True Tales of a Political Operative Part II: The Curse of the GOTV Cell Phone.

The first time I ever drafted a post for this website, I wrote about my life as a political operative.  I promised (more like warned actually) you that I would write again of my misadventures in democratic campaigning, so here’s part two of the installment.

In 2005 I returned from Alaska to my home state of Virginia to work on the Tim Kaine for Governor Campaign.  I was thrilled to take this gig.  I had met Tim four years previous as a college freshman when he ran for Lt. Governor.  He is truly an amazing man and I was enthused to be working for him.  Plus after spending several months on barren ice tundra, it was nice to be home again. 

I was a locality director in a Northern Virginia locality.  I had my own office and staff and pretty autonomous from the rest of the NOVA staff.  By the way, there were six people on the Kaine race that I had worked with in Anchorage.  Just a random fact I thought you’d all get a kick out of.  The race was going well, but hectic.  When I had started, we were 11 points down.  At the time this story takes place we were down 1, with a margin of error of +/ – 3.  So to say it was close would be an understatement. 

So here’s the scene.  It’s the Sunday before the election; it’s about 1:00 in the afternoon.  my office was in a walk-out basement of a daycare that faced a rather busy street.  We were hitting the whole city, 24 precincts, 260 volunteers, 50,000 pieces of literature were all being disseminated from my office, and two staging locations I had set up in other parts of the city.  It was just about lunch time and about 30-40 people were in my office.  I had great volunteers and a fantastic local party committee to work with and we were all feeling pretty good, we were gonna make out goal for the day. 

As a couple ladies set up food on the conference table for the volunteers, I stepped outside with my partner in crime T. to discuss logistics for the rest of the day.  She and I sat on the steps leading up to the day care as I chained smoked and we talked about the day.  At some point my boss had called my cell and I had a ten minute conversation with her giving her an update on our progress.  After I got off the phone with her, we were both distracted as one of out super volunteers crossed the street waving a bunch of papers as if in a crisis.  We both jumped up to go help her (in the end it was just a miscommunication but for a few solid minutes we thought something bad had happened to one of our canvassers).  Crisis averted, I turned back to the steps to gather my coffee, keys, and cell phone and low and behold the cell phone was gone.

I had about 2 seconds of wondering if it was in my pocket before I realized it had been stolen and that I had seen the guy that did it.  When we were talking to super-vol (which by the way was less than six feet away from our original seats on the steps), we had all stopped to look as a car came to a screeching halt to avoid hitting a man who was crossing 4 lanes of busy traffic without bothering to wait for the crosswalk signal.  All three of us had commented on how crazy this individual must be to cross so dangerously.  A few moments later, I saw him walk behind me out of the corner of my eye, when you spot crazy you tend to try and keep it in your sight.  I didn’t think anything of it, but he totally grabbed my phone. 

I got inside the office all pissed and trying to figure out what I was going to do.  It was not an option to not have a phone 2 days before the election.  It was just not an option.  I called it, the guy answered, I asked him if he would give me back my phone, he said he would for 20 bucks.  I agreed and walked to the corner to meet him.  He didn’t show.  So I called the police and called Verizon to deactivate the phone.  I was sitting at my desk explaining to my boss the situation when the police showed up.  When they walked in, everyone in the office kinda stopped what they were doing to look at the cops.  It’s not everyday the police calmly saunter into that office and they were curious.  When one of the officers asked for me, H., a 70 year old former Women’s Rights activist stood up in front of me to declare that “she had never heard of her.”  It was kind of sweet to see this woman try to protect me.  She clearly thought I was in trouble with the cops and trying to protect me.  Thinking back on it, it was pretty hysterical.  This woman had burned her bra, marched with Dr. King, and been arrested more times than she could remember.  It was fun watching her recapture that spirit even if misguided.   After assuring the room that I was not wanted by the law, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and I went out with the officers. 

About ten minutes into my conversation with one of the cops, another officer pulled up to tell us they had a suspect in custody.  The cops asked me if I would come with them.  As they held the door open to the cruiser I had a spooky realization that I was getting into the back of a cop car and what if we passed someone I know?  What would they think of me?  Silly, but it still stands out in my mind. 

As we approached the scene the officers explained the situation to me, I was to remain in the car and they’d have the guy stand about ten yards away from the car, he wouldn’t be able to see me and I’d try to make the ID.  I was pretty calm on the drive, ready to catch the fucker.  But, when we got there and I had to look at him, I felt strange.  I hated that this guy was an African American man and that I; a white woman was accusing him of a crime.  Why couldn’t this dude be white?  I hated that they caught him in the section 8 housing.  I hated that he was crazy and mean and he stole from me.  I hated the situation, I hated society, I hated the cops all of a sudden for dropping everything to catch the black guy that stole from the white woman.  It made me feel like a hypocrite, a stupid girl, maybe even a little racist because I had to describe and black man as my perpetrator.  All these things made me so confused and mad that I was having a hard time getting through the encounter.    

So I choked.  I wasn’t entirely sure when I was looking at him if it was the same guy.  The shirt looked different and he was carrying a white plastic bag, not a brown one and he was on foot, not on the bike when I saw him.  All these little discrepancies in my memory caused me to tell the officers that I didn’t think it was him.  They asked me repeatedly if I was sure, and each time I had to tell them that no, I really really wasn’t.  They drove me back to the office and as we pulled up I reached for the door handle and was a little surprised when it wouldn’t open.  I had almost forgotten that I was in the back of a police cruiser.  The officer in the passenger seat let me out of the car and shook my hand saying he’s sorry they didn’t get the guy and handed me his card, asking me to call him if I ever want to come by and look through mug-shots. 

After watching the cruiser pull away from the office I popped my head in to make sure everything was running smoothly, which of course it was because I had an amazing staff.  I jumped into the car and ran down to the closets Verizon store to try and get a new phone.

If I die and go to Purgatory, it will be a Verizon store.  Two hours later, and two hundred bucks down the drain, I had a new phone.  It was getting close to 8 that night.  I had to get my numbers in by 9:30.  I finally left the office somewhere around 2:00 am.  I had gotten my numbers in on time (just barely), made the 10:00 conference call and the 11:30 regional call.  I got the office sorta cleaned up and the materials for the next day mostly ready and after sending my staff home I left the office in the wee hours of the night hoping to get at least 4 hours of sleep.  It had been an eventful day and despite all the bullshit that had served as a distraction, everything that we were supposed to do that day got done.  187 days of the campaign down. 1 to go. 

 

Passing the Torch[ing Flag]

Memorial Day is a tough day for anyone who’s lost someone to war. I don’t know many people who aren’t touched in some way by the death of a friend/ loved one/ co-worker/ neighbor kid in battle. I know people, young people, who didn’t come home, I know people over there right now, and I know people that will be going back. It’s sad and senseless and most of us are trying to figure out how to properly grieve, let alone who to direct our anger toward.

Cindy Sheehan’s retirement is the top headline on CNN right now. And I totally understand why this is national news. Here you have this middle aged, middle income, middle-America kind of woman dropping her cozy life to become a figure head for all those bereaved mothers out there who lost a child to a senseless war. She was brave, she was inspiring, and she moved a lot of Americans with her vigil outside the Bush ranch in Texas. She became a symbol, a poster child if you will, for the anti-war movement, a movement I consider myself to be apart of.

So two years down the road, she’s announced she’s out. Can’t take it anymore, her son “died for nothing.” Sad. Really really sad.

As I read this article I’m starting to kinda see the progression from bereaved mother to anti-war activist and I feel very sorry for this woman. The anti-war movement did her wrong.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you before I begin this tirade that I work in politics for a living, democratic politics, and I know my way around a political machine. So when I say the anti-war movement did her wrong, I’m gonna be talking more about the mechanics than the spirit of which I totally agree.

I love a good protest, I really do. In college I marched downtown to oppose a misogynist running for office, I threw eggs at a cut out of Dick Cheney, and I participated in a “die in,” on the first day of the war back in 2003. I get it, I love it, and I believe it can be effective, if done correctly. The modern anti-war movement, though, is not effective. I wish it were, but it’s too disorganized.

In 2004 I participated in the “March for Women’s Lives” here in DC. It was a great week filled with Choice promoting activities and concerts and every time I got on the metro I gave a group of women directions to some landmark they were off to see before that evening’s big event. It was a great feeling of sisterhood and change making. The event was well organized; hundreds of thousands of women from across the nation gathered, and we sent a message. I felt apart of something.

The modern anti-war movement is a disaster, the complete opposite of effective and organized. I’ve been to some of the impromptu rallies, which while I feel warm and fuzzy are usually poorly attended and rarely do elected officials bat an eyelash at our presence. It’s sad, because the message is pretty simple and usually simple things should be easy to champion.

But activist are heading in the wrong direction. Storming the office of a Congressman screaming obscenities at their staff is highly ineffective. Organizing raid’s on the State of the Union Address and then creating a scene while being escorted out, is highly ineffective, and accusing both sides of the same thing wins you no allies inside the political machine.

I don’t want to demonize Cindy Sheehan or any other activist fighting for this cause. These people believe in something and fight for it on a daily basis which is more than most of us can say. I also can’t imagine what its like to lose a child, especially to such a pointless and nonsensical tragedy that this war is. But I also kinda feel like these whack-tivists misled Ms. Sheehan on how she could turn her grief into a movement and took advantage of her pain. Two years later we find Ms. Sheehan a tired, broken, thoroughly depressed woman who has not only lost her son, but her husband and her finances. At the end of the day she’s learned to not trust electeds of either party and believes that the system failed her, and worse yet, failed her son.

I feel bad for Cindy Sheehan, I really do. She dedicated two years of her life for a cause she believed in and she’s worse off than she was before. It’s hard to find your path in this world of politics. You’d like to think it’s fair and open but any seasoned, slightly cynical operative knows that it’s all about who you know and how you can manipulate them. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a little optimism streak in me that believes that everyday people can change the world. It’s worked in the past, and I think it can work in the future. But only if they people leading that movement know how to do it. Right now the leaders of the anti-war movement consist of a few famous people and mostly dirty hippies.

I decided a while ago that the only way to beat the system was to join it and I reluctantly hung up my protest bandanna (yeah, I had one, it was orange with the words “War Ends Nothing” written in sharpie on it) and shaved my legs again. And since then, I have enacted more change that I thought possible. I’m a player, with a cause. I have the ear of those in power and I champion the things I believe in. I still stop when I see a group gathering around a woman with a bull horn and smile. Cause in the end, it starts there, the activism. You don’t know who to talk to so you talk to anyone within ear shot, but eventually it has to progress into a movement of ideas, people, and politics, or else it ends there, on that soap box, with that burning flag as the back drop.

Good luck Ms. Sheehan. I hope you find some closure and happiness. The rest of us will keep trying.