The more cameras, the better, to record history in the making, and discourage GOP goons from intimidating voters.
"Bay Area activists hit swing states
Kerry backers move to where they can have more impact
- Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, October 17, 2004
Rolla, Mo. -- Two months ago, Peachy Myers left her job working with homeless seniors in the Tenderloin to move back to her teenage bedroom in tiny Rolla. There, she felt she could do more to help the Tenderloin's poorest.
She keeps photos of three homeless men at her bedside to remind her that if she wants to change the federal housing policies that affect their daily lives, she must work in a closely contested swing state such as Missouri, where she can have more of an impact on removing George W. Bush from the White House.
So in August, the 27-year-old moved back to her mother's house, where her stuffed animals are still in the chair where she left them and the sash she wore as high school homecoming queen drapes across a full-length mirror.
Myers isn't the only Bay Area resident who has temporarily left in search of a greater challenge.
Across California, people frustrated by how White House policies have affected their day jobs have packed up and moved to swing states through the election. This high level of political activism is predominantly a left-of- center phenomenon, as Republican officials say they rely more on in-state volunteers for campaign help.
The California contingent is led by Bay Area progressives who couldn't sit still in a state where Democratic Sen. John Kerry is far enough ahead in polls that neither campaign has spent much time west of Nevada.
So instead of preaching to the converted or protesting in the San Francisco echo chamber, they've taken temporary leave of their jobs and headed to places where the race is close.
But a funny thing is happening to these missionaries as they preach to the rest of America: Some are thinking of not coming back. And it's not just because of the cheaper housing prices. Many prefer to stay where their organizing can have more of an impact than it would in Northern California.
"In the Bay Area, I'm just one of many people doing this kind of work," said Mattie Weiss, a 25-year-old Oakland resident. She has been living in her parents' Minneapolis basement all summer while organizing activists in Midwestern states for the fledgling League of Pissed Off Voters.
"But in Minneapolis, you feel really needed," Weiss said. "There's a lot of kinetic energy in the Midwest that's waiting to explode."
Still, Weiss and others say that kind of talk can wait until after the Nov. 2 election. Until then, these "expatriate" organizers share a life of 20- hour days, low pay and, for the poor vegetarians among them, not a lot of options beyond the side-plate combination at KFC.
"That's like my only option here. It's all chains," said Evan Paul, a 27- year-old Hayes Valley resident who left his environmental activist job in San Francisco to organize blue-collar workers in West Virginia.
Same story in Ohio, where fellow activist Micaela Davis said, "The guy working at the taco truck told us that we must be from California." The San Francisco native asked him why. "And he said, 'Because you know what a taco is. ' "
But usually there is little time to eat with so much work to do.
Some, like Myers, have hooked up with the Kerry campaign, others have joined independent advocacy organizations working against Bush, and some are freelance campaigners helping a variety of efforts.
Though it is difficult to gauge how many people have moved temporarily to swing states, leaders in the Kerry campaign and other organizations say such voters are a key part of their efforts. Most are young and single.
"There must be 100 people like that (from all over the country) in Ohio," said Jim DeMay, who is coordinating the Kerry campaign's efforts in that Midwestern swing state.
Other campaign organizers wish they had a separate program to coordinate all the folks headed to swing states for months at a time.
"The supply, in many ways, outstrips the demand," said Eli Pariser, executive director of the anti-Bush activist group MoveOn PAC.
The organization is trying to recruit volunteers to work in 10,000 neighborhoods in swing states. "If we had known there would be this many people doing that, we'd have set up a separate program to deal with it."
The Bay Area has been a fertile recruiting ground for the itinerant Bush- bashers because of "the culture of activism that exists there," Pariser said. "People there are experienced organizers, and they can step into a campaign and hit the ground running."
For Myers (who became Peachy after she couldn't pronounce her given name, "Patricia"), coming home to be a field organizer for the Kerry campaign has been a mixture of nostalgia, joy and frustration.
It's great to be home, where her mom makes her "apple Betty pie," where she shares in family celebrations that she's missed for years, and where she lives rent-free in the town where the mayor once proclaimed Peachy Myers Day in honor of the high school wunderkind. Across the street from the campaign office is the theater where she'd go on high school dates. Now it is a bar.
"Peachy's always been about saving something, saving somebody," said her mother, Nancy Myers, looking at the posters of endangered animals that have remained on her daughter's bedroom walls. Then she looks down at the photos of the Tenderloin men. "Just like these men."
But it is politically challenging for a San Francisco resident to work in a county where 58 percent of the voters cast ballots for Bush four years ago. Missouri Democrats aren't like California Democrats. In one of the rural counties Myers supervises, Kerry supporters auctioned off a gun at a fund- raiser.
"In the Tenderloin, I worked in a dangerous neighborhood, but here the work is never-ending," Myers said. "I go to bed, and my mind is racing, and I wake up panicked about all the things that need to be done. It's overwhelming."
Yet Myers is the exception among expats in that she knows the turf she's working. Others have had to learn on the job.
"There are Republicans here, and that's a real shock," said David Edeli, a 27-year-old organizer working in the tightly contested battleground of central Florida. "There are no Republicans in Noe Valley."
Edeli left his job as an organizer with the Alaska Wilderness League in June because, like Myers, he found that he was "constantly playing defense" against the administration's environmental policies. Soon, he hooked up with MoveOn PAC as its lead organizer in Tampa.
The closeness of the race means 20-hour days are routine. The only time he's stopped working is when the series of hurricanes swung through Florida. "People don't really want to talk about politics for a few days before and after that," he said.
Edeli doesn't know if he'll return directly to San Francisco after the election. Neither does Paul, who is now a West Virginia organizer for Americans for Democratic Action.
While he's in the Mountaineer State, he doesn't volunteer that he's from San Francisco.
When asked where he's from, Paul replies that he grew up in Georgia and Tennessee and attended Florida State University. It's a political sin of omission, just like how he tiptoes around environmental issues in the state's industrial towns.
San Francisco "is pretty polarizing in this area," said Paul, a 27-year- old who is living in Parkersburg, W.Va., site of two Bush campaign stops. "They're pretty socially conservative here, and all they see is what San Francisco has done with (approving) gay marriages."
Paul is trying to talk about trade and outsourcing issues in a region that has seen jobs leave, many of them headed overseas through corporate outsourcing. But when discussing these issues, Paul has learned to adapt his vocabulary.
"The frame of reference is different here," Paul said. "In the Bay Area, you can talk about 'corporate power,' and people know what you're referring to.
"It's important for activists to get out of communities where everyone agrees with you," he said. "I've been doing a lot more listening than talking here."
Paul is another activist who won't be returning to the Bay Area. After the election, he plans to move to St. Louis, where he hopes to begin graduate studies in public policy.
Davis is pondering her next move after she leaves her swing-state sojourn in Columbus, Ohio. Born and raised in San Francisco and schooled at UC Berkeley, the 24-year-old jumped at the chance to move in August as a way to experience life outside the liberal bubble. The Oakland resident splits a bedroom with a friend who is doing the same thing.
After working as a researcher at the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland, she grew tired of fighting Washington. So she and a roommate held a fund-raiser and sent out solicitation letters, eventually raising $3,500 to send themselves to a swing state.
Since mid-August, Davis has been in Columbus. She divides her time between working for America Coming Together -- one of the largest anti-Bush "independent" political organizations -- trolling for young voters with the fledgling Vote Mob organization, and organizing a speaking tour for folks from the League of Pissed Off Voters.
"You can sit there and talk to your progressive friends about how much you hate Bush and how you don't understand how they can vote for him," Davis said as she drove back from meeting with young voters at Youngstown State University.
Now, after having conversations with countless "theys" across Ohio, Davis has seen that activists need to reach out to the heartland.
"All the good work we do in the Bay Area," she said, "all the activism, won't be worth much unless we start talking to people across the country."
E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com.
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