meet up to get down
I’d gone to a Kerry meet-up in Durham. ("Meet-ups" were used to great effect by the Dean campaign and MoveOn, simply by enabling dates to be set on the Meetup.com website, which managed confirmations and reminders automatically via email-- instant, free event planning.) This meet-up was hardly advertised at all, but the coffee shop (one of the larger ones in Durham) was filled almost out the door. They’d arranged the tables together and about fifty of us smushed in together. Everyone was excited at the number of people in attendance, and we talked among ourselves for a while, waiting for whoever was in charge to get us started.
We kept talking.
Eventually it became clear that no one was in charge.
“Does anyone know who called this meetup?” asked one woman. She was standing on a chair.
People looked at her and looked around but no one said anything. “Well,” said the woman, now the default leader, “we might as well get started. I guess…everyone divide into groups and we’ll talk about ideas.”
My quarter of the room split off and people introduced themselves. Everyone seemed very nice, although some were clearly impatient at the lack of a leader—or, even, purpose. Someone said we should start brainstorming; someone else offered to take notes. Notepad out, pen at ready position, and then…someone finally spoke.
“We should do…voter registration?” The notetaker scribbled away.
The guy across from me was silently fuming. He was a bit paunchy, little bit of head grease over his furrowed brow; a nebbish. Every once in a while he would chip in with a comment that casually supplied more information than anyone in the whole room seemed to possess; he seemed to slip in a tiny morsel of resentment with every piece of information that he gave out. (...You could raise money in this way, but that way would be illegal...you had to go to this city department to apply for a license for that kind of event...) Sure enough, he told us he was a Deaniac. That campaign had sent nebbishy little buds up even down here, but they couldn’t have grown very much… now he was left stranded with this mangy bunch. He was probably thinking that he deserved a better movement.
How much could you expect, though? This was North Carolina – this state wasn't swinging very hard. “Does Kerry even have a headquarters here?” someone asked, and the answer seemed to be No. I leaned over to the Deaniac, and asked if he knew what the margin of victory was in 2000 for Bush. He shrugged.
“I think around 100,000?” I asked him how much turnout it would take in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle, give or take some in Charlotte, to swing that. He furrowed his brow deeper…“Ninety percent?” We looked at each other, and back at the crowd, which was now talking about Michael Moore. I shrugged. He seemed to shudder.
In the end, all that came of the meeting was an agreement to meet again. Also, they wanted to write a press release. Hey, I’m a writer! Sure, I can write a press release for you.
“TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: A group of Durham residents who are politically committed to the campaign to elect John Kerry met last week at local coffee shop…Plans were discussed for such topics as registering voters…”
* * *
I don’t think any press received that release. I certainly never heard of anything that came from the meetup. Later that week, I signed onto MoveOn.org, went to their Volunteer page, and wrote three pages on the spot about why I wanted to volunteer. About how I would give all I could, if only my efforts could be of use. About how I respected their organization, saw real promise in the things they put themselves out for, and my skills are really in writing so it would be great if I could help out somehow that way (like, write press releases!?), but I’ll do anything really…I’m moving to New York and would love to set up an interview…
I even pasted in links to my clips from the Chronicle. That’s how sad it was.
* * *
I sent four or five emails like that to MoveOn as the summer went on. They got progressively shorter, as I was learning along the way how to apply to jobs as efficiently and painlessly as possible. I never knew what exactly I was volunteering for—registering voters? Writing press releases? I got the same response from MoveOn as I did from all the other places where I sent my resume, clips, eager cover letters. Silence. Other than the odd tutoring gig, only one place responded—the Working Families Party. They explained their politics to me over the phone, all of it sounding progressive and innovative and exciting, until they got to the job description: fundraising.
“You mean, canvassing? Like going door to door asking for money?” She scheduled a time for me to come in for a day, “just to check it out.”
Not for me, I told Blake later. Same thing about the classified ads she’d circle for me: “Jobs to BEAT BUSH! Earn $300-500 a WEEK!”
“That stuff is a nightmare. Going around asking people for money. Look at me, do you think I can do that? My posture is…all wrong. People want to argue with me, they don’t want to give me money.”
* * *
Instead, I announced my intention to drive across the swing parts of the country, registering 538 people in a summer. There was a website that encouraged people to do things like this, offered voter registration packets, and contacts for housing in swing states, and even blogs!
(Secretly, I thought this would make a good idea for a book. Something about the simple transaction of one person empowering another with the most basic tool of civic participation, set against the backdrop of the classic American road trip.)
The summer crept by, outrage over Bush continued to mount, and the road trip didn’t happen. I checked Craigslist four times a day, sending out one or two cover letters to whatever job happened to be posted—knowing that thousands of people out there were doing the same thing. We watched the Daily Show every night, cooked organic foods, and lived like a married couple. I got fired from my tutoring gig; Blake crashed my car; I crashed my computer. As the song says, “Nothing lasts forever.”
* * *
On the morning of my 23rd birthday, still unemployed and now without my most valuable piece of machinery, I saw an ad for a Get Out the Vote campaign run by MoveOn PAC. It called for field organizers who would work in swing states to turn out half a million new votes. I shot off a cover letter in ten minutes—no Chronicle clips this time, less than a page long, all business—and that afternoon I was called. We scheduled an interview over the phone. No details, really, just could I come in for an interview on Sunday. Yes. of course.
I talked to my friend Mark that night—he’d gotten an interview, too; he’d heard a rumor that our friend Lucas had an interview as well…whatever it was, this MoveOn thing was big. It was going to be something big.
We kept talking.
Eventually it became clear that no one was in charge.
“Does anyone know who called this meetup?” asked one woman. She was standing on a chair.
People looked at her and looked around but no one said anything. “Well,” said the woman, now the default leader, “we might as well get started. I guess…everyone divide into groups and we’ll talk about ideas.”
My quarter of the room split off and people introduced themselves. Everyone seemed very nice, although some were clearly impatient at the lack of a leader—or, even, purpose. Someone said we should start brainstorming; someone else offered to take notes. Notepad out, pen at ready position, and then…someone finally spoke.
“We should do…voter registration?” The notetaker scribbled away.
The guy across from me was silently fuming. He was a bit paunchy, little bit of head grease over his furrowed brow; a nebbish. Every once in a while he would chip in with a comment that casually supplied more information than anyone in the whole room seemed to possess; he seemed to slip in a tiny morsel of resentment with every piece of information that he gave out. (...You could raise money in this way, but that way would be illegal...you had to go to this city department to apply for a license for that kind of event...) Sure enough, he told us he was a Deaniac. That campaign had sent nebbishy little buds up even down here, but they couldn’t have grown very much… now he was left stranded with this mangy bunch. He was probably thinking that he deserved a better movement.
How much could you expect, though? This was North Carolina – this state wasn't swinging very hard. “Does Kerry even have a headquarters here?” someone asked, and the answer seemed to be No. I leaned over to the Deaniac, and asked if he knew what the margin of victory was in 2000 for Bush. He shrugged.
“I think around 100,000?” I asked him how much turnout it would take in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle, give or take some in Charlotte, to swing that. He furrowed his brow deeper…“Ninety percent?” We looked at each other, and back at the crowd, which was now talking about Michael Moore. I shrugged. He seemed to shudder.
In the end, all that came of the meeting was an agreement to meet again. Also, they wanted to write a press release. Hey, I’m a writer! Sure, I can write a press release for you.
“TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: A group of Durham residents who are politically committed to the campaign to elect John Kerry met last week at local coffee shop…Plans were discussed for such topics as registering voters…”
* * *
I don’t think any press received that release. I certainly never heard of anything that came from the meetup. Later that week, I signed onto MoveOn.org, went to their Volunteer page, and wrote three pages on the spot about why I wanted to volunteer. About how I would give all I could, if only my efforts could be of use. About how I respected their organization, saw real promise in the things they put themselves out for, and my skills are really in writing so it would be great if I could help out somehow that way (like, write press releases!?), but I’ll do anything really…I’m moving to New York and would love to set up an interview…
I even pasted in links to my clips from the Chronicle. That’s how sad it was.
* * *
I sent four or five emails like that to MoveOn as the summer went on. They got progressively shorter, as I was learning along the way how to apply to jobs as efficiently and painlessly as possible. I never knew what exactly I was volunteering for—registering voters? Writing press releases? I got the same response from MoveOn as I did from all the other places where I sent my resume, clips, eager cover letters. Silence. Other than the odd tutoring gig, only one place responded—the Working Families Party. They explained their politics to me over the phone, all of it sounding progressive and innovative and exciting, until they got to the job description: fundraising.
“You mean, canvassing? Like going door to door asking for money?” She scheduled a time for me to come in for a day, “just to check it out.”
Not for me, I told Blake later. Same thing about the classified ads she’d circle for me: “Jobs to BEAT BUSH! Earn $300-500 a WEEK!”
“That stuff is a nightmare. Going around asking people for money. Look at me, do you think I can do that? My posture is…all wrong. People want to argue with me, they don’t want to give me money.”
* * *
Instead, I announced my intention to drive across the swing parts of the country, registering 538 people in a summer. There was a website that encouraged people to do things like this, offered voter registration packets, and contacts for housing in swing states, and even blogs!
(Secretly, I thought this would make a good idea for a book. Something about the simple transaction of one person empowering another with the most basic tool of civic participation, set against the backdrop of the classic American road trip.)
The summer crept by, outrage over Bush continued to mount, and the road trip didn’t happen. I checked Craigslist four times a day, sending out one or two cover letters to whatever job happened to be posted—knowing that thousands of people out there were doing the same thing. We watched the Daily Show every night, cooked organic foods, and lived like a married couple. I got fired from my tutoring gig; Blake crashed my car; I crashed my computer. As the song says, “Nothing lasts forever.”
* * *
On the morning of my 23rd birthday, still unemployed and now without my most valuable piece of machinery, I saw an ad for a Get Out the Vote campaign run by MoveOn PAC. It called for field organizers who would work in swing states to turn out half a million new votes. I shot off a cover letter in ten minutes—no Chronicle clips this time, less than a page long, all business—and that afternoon I was called. We scheduled an interview over the phone. No details, really, just could I come in for an interview on Sunday. Yes. of course.
I talked to my friend Mark that night—he’d gotten an interview, too; he’d heard a rumor that our friend Lucas had an interview as well…whatever it was, this MoveOn thing was big. It was going to be something big.
posted by Greg Bloom at 4/11/2005 12:26:00 AM
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