Why did I pursue the Our Revolution Medford endorsement?
Early in the campaign, I knocked on a door that was answered by a man who wore an Air Force baseball cap and wanted to chat — about his life, the history of Medford, the state of Medford Square. He was pleased to see a young reservist running for city council. At one point, the question came up:
"Now, are you running with those OR councilors?"
For every 50 or so people who answered their doors, maybe one asked this question.
"I'm pursuing the endorsement," I replied.
"Oh, that's too bad."
"Let me ask you, I'm curious: What are your thoughts on OR?"
We talked over it for a few minutes, navigating the typical narratives and thoughts on ORM. Finally, I asked him to vote for me on November 7th.
"You know what? I think I will."
For those out of the loop: Our Revolution Medford (ORM for short) was started by a few Medford residents as an independent local chapter of Our Revolution, a progressive political organization that was the successor to Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign. It was the first serious attempt at municipal progressive organizing in my generation. ORM has been uniquely successful among these chapters at electing its candidates, and it has grown into a hub of Medford residents advocating for progressive policies in the city.
Many people in Medford are hugely supportive of ORM, most are lukewarm, and some are unsupportive. ORM has a public platform that Medford residents painstakingly crafted; I personally helped to design parts of it, particularly the economic development and affordable housing sections. Money is raised by individual candidates, and, this past cycle, most of us went into debt as we self-funded parts of our own campaigns. The practical advantage of ORM is that we can pool money to pay for joint staff and slate mailers; in the US, there are less than 20,000 elected officials at the state level and over 500,000 at the local level. Resources get spread very thin in city council elections, so sharing them between candidates that share similar ideals and endorse a community-based policy platform makes sense.
The reason I sought ORM's endorsement can be summed up in another conversation I had with a middle-aged man who had come to Medford as a graduate student at Tufts. "I moved here in the 1990s. I tried to get involved in politics then." He explained that, back then, politicians wouldn't even meet with constituents who were new to the city. "If you came in with a business, they'd take you a bit more seriously. But generally, unless they already knew you, they refused to meet with you. They didn't think you'd be around that long."
In 2016, he tried again. After Trump's election, more people started to pay attention to local politics. Our Revolution Medford formed, electing three endorsed candidates in 2017, five in 2019, and eight in 2021. It wasn't just ORM that formed. Safe Medford, Housing Medford, Walk Medford, Trees Medford — a lot of local groups popped up over the past 10 years, and ORM was one of them. ORM was the first time that this 30-year resident felt that he could even get politically involved in his own city. I've heard similar stories many times, and it was consistent with my own experiences: when lobbying city councilors last year to pass the affordable housing trust, the ORM councilors were far more responsive to me, a renter two years out of grad school, than their colleagues.
One of my goals in running for office is to welcome everyone, build a wider audience, and build bridges between these communities. That means joining the communities that were responsible in the first place for bringing more people into politics. That also means expanding the appeal to a wider audience. So, I'm going to continue to reach out to everyone I can. Change is always coming, and we need to work hard to make it change that includes the whole community.
