It was a crazy final couple of months and then the really crazy couple of weeks on the campaign trail on the Pennacchio campaign, but I’m alive and now, a week rested, ready to start writing about it. I’ve been absent on these pages [as has the hard working jpol] as a result of my involvement on the campaign, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
I also ran, and lost, a bid to enter the other side of politics as an elected official. I wrote about why I ran previously here. I wasn’t able to devote as much time on running my own [little] campaign and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to, but I still felt it was important to run and get involved and enter my first political race.
I learned a whole lot about getting involved heavily in a Senate primary run and running for an über local spot and I’d like to share a little bit of that here.
Getting involved as I did in the Pennacchio campaign was the single best feeling thing I’ve ever done in my still young tenure as a political activist. It seems like it was just yesterday when I was in school down in Washington, D.C. wanting to protest the protesters and now I just gotta laugh at the version of me of five years ago. Getting involved as I did which entailed 20+ hours a week, traveling with the candidate, giving up weekends, standing out in the cold talking to mostly apathetic strangers, putting your personal life on hold… involves a lot of things falling into place.
If you have a job, a normal 40-hour 5-day workweek, be prepared to go in sleepy, drained and generally out of it at least two days a week. I’m talking about a solid half a work week, unpaid, in addition to the load you’re already undertaking right now. The only benefits provided by this volunteerism is a pat on the back and your own self righteousness. If your candidate gets elected, then maybe you can parlay your efforts into a gig down the line if you want to stay involved. Other than that, just like most unpaid volunteer efforts, it’s all on you.
If you have a significant other in your life, you should talk it over with them to some extent before throwing yourself into the madness. My girlfriend is awesome and she not only understood, but was one of the main reasons I was able to get through it all. The words of encouragement, picking up my slack of household chores and her general cheery nature was an incredible help over the last two months of craziness.
If you have some needy friends, either get them to join on or just tell them to deal with some things themselves. You won’t “have a life” for 99% of the time. You will eat, sleep and breathe the campaign. You’ll think you’re out relaxing one night on the town with your friends and you’ll be doing some campaign related calculus in your head at all times. The cars you pass by on your walk to the bar: which ones should you be flyering? The people in the bar: how many of them are super voters? The people buying drinks: how many dollars could be raised for the campaign? The houses you walk by: how many potential volunteers live there? It never ends. E-day +7 now and I still see myself reaching into my bag for a brochure as I pass by cars with Kerry-Edwards bumper stickers [stop it!].
You will be traveling with the campaign at one point or another. Locally or not so locally. I took several trips around this half of the state to campaign, canvass and attend debates/speeches. Sometimes you go five in a car, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you get back at 2am, sometimes you luck out and get back before midnight. You’ll have some great company either way, but getting some shut eye isn’t the priority on these trips.
I was up for the final 38 hours driving all over Philadelphia shuttling myself and voluteers and various sorts of literature to polling places. I even plastered an area between 2a – 4a where a couple days later, a cop killer was caught in a shootout. Hey, they have a high voter turnout. Like I said, ya gotta do what ya gotta do. I passed out after the craziness at the wrap up party after a beer and a half. I was running on nutella, cheese and crackers.
In the end, win or lose, you will end up with an incredible new group of friends. Who the hell else will understand the hilarity of a glass of wine spilled all over a laptop holding crucial voter data 48 hours before the final election day mobilization efforts? Luckily, she immediately flipped her laptop upside down and I powered down the laptop to avoid an immediate short. I ran home to get my mini screwdriver set and took apart the laptop mopping up the mess. In the end, only we know why Al Gore was to blame. Damn you Gore!
I know that the core group out of Philadelphia who worked on this progressive, grassroots campaign will be sticking together and working on more local, homegrown campaigns in the future. In the very near future actually. We’ve got our eyes set on the Speaker of the House here in Pennsylvania’s General Assembly, John Perzel (R-Philadelphia), who is quite a specimen. He has single-handedly held up numerous tries to get a vote on an increase of the minimum wage here in PA which is still at the federal minimum of $5.15 among other nastiness.
I don’t mean this diary to scold people for not getting involved the way I did/have. It’s fucking near impossible, I know, from experience. You have kids. You have a mortgage. You have a demanding job. You’ve got other things to worry about. But we can all contribute along the way. Not everyone has to basically give up two months of their lives to work a part-time job for free. But many if not most of us have a computer at home and can help with some data entry an hour a week. Make some phone calls on your cell phones using your free night minutes. Attend a rally/debate/speech/event and show your support in numbers. Tell your friends. Tell them to tell their friends. Maybe a handful of people in your extended network will be able to volunteer those crazy hours that a grassroots campaign vitally needs to survive.
There are great candidates all over the States. They don’t have to have the national spotlight of Hackett in Ohio or Lamont in Connecticut. Look right in your backyard and see who is running for school board or city council or state senate or U.S. Congress or governor – whatever. The democracy our founding mothers and fathers strived to create is not so slowly eroding before our eyes and we need to get good people back and jumpstart some good government. But it all starts locally, All politics is local said Rep. Tip O’Neill (D-MA) and I gotta say, he sure as fuck knew what he was talking about when he said that. We were a big part in mobilizing 113K votes across the state for two progressive candidates (65K Pennacchio, 48K Sandals) and that’s an incredible base of people to work with as a starting point for the next elections statewide and I can’t wait to get behind the next wonderful candidate that comes through the pipe.