Political Revolution in The Bay
While organizing for the Sanders campaign in 2016, I spent most of the spring and into the summer in San Francisco. Having visited the city often, and having family in the area, I was incredibly excited to dig in and grow some meaningful relationships while working. It was a founding moment for my career — and I learned a lot about how politics works in a city of 883 thousand, and how to adapt my skills.
- Money Rules All
Unsurprisingly, San Francisco is incredibly expensive. Residents feel the crunch as rents slowly creep up while wages stay the same. Landlords often get creative and rent their spaces for longer terms. But when campaigns place organizers in March for a primary in June, office space is limited, small, or far out of campaign’s budgets. If structured well, the campaign will have an all-star operations team follow up on leads about possible volunteered campaign offices.
Growing up organizing in a rural area, office space was never an issue in most of the campaigns I worked out. But not having an office that ran as a hub posed an interesting challenge. Canvasses had to be launched out of parks — with a mobile hotspot in my bag so volunteers could download their turf. The way I had become used to running phonebanks had to change, too — I spent Saturday afternoons hopping from house to house, checking in on all my phonebank captains. It was a lesson on how to develop volunteers to leaders I still remember.
Since San Francisco is crammed into forty-two square miles, it’s often you see apartment buildings build up instead of out. This includes business that usually would have been perfect for volunteer meetings, actions, and viewing parties, had to be taken out of the equation due to sheer size. Fitting more than ten people into that size was impossible — and rude for the owners, who were still trying to run their businesses while aiding the political revolution. Building connections with these pro-progressive businesses were vital — by forming a positive relationship and promising to buy a round at the next event, these businesses were often willing to stay open an extra hour for private campaign events.
- What Is A Melting Pot?
We often describe America as a melting pot — but growing up in rural western Maine, diversity was an issue that went undiscussed in many households. San Francisco is the complete opposite, with multiple communities coming to call their district home. That became an interesting dynamic in organizing the city while connecting with these communities. Often, chapters of these populations were more politically active than others — with communities splitting into camps long before the campaign comes to recruit volunteers.
Working with these community leaders (who had often worked with their local progressive counterparts, and had a reason why they were no longer aligned) and juggling those relationships was a big part of uniting these communities for a “greater good” — the candidate the campaign was focused on electing. It made an equal playing field when the Sanders campaign placed an organizer like myself — who was new to the area and had no previous connections to the community. Being from “away” did have some benefits when getting to know neighborhood leaders.
With this many diversified communities call cities like San Francisco home, an organizer sometimes faces a new set of challenges like I did — languages. When requesting voter registration forms for drives or even canvasses, the first thought was always how many non-English forms the campaign needed to pick up. A packet consisting of Tagalog, Spanish, and Mandarin voter registration forms would go out with each canvasser to ensure the registration of all family members to Democratic or No Party Preference to guarantee that they were able to vote for Senator Sanders in the upcoming primary. Making sure I had a strong connection to community leaders, who spoke those languages and could turn out those voters, was vital to the campaign strategy.
- Voter Contact
With voters of San Francisco being so transient, the Sanders campaign knew that the traditional methods of voter contact, as persuasive as they are, wouldn’t be an effective use of time. Gathering phone numbers to text wasn’t necessarily new technology — but the beginning of campaigns using mass texting to inform voters was born out of the Sanders campaign. With texting, the campaign was able to clean voter lists faster than a dialer. After responding to an initial text after opting in, the campaign can either mark that voter as moved, a non-supporter, or a possible volunteer lead while an organizer, like myself, was in line for a burrito.
California has a unique set of voter laws — needing a “place of residence” as opposed to an address as some other states do. The campaign encouraged a relationship with progressive organizations that were helping the homeless population in San Francisco. These often would lead to a voter registration drive for those who opted in while receiving care from these organizations. The campaign was set on assuring that every voter of San Francisco — with a home, in a shelter, or at a homeless camp — had an equal say on who was chosen to be the nominee.
The campaign was also sure to focus on the demographics of the city. When ordering literature, the campaign often thought about what first impression the Senator would leave. What issues were most important? What language would need to be changed to reshape the message? The campaign did keep an ear to the ground — often asking organizers to give voters a phone survey of what issues are most important to them to refine their message box.
San Francisco is an ever-changing city — communities have transferred leadership and re-formed since the last time the Sanders campaign was in town. By challenging the way organizing had traditionally been done, it developed how I organized and gave the Sanders campaign insight on how to adapt their message for San Francisco in 2020.
