Noelani's Campaign review

As promised, here is a post mortem. Its a timeline with incidental comments regarding man hours.

Racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia: these horrid things are real. Do not go or suggest that your volunteers go places alone. Always buddy up yourself and your volunteers. If you can get white volunteers, I highly recommend mixing them in with your non-white volunteers, same with your females and males, and so on. I do not recommend telling even your volunteers why you are mixing them together, just do it. You are responsible for your personal safety and the safety of your volunteers, whether you pay them or not. Pretending problems don't exist make problems harder to solve.

Protip for queer female minority candidates: Your picture will probably not be run in any paper and more than likely, any real messages you carry will be erased and replaced with whatever the white straight people surrounding you or running against you have said or accomplished. It doesn't matter if you've graduated from MIT (like me) or worked at a large institution like Harvard University (also like me). You will probably get smeared or ignored. This is normal. Despite the fact that you probably won't win, you should run anyway. Run in primaries and lose. Run in general elections and lose. Just run. Candidacy is a great way to get the word out that being female, queer and not primarily white is okay. Make your own media when you can and get it out there. Since you more than likely won't win, you can set that as part of the trajectory: use your candidacy to forward your own goals in the world. I found that I was unable to volunteer generally for other things, but I was able to advocate for groups I love and actually get messages out to people more. Its a trade-off.

If you have large time commitments and you want to run for any position, think about shifting your schedule. The time commitments are about 3 hours a week on average for a candidate for State Representative. If you have to spend more than 60 hours a week at a job or multiple jobs (I usually came in a little under 50 hours of work per week), candidacy is not ideal. I would include raising children or taking care of an ill family member to that time estimate.

June 2013: I am asked by our Captain to run. I say yes.

2014 election calendar

11 February 2014: Nomination papers are released. Papers for State Representative are due in May 27. They require 250 certified signatures.

February, March, April, May 2014: Every week, 1-8 volunteers spend at least 3 man hours gathering signatures. We hand petitions to City Hall every week: post-verification, we pick them up and continue to gather. I ask Denise Provost for her signature, she declines. She is not interested in a debate.

22 May 2014: We have gathered enough verified signatures to hand in nomination papers. After handing them in, we gathered near the State House. This marks the beginning of non-petition doorknocking, which we pin at about 1-2 man hours a week.

24 May 2014: I and several other Pirates participate in the March Against Monsanto. I made an appearance with Joseph Guertin with the Young Jurks on WEMF Radio. Audio is up at Daily Motion here.

12 June 2014: I attend Wage Action in Copley Square.

14 June 2014: We march in the Boston Pride Parade. I attend 15 Now New England fundraiser at Doyle's.

12 July 2014: I moderate Net Neutrality: Stop Monopolizing Our Media, a live panel discussion held at SCATV. Video is up at telvue here.

19 August 2014: James O'Keefe and I appear on The Real Talk Show on BNN TV to speak about net neutrality and government accountability. Video is on YouTube here.

9 September 2014: As a non-party member, I do not vote in the State Primary. We hold a stand-out in Davis Square and get to meet other politically minded individuals.

13-14 September 2014: Pirates attend Freedom Rally. We hand out propaganda, register voters and speak with patients who suffer from conditions that are alleviated by marijuana: ALS (ice bucket challenge!), certain cancers, HIV/AIDS, neuropathic pain and MS (there are probably more, but these are the ones I remember). Quite a few of these patients are physically disabled and went through great pains to come to the event. The legalization efforts talked about are centered around a full legalization initiative for 2016.

17 September 2014: I appear on Occupied Nation Radio to speak about direct democracy and my candidacy. Audio is up on YouTube here.

27 September 2014: Volunteers and I hand out the first run of flyers at What the Fluff Festival in Union Square. Flyers were collaborated on with local activists and Pirates and funded using campaign moneys. My campaign manager asks Denise Provost if she is up for a debate.

9-12 October 2014: HONK! invades Somerville and Pirates invade it. We flyer, register voters, get Pass Mass Amendment petitions signed. I get to interview parade goers and comment live on the activist bands and groups for SCATV.

22 October 2014: Flyers and door hangers, designed with a process similar to the first run of flyers, arrive from Piro Printers. Distribution of flyers and door hangers adds more time to door knocking in last two weeks, at least 8-12 man hours more per week. The total amount spent on propaganda is about $600. Some of the propaganda, including buttons, is in-kinded from generous volunteers.

26 October 2014: I appear with Joseph Guertin on the Young Jurks for a gubernatorial straw poll. Audio is up on YouTube here.

30 October 2014: The Somerville Journal runs an Editorial for the 2014 election which endorses the Democratic party here. I am mentioned.

31 October 2014: The Boston Globe runs an article which mentions direct democracy and Massachusetts Pirates in the election cycle here.

2 November 2014: The very last of the flyers are all used up, right before the election! We shift to getting Pass Mass Amendment petitions signed before they are due on 19 November 2014. Doorknocking is declared over. The Open Standard runs an article which mentions all three Pirate State Representative campaigns in the US here.

4 November 2014: Election day! We gather over 100 more signatures for Pass Mass Amendment petitions and intend to gather more. We carry 11.9% of the vote.

Overall stats: 50 volunteers at max of ~90 man hours (not including candidate time) over 9 month period; expended less than 1k; 10,000 voters targeted through physical doorknocking, TV, radio and personal appearances campaign; final vote 1,452: 10, 717 or 11.9%.

Some of these events (such as interviews, panels, flyering) can take several man hours of time to procure and I didn't include the smaller meetings with activists to create actions. In fact, many of these events are events we have established as Pirate events that we wish to be at every year. It helps to campaign within your district if you identify events you are already going to as an activist and then go to them as a candidate.

I think its important to recognize that if you are not a Republican or a Democrat (or a United Independent what what), you are not tied to the huge money and person machines that these candidates have access to, thus limiting your chances of fully winning a vote.  If you are the candidate or volunteers, please recognize that you should use the experience for your own personal spiritual growth.  Set your own vision of what you hope to accomplish, both in hard numbers as well as the impact that you want to have.  

When I met with Denise Provost months ago at the Somerville Armory, she helped me set my reach goal for votes at 13% by explaining that this was all that Harry Kortikere could achieve in the Democratic primary of the last election cycle. So, for hard numbers, we needed to reach at least that amount. So, the range of numbers of flyers and the amount of doorknocking for volunteers was set accordingly. I will also mention that both Harry and I are people of color. I think that if anyone does eventually win or inherit this seat from Denise, that person is probably going to be white.

Impact is one thing I've thought about a lot, since becoming a Pirate after drifting away from the Democratic Party. I like the Democratic Party, I tend to enjoy a lot of the delegates and most of their politicians even if they were Republicans once like Joe Curtatone. However, I don't see a lot of non-white and queer candidates running outside of their primaries. I knew I would have an impact in that fashion immediately, and help people understand that the Pirate Party is really a progressive party or at least not populated overtly with a bunch of racists.

I've been able to talk to people my own age about what it means to be engaged, and get young people to think about running before they turn 30. Its pleasing to me to get people interested in politics, and as a side coda to our campaign for Pirate votes, to get people thinking about voting at all and what our fairly limited, fairly low participated in process in Massachusetts is about. Only when people think about how similar our voting laws are to red states (which are progressive voting laws for the early 1960s), can we go about changing them.

Change is incremental. We can only solve problems if we have options. We have to create options, we have to talk boldly about what our visions for the future look like even if we think our neighbors don't share the same thoughts. Someone told me today I'd have garnered more votes if I had watered down my positions or reframed them: because our materials were created democratically (the method, not the political party), all of my positions were watered down from their original stance. I'm still happy to put my name on them, though: Pirates are different and we are proud to be different. We are proud to take selfies where seasoned politicians are frightened to be within a five mile radius.

Ultimately, we got over twice the amount of votes that people from non-ballot status parties usually get. Some of it is down to the fact that I've lived here for ten years and live in a progressive area. Some of it is that I will always be one of two candidates for State Representative who were the first Pirates on any general election ballot in Massachusetts. And the bulk of our votes? Purely down to our volunteers who trekked with me through all four seasons, raising the Pirate flag wherever we went, writing and singing, standing and sitting, getting paid only in buttons with my face on them and the black and white flyers we designed together. You are the Pirates, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Socialists (that are Alternative), Green Rainbows and more who made our campaign successful in so many ways.

If anyone has any further questions about what the campaign did that were not answered here, please feel free to poke us via Facebook, Twitter or the regular votenoelani contact tubes. We intend to archive this blog and shift the archive away so that we can use this acquired resource for other Pirates or Pirate causes. This campaign was the continuation of a conversation started by tech minded people in Sweden in 2006, which lead to the founding of our Commonwealth's party in 2010, that flowered into other potential candidates, that delivered voteguertin with 4% and votenoelani with 11.9% here in Massachusetts.

More soon,

Noelani