The volunteers behind Invest in Medford
This’ll be a quick post about my gratitude for the volunteers of the Invest in Medford campaign.
Running as a candidate for local office can be a lonely experience — there are parties, usually right at the beginning and at the end, but the times in between are spent walking around different neighborhoods around town, knocking doors, repeating, and watching as, most of the time, people don’t answer. It’s good exercise and you get a lot of fresh air, but in the months between kickoff and election it can feel like a lone effort.
The Invest in Medford campaign is very different. After all, a ballot measure isn’t a candidate. It’s a definitive statement that Medford will get a new fire station, we will get more money in our schools, and we will get a permanent crew to repair our roads. Residents have been asking for more investment in their city for years, and the cut-and-dry nature means that it attracts wider support than a local candidate.
Shortly after City Council voted to put these measures on the ballot, a group of parents congregated, ready to go and make the questions pass. They hit the ground running as they attended events, posted online, knocked doors, and learned the issues inside and out. All of the campaign, I’ve been helping to organize them, teaching them about municipal finances and political campaigning.
What’s fascinating to me as I work with volunteers is to see their perspectives shift as they engage. As volunteers come off the sidelines, they become more focused. People tend to think of their problems in aggregate, but they’re usually solved one by one. Initially, a few volunteers thought about a much wider range of problems with the Medford Public School system — lack of after school programs, money going to charter schools, underfunding, the poor state of the high school. All of these perfectly relevant issues came up in conversation. Gradually, though, they shifted their efforts and focus. After all, these ballot measures won’t address every problem with the Medford Public School system, but they’re an essential step in the right direction. We can’t solve everything all at once, but we can solve some things over time.
Second, as the volunteers pay more attention and engage with folks who disagree with them, they begin to understand that, even with rock-solid arguments, it’s literally impossible to change everyone’s mind. One volunteer with a STEM background really liked to parse through graphs and data and present them, logically, to opponents of the overrides. But, to this person’s chagrin, the opponents just kept repeating what they were saying before. Some people will never shift their viewpoints, and that’s OK, because nobody gets any more votes in the ballot box than anyone else.
Third, talking to your neighbors exposes you to a range of political opinions. This is something that you can’t know in your gut until you’ve knocked on the doors of random people and asked them what they think. One volunteer found out that a teacher was still unsure of the overrides, even though voting “No” on them would most certainly result in the layoffs of around 40 of their colleagues. Others found that seniors, even ones who had never had any kids in the schools, thought that a “no” vote on these overrides would be selfish. In-person conversations is the only way to really break out of natural echo chambers, and that exposure is why political campaigners have different views on issues than most other people.
Most of all, I like to be around people who fight for what they believe in. It’s energizing and it’s what keeps me going. So, to everyone who put in any effort to the Invest in Medford campaign, I just want to say — thank you! And, if you would like to volunteer, sign up here!
