Politics Is Still Human

One of my favorite conversations recently started with a T-shirt.

 

A 62-year-old man answered the door wearing an Empire shirt, an old TV show starring Terrence Howard as a music mogul and Taraji P. Henson as his wife. We were already having a positive conversation about the race when I commented on it. He laughed and said it was a great show. I asked if he knew it was loosely inspired by Diddy and he was aware.

 

That turned into talking about the Diddy documentary on Netflix. Then Power and then Force—two shows on Starz similar to Empire. We laughed. The conversation relaxed. And at the end, he said, “You’ve got my vote.”

 

There’s no grand lesson here except maybe an important reminder.

 

Politics doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens between people who like shows, have opinions about music, worry about their families, and carry decades of lived experience with them to the door.

 

We don’t need to flatten ourselves into slogans to be taken seriously. In fact, the opposite is often true. When people feel like they’re talking to a real person—not a script—trust builds faster.

 

Yes, systems matter. Structures matter. Power matters.

 

But so does being human enough to meet someone where they are, even if that meeting starts with a TV show instead of a policy brief.

 

This work is hard. It’s cold. It’s repetitive. And sometimes it’s unexpectedly joyful.

 

That’s why we keep doing it.

​