadoff said in regards to why they have excelled in hosting these events.
“In terms of pulling things together and making community, it seems to be more natural for women,” Stonehill replied.
Events such as these are posted on Mobilize, which is a website to help mission-driven organizations manage events and recruitment. For example, anyone seeking to attend a letter writing party, go door knocking, or phone bank could find such events in their area using the website. This is how I found Stonehill, Sadoff and many more parties similar to theirs in Manhattan.
At another letter writing party hosted on Thursday nights at The Forum at Columbia University, I found a table of 11 – you guessed it – women.
Simone Franco, 72 and retired, helps run this event, where a rotating group of women — which includes students at Columbia, mothers, and other retired women — gather to write their own versions of “Why I Vote” letters to send off to undecided voters.
When Franco turned 70, she decided to find things to do in Manhattan aside from dancing salsa. In April, she found the organization Swing Left, and began writing letters to help with the Harris campaign.
Swing Left is a national organization founded by Ethan Todras-Whitehill, Josh Krafchin and Miriam Stone. The organization began in 2017 as a resource for people to find where their closest congressional swing district was. A swing district is a place where voters have swung between Republican and Democratic candidates in the last three to four elections cycles. Swing Left now has over 1 million grassroots members and over 400 volunteer groups across the country, according to their website. They get help from volunteers like Franco, Sadoff, Stonehill, and the dozens of other women I met over the last month who have been writing letters, making phone calls, hopping on canvassing buses and more to reach undecided voters.
“Women are willing to work for free,” Franco said. “When women are mothers or caretakers, you get used to working for free. More men just want to get paid for their work.”
Franco said the letter writing parties she had attended skewed heavily female, which Stonehill and Sadoff echoed. She thought that women were more willing to volunteer their time, especially when it came to political participation. All three women insisted that they couldn’t sit around and do nothing during this election. Issues such as abortion access, environmental protection, gun safety, democracy and more rang out in my conversations with them. Politics is not something they see as needing to be divisive, but actually a way to build community.
“This has been an epiphany for me,” Franco said. “I didn’t know how to get politically involved [before], and now I’m plugged into people who value this kind of work.”
What started out for Franco as a way to fill time and give back to her community is now giving her a newfound purpose. And as for Stonehill and Sadoff, they plan to keep going as well.
“I’m going to be dead in like how many years? And so what do I care?” Stonehill said. “ But I do care. I care about the principles that [America] had.”
After election day, Stonehill and Sadoff plan to start another group to focus on issues like environmental justice and gun laws, but at a more local level.
“If it needs to be done, women are going to get it done,” Stonehill said.
These women can host parties. They can write thousands of letters. They can build community. They can dance salsa. They can make change. And maybe they can help convince other people to elect a woman as president this November.