Ever since I was a little girl, my parents instilled in me a deep responsibility to give back to my community on the southeast side of Chicago. For my dad, that took the form of serving on our local school board and organizing holiday gift drives in December for families who needed assistance. For my mom, that looked like organizing fundraisers and planning holiday parties for underprivileged children at our local church. In both regards, it meant reaching out to other community leaders, volunteers, local businesses, and neighbors to improve the place we called home.
I followed suit since high school, volunteering in inner city schools and parishes in Chicago, “dancing” for IU Dance Marathon giving to Riley Hospital, raising money for worthy causes, tutoring, immersing in an urban, Hispanic neighborhood for a week to help with their annual summer fundraiser, or giving labor to non-profit issues that meant a lot to me. Whether serving as CASA, court appointed special advocate, or throwing a fundraiser for Easter Seals, there are endless needs in each community I have lived in that appreciated the help, but the larger, underlying political issues that framed these causes were largely lost on me.
Unfortunately, it took me until after the 2016 general election to realize that liberties and rights that I valued, like those that centered around core issues like reproductive rights, economic and racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and our access to healthcare, were at stake. Seeing John McCain gives a thumbs down, essentially saving healthcare and thwarting the repeal of ObamaCare in 2017, was especially impactful for me. Seeing the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) being used as a political pawn that same year was also jarring. I knew that the Riley Kids I continued to donate to relied heavily on this government program for care, and to see it being used as a bargaining chip was incomprehensible to me. It was no longer enough to simply vote. I needed to step out of my comfort zone and actively participate in helping worthy candidates succeed.
I was new to political volunteering in the Summer of 2017 when I decided to move back to Bloomington. A progressive organization determined that the IN9 Congressional District was the most likely one to flip. I was lucky enough to reach out to a mentor here in Bloomington, Cathy, who introduced me to strong, determined women who were running for office for the Fall 2018 cycle. These women were running for office because they, too, were fed up that Hoosiers’ rights were under attack, and they believed that Indiana deserved better representatives who actually cared about their constituents’ needs.
As a new political volunteer, candidly, these campaign assignments scared me sometimes. Being an advocate for progressive policy, knocking on doors in every area of our Congressional district, some communities that were not the most receptive, wasn’t always the easiest choice to make on a 95-degree day on a sticky Saturday summer morning. Was I going to knock on the wrong door to someone intolerant of being approached? Would I see a “this house is protected by (insert a photo of an assault rifle)” sign? Nor was it easy to phone and text banking on the rainy, stormy days in the Fall when the weather was too poor to canvass for the day. The rain did not stop a voter from hanging up on you or yelling at you for interrupting their nap.
Voter contact still needed to be made. And eventually, I made lifelong friends during my first Congressional campaign. When numbers for voter contact needed to be hit, I found myself driving to Greenwood to help my friend, Kyle, with voter outreach in Johnson County, knocking on doors in retirement neighborhoods off SR 135 on rainy Sunday afternoons. Or door knocking in Salem and Jackson County with a small team of volunteers, unsure of what the area looked like, but committed to trying to get the message out. It just became second nature because the cause was too important to let fear dictate ability. Safety is always paramount, but there is a way to work with your team to ensure that everyone is accounted for and help is accessible if it is needed with a team leader.
My first campaign experience was great preparation for the primary season this past Spring as my focus was on helping talented, progressive candidates running for seats in Indiana’s state house. These candidates were from a multitude of backgrounds and professions, but their common thread was believing in better representation for Hoosiers that centered around fighting for core issues like economic justice and protecting LGBTQ+ rights. I took a leave of absence from my other activist commitments to focus on statehouse races in 2020 because every part of me believes that this is the most important election cycle of my life. Neither I, nor the candidates I was helping, could have ever expected our world to be turned upside down with the COVID-19 pandemic.
I remember conducting endless Google searches, looking for any type of guidance that could be found during this time of COVID-19 to help us with campaigning. Since we can’t knock on doors anymore or do in-person voter registration drives, what do we do? What do we do with the thousands of line cards we had printed in preparation of handing out in the community? Where was the answer to what we do now? (Spoiler: I am still not sure, so please reach out to me if you know.)
As I wrapped up this primary season, I realized that something exceptional happened. For the most part, we had to rely on phone and text banks with the campaigns I helped on, and that meant that after work, I would hop on to a ZOOM, say hello to the team, and from 5-8 pm, we would phonebank together. On one screen, I would access the voter phone bank information I needed to call and on the other screen, I would see my candidate and the rest of our team have these critical conversations with voters. We did this to see what worked, what did not, and to get a better sense of what the community sentiment was. And we were all in it together. Because COVID-19 rightfully framed our conversations differently, we were almost a tighter knit group than if we would congregate in the same large office space because this time was so unprecedented, but we were navigating it together.
I got to see how animated my candidate’s face was, hearing voters’ issues, listening to what must improve and assessing what services are the most critical in our community. I saw how tired we all were at the end of the night, because not all calls were great- maybe the call recipient did not want to vote this year, maybe they were disillusioned with the process, some were out of work, some just hung up on you, or maybe your call pickup was low. And I got to see how human we all were, but we were all in it together on that night, and probably the next night too.
Every part of me feels like running for office, putting yourself out there to be judged and tested, is one of the bravest acts I can imagine. On some of those phonebank nights, seeing my candidate calling the last voter on their list at 7:55 pm, gave me the energy and enthusiasm to do the same. Courage takes many forms. Sometimes it looks like emailing a campaign to introduce yourself. Sometimes it looks like knocking on a door in a community you have never even heard of or calling an elderly voter whose polling location changed for the first time in 25 years.
This experience reminded me of my elementary school days as a young girl in Chicago. We had a rolling admission process and would often get new students. It reminded me of getting a new student in class, their face fraught with fear as the principal brought them in, looking for a kind face to sit next to or acceptance of any kind. I did not realize it then, but when I sat with the new kid at lunch or talked to them at recess, that was empathy. In many ways, I feel like that is similar to volunteering on a campaign. These amazing, brave, progressive candidates are mustering up the courage to run for office in our state that is one of the most conservative in the country, but it is up to us to be that kind kid who offers to sit next to them on the school bus or at lunchtime in the cafeteria because they can’t fight these battles and win their election alone.
If you have any bit of time, I encourage you to consider reaching out to a candidate whose values and perspective resonates with you. They do not even necessarily have to represent your district. I am certain most candidates in these tough races will happily accept any amount of time your schedule can afford and volunteers of every ability level, since we are all new to this at some point. Because just like Dr. Seuss said in “The Lorax,” “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”