TRADITION — Greg McBride passes his family’s tradition of activism to his son Khalil by campaigning together in New Hampshire. — Photo by Tim Raab
Volunteers relished taste of grassroots democracy
By SHERRY HALBROOK
It takes a special kind of person to do more than just talk about the issues. The 2004 elections tested the commitment of PEF activists and many answered the call
Natalie Williams, Greg McBride and Mark Hyland are examples of the many dedicated people who rose to the challenge, acted on their beliefs and proved the value of simply “showing up.”
Setting a record
Williams, a retired PEF nurse, left her familiar, “vibrant East Harlem neighborhood” in March to train and work as a “hero” for the political education arm of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). She worked for three months in New Hampshire and then was transferred to Montgomery County Pennsylvania, where she worked until after the November 2 election.
Williams, who has been an activist for many years for many causes, said she made “wonderful new friends” among the many diverse volunteers who showed up to help reach out to local voters on issues ranging from Medicare funding to the war in Iraq.
“We never mentioned Kerry, we just tried to identify the issues that mattered to each voter and then give them information about those issues,” she said.
“I had never before worked with people from groups such as the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters and Planned Parenthood,” she said. “I worked with young people from America Coming Together (ACT) who were wonderful. And we had tremendous help from many, many New York City retirees. They worked so hard it just blew my mind.”
Although the company was great, working conditions were often cramped and the summer heat and humidity in Pennsylvania “were horrendous,” she said. Frequent severe fog was another unexpected problem that plagued her efforts to navigate the maze of unfamiliar streets and highways that seemed to “wander like cow paths” over the hills and valleys of Montgomery County.
Williams’ seven months of intensive campaign work set a record for PEF activists. No one else from PEF worked harder or longer on this national election than she did.
“It was a great experience,” Williams said, “but a lot of work. I learned a lot about organizing and I came back with a lot of new skills and experience that will certainly help me work on all kinds of campaigns.”
Solidarity and a higher power
McBride, a PEF member and junior supervisor of construction for the state Office of General Services, said he sees his activism as a member of the PEF Region 8 Political Action Committee and other groups as fulfilling a duty to his country and carrying forward the courageous traditions rooted in the civil rights movement.
McBride answered the call for PEF volunteers to travel to Long Island in March to canvass voters there for Ginny Fields, a Democrat running for the state Assembly in a special election. Over the summer and fall, he joined PEF members on four Saturdays of campaigning to defeat George Bush in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
“I’m motivated by a spirit of solidarity,” McBride said. “When I become involved, it’s not just me, it’s people like me all over the country. It’s more patriotic and more of a grassroots movement, like the civil rights movement, when so many of us get involved. The spirit of what we’re doing is so crucial, because the outcome affects our supreme court and our immigration laws. These elections affect the people who are the backbone of our country.”
McBride said he has no difficulty seeing how national issues and even local races in other places will ultimately affect him. He learned that sensitivity for issues and a compelling need to take action from his father.
“My father worked for Albany Steel and was a member of the United Steelworkers of America. His local union contract had to be renegotiated every year and he would take my brother and I with him to walk the picket lines and demonstrate for better contracts,” he recalled.
McBride has begun to pass that tradition and those values on to his 10-year-old son, Khalil, by taking him along on a saturday trip to New Hampshire in late September.
“When I first told him about it, he just said, ‘Whatever.’ But once he got a taste of it, he was so enthused. When I heard how he talked to the voters — it wasn’t from a script; It was straight from the heart — I was so proud of him. Now, he wants to come with me on all of my trips and to all of my meetings.”
Although McBride said he is skeptical of the vote counts on new electronic voting machines used in some swing states, the experience of working for a candidate who ultimately lost has not deterred him.
“I don’t completely trust the results, but I felt the solidarity and the love we experienced when we went out to meet other volunteers and talk to voters. The young people who got involved made us feel it was worth it. They did their work and pounded the pavement. They had everything organized for us. They were young, energetic, determined and competent, and that’s a very powerful combination. They are the real foundation for everything we did.
“I’m not discouraged at all, I’m here for the long haul. The belief in a higher power has brought me this far, and it will continue to take me.”
Ready for more
For PEF member Mark Hyland, director of the bureau of middle tier support at the state Department of Environmental Conservation in Albany, the 2004 presidential campaign was his first hands-on experience with politics. But it won’t be his last.
Drawn to volunteer because of his deep concern for environmental issues and his frustration with the war in Iraq, Hyland began by going on two of the Saturday trips into swing states — once to New Hampshire and once to Pennsylvania.
Then he answered the call for volunteers to work the last five days of the campaign, including election day, in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
“This being my first exposure to a campaign in its final days, it looked like perfect chaos to me,” Hyland said. “But more experienced people from PEF — Steve Chamberlain and Tom Cetrino — assured me that it all made sense. It was being done right.”
Unlike the previous one-day trips, this was complete immersion, Hyland said. He spent long days and nights educating voters about their rights, phoning volunteers, faxing required notices of election activities to affected municipalities, stuffing packets of materials for election day volunteers, acquiring vans to transport volunteers and staffing an election day outpost under a tent in a vacant parking lot.
Although he didn’t bring his family with him, Hyland said the campaign activism was a shared experience.
“While I was working in Scranton, my wife was calling voters from our home and drove those who needed a ride to the polls,” Hyland said. “And my daughter, helped staff a help desk for voters at her college in Minnesota.”
All in all, Hyland said, “I learned a lot. And although my candidate lost the election, I am not at all discouraged. I was disappointed, but not discouraged. I’m going to stay engaged in the political process.”
The
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