“Decisions are made by the people who show up.”
“...democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms...”
In fall of 2019 I worked on a city council campaign for the city of Cambridge. The title I gave myself was Director of Digital Outreach, but I spent a lot of time going door-to-door canvassing, too. As of time of writing I don’t know if we’ve won yet.
Burhan Azeem was a recent graduate of MIT who decided to run for council. At the time, 8 out of 9 city council members were older than 50 and none of them commuted to work by train. The way Burhan tells it, some of his friends convinced him to run.
I got involved because of a flyer placed on my door. At the time I was watching a lot of The West Wing and was curious how the political process looks on the ground at a smaller scale. So when I got the flyer and it seemed like a candidate that I might like, I emailed the address on their website and volunteered to help. I first met Burhan in a coffee shop in Central Square. It struck me that he seemed to be an actual, genuine good person. It also struck me that he seemed to never sleep and I would probably never have the energy to do what he does.
My initial offer to help was centered around my technology skills, but since most of Burhan’s support came from MIT students, who are on average very tech-savvy but also very shy, what he really needed was salespeople. My largest contribution to the campaign was a number of Saturdays spent canvassing - going door to door and pitching my candidate to the voters. It was at a time of year when the weather is beautiful in Boston, so it was fun just to be outside, and it was a new and challenging form of social interaction that really pushed my limits. Some people were eager to hear what I had to say; others were actively hostile. Some people were just lonely, and really wanted someone to talk to, which I happily did. Others had opinions, some of which were really valid opinions, which we relayed back to the candidate; it turns out that a big part of canvassing is listening to the electorate.
I also took responsibility for their digital outreach, which consisted of google ads and a system called Hustle that made it easy for our volunteers to connect with voters via text message. I did fairly well with optimizing the google ads, significantly increasing our number of impressions. I also set up Hustle, which was less successful. People didn’t really like being texted; now we know that.
Regardless of whether or not we win or lose this time, I think I learned a lot about local politics, gained some great marketing experience, and made some cool connections. I also got to have a lot of short conversations with the real people who live here, which was so much fun.
UPDATE: We didn’t win. However, voter turnout from the MIT and Harvard student populations definitely increased, and our actions played a large part in making that happens. We got our smart people to stand up and have an opinion, and that’s a consolation prize that I’ll gladly accept.
Some of our canvassers posing for a picture. Burhan Azeem, center; Daniel Curtis, campaign manager, center-right.
The blue regions were our largest base of support by far; the region labeled 15.1% had nearly 70% of voters pick Burhan as their #1. Our supporters were almost entirely students who really didn’t realize that they get a say in how things are run, until we told them.