Why did you become an activist or volunteer?

[claypool4prez]

I wasn't involved in politics at first.


Then when they passed the Military Commissions Act, I quit as a journalist and began volunteering for the local Dems.

Which eventually led me to an internship with Democracy for America, and the Dean family.


The work up there in Vermont was great. We got a new governor elected in Kentucky, and backed progressives across the country.

But the whole time I was up there I worried about back home. A piece of the Bible Belt if there ever was one.

Every week I would call home to our democrat state senator or someone else on the inside, to find out if anybody was going to run for U.S. Congress against right-wing extremist Rep. Virginia Foxx. And every week I got a "no." No mayor, or county commissioner, or judge, or lawyer, or municipal council member would step up to the challenge.

I got discouraged, that I had done all of that work, that sincere push for a better and more progressive country, and had gained the skills to spread it but without an opportunity to do so back home.

My last day in Burlington, Vermont, up on the third story office of DFA - formerly the Dean for America headquarters - I said my goodbyes to my coworkers, all now cherished friends, whom I'd admired for their commitment to sacrifice pay or recognition to fight the good fight. As the day ended I gazed out of my window over Lake Champlain, and thought what I would do going back to college for one last year. Back to North Carolina. Where we had never voted for a Democrat for president, ever, my home county even voted for Lincoln.

The staff had already thrown me a going away party, and now I was down to packing away my things, clearing the desk, and ending the best summer of my life.

As I was finishing Jim Dean walked by, in his infamous short shorts and high socks, naturally, and noticed me finishing up. He thanked me for my work and wished me luck carrying on the fight back home. I told him that all we ever elected were Blue Dogs back home, that is, if we somehow voted in a Democrat, and that no cause back in the tucked away mountains of North Western North Carolina, would really fit what America needed. I expressively noted my concern that no Democrat had even come forward to challenge a woman who voted against giving aid to Katrina victims. He told me, and I will never forget this, "somebody will come forward, somebody will step up, and if they even remotely match your purpose and your ideals, then you go and work for them and get them elected no matter the odds."

I tried to crack a couple last minuted jokes in as I secretly tried to soak in what he was trying to say.

Soon after I was back at Appalachian State University - thirty minutes and one county over from my home town- the local politics were fine it being a "liberal" college town and all. But the town was a small oasis in a twelve county district that produced Andy Griffith, Nascar, Lowe's Hardware, and was most famous for moonshine running and Richard Burr.

That fall I went back to work for the campus newspaper, the same one that had fired my a couple years ago for being cocky. Now with some more experience under my belt including interviews with: Chuck D, Dead Prez, Rep. Ellison, Rev. Yearwood, Saul Williams, Kevin Barrett, Bob Bowman, CIA department director Mel Goodman, Primus, The Wu-Tang Clan, Russell Simmons, Mike Patton, Mike Gravel, etc...I guess I was expecting too much trust. The first story I took, eventually turned into an investigation into BOT corruption, that forced the chancellor to personally have me fired to cover it up.

Betrayed by the school, and the newspaper which cut me loose to protect their image. I was out of work. Fed up with reporting, and pondering whether I should go back to that passion I had so not so long ago wielded.

Two days later I picked up a local town newspaper and read a small blip brief about an area farmer who had , out of nowhere, declared a bid for Congress. One paragraph down I glanced over the candidate's name with utter shock, "Roy Carter, who will retire from teaching in the Winter, to run for Virginia Foxx's seat." That was my Roy Carter!!!!

He had been my own teacher four years prior, back when I was in high school.

I could still remember him calling out fellow coaches in the lunchroom, while at the table, over their blind support for an invasion of Iraq.

Roy was fiery back then, and knew his stuff, although he explained the facts with the style of a Knut Rockne rather than an Adlai Stevenson.

He was more common sense than pure idealism. He took every issue in stride.

It was like Huey Long was walking our halls, teaching science and giving "don't ever give up" speeches in our lockerooms.

It's hard to argue that he didn't instill something in me, but I thought of him little after graduation.

After all, it's not like a man who was been a high school teacher for 36 years, already, is ever gonna amount to anything more.

The next day I called him at his office at North Wilkes High School.

I was the first to do so.

I told him that I was unprepared to come to terms with the irony or implications of me coming on to work for him, but I pledged that I would stick with him no matter what.

So I tried to finish up a spring semester and help Roy win a primary while defending his progressive stances on issues, to crowds who had never heard that type of "talk."

Roy came out against Mountain-top Removal, hardcore.

So much so that Duke Power donated treasure chests of safety money to the republican incumbent Foxx as soon as they read the press release.

Sure enough I ended up skipping too many classes, because I made attending forums and Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinners a higher priority than dropping in for some elective courses, especially when I had already finished my major in journalism, and minor in political science.

What happened? I failed a couple classes.

But we won the primary.

And then it was on to un-intended summer school, with geology lab by day and phone-banking by night.

Then the polls came out.

And our "nobody coach" had skyrocketed up.

Soon I had finished my last semester of summer school, and was left with four credits left to graduate.

But the county where my university was located was the strongest one for us in our 12 county district.

So I decided to move back home, to the front lines. Now I wake up at 5:30 in the morning to catch a bus up the mountain to school; doing phone-banking in between classes, and canvassing every dirt road and forgotten trailer park I can during evenings and weekends.

I am meeting the folks who live just miles from where I grew up, and hearing their stories of getting laid off, or that the bills are too high, or that they have to choose between groceries and medicine. Veterans who've been neglected. Former grade school classmates who can't find work.

My last semester of college was supposed to be filled with parties and tailgates. But, when not in class, most of my time is spent in rooms or on doorsteps listening to the grievances of poor forgotten souls that had been laid off from work before my parents even met.

It's worth it though. Jim Dean was right. His brother's 50-state-strategy is working.

And that unique voice from the wilderness, who rescued the trouble makers and high risk kids from dropping out, who mentored, who taught, who declared that the attack on Iraq was an illegal preemptive strike the second the first bomb fell, is on the verge of history.

Roy retired this year after forty years in the same profession, teaching high school science.

He was preaching Global Warming in class, before Al Gore even ran for Senate.

Half of his students make starting salaries out of college, higher than the one he retied with.

Cynics say this can't happen.

Poor folks aren't supposed to get elected to national office.

Folks, I'm trying to prove them wrong.

www.roycarterforcongress.com


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I'm curious what path led all of y'all here. What keeps you so motivated? And more importantly what initial incident, moment, date, etc...,got you up off the couch, sofa or rocking chair?

[Forkboy]

1. The No Nukes movement was my politcal cherry.

I had a friend whose brother was very active in politics. At the time it had barely even registered on my radar yet (I was 14). So the brother says one day that he's going to a protest and asked if I could help with a few signs (I was the artist in the group). I got into doing the signs and ended up going with him. Been a political junkie ever since.

[rurallib]

2. Oddly, I come to my left wing views from the right side

If you are paying attention, it is very obvious that the economy and more people do much better under Democratic admins. Plus there is much more fair andequitable administration of justice under Dems. Plus foreign policy relies more on diplomacy and negotiation under Dems.
I came to these positions very young. Generally I simply want people to be treated equally. And those to whom much has been given bear a responsibility to repay the society that gave them their opportunity.
All that being said I was an anti war activist in the '60s. Due to some family problems, I really dropped out of politics for decades. After our children were gone and I was semi-retired, I was doing some substitute teaching. I felt odd and out of place as all the networks were telling me we wanted war and tax cuts.
Then one day I was working at a rural school. The teacher I was subbing for left TomPaine.com on his computer. I started reading during my free period and I found that I wasn't alone. I also found I was missing TONS of what was really going on. TomPaine led me to DailyKos and it was all down hill from there.
What really bothered me was the brazen daylight theft of our public moneys. This was @ 2002.
We live in what used to be a Republican stronghold. I knew not who the local Democrats were, but I was determined to find them. Took me about a week to hunt down when and where they met. I shoved my way in and as they say the rest is history.

We have had many successes in my six or so short years. Our county board has gone from all Republican to 4 Dems, 1 repug. We hop to change that this year. We have a Dem state rep for the first time in 50 years. In probably the biggest upset of 2006 we retired Jim Leach! We hope to take our state senate seat this fall.
There are many other things which really highlight that change in attitude of the electorate.
Gotta go.
Benn wanting to tell my story for a long time.

[claypool4prez]

3. Thanks

Thanks for sharing that.

With all the bickering here we often forget that we have so much in common. Many of us came to sites like this and to the causes they support for different reasons. But I think we all came because it was the right thing to do.

[JNelson6563]

4. I hope this gets 100 recs

Most excellent post! I cannot add my own at this time as I recently moved and don't have cable yet. Too hard to type long post on my phone.

Thanks for tbis great post and your tireless efforts.

Julie

[lonestarnot]

5. The slingshot of 72 lbs of plutonium over populations by NASA

did it for me. Then there was the growth hormone in milk cows, and the ownership of the media, and it gets worse from there.

[JSK]

6. Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill

In my zealous naivete at the time, I even wrote a scathing letter to Poppy Bush, so I am sure I have been on some list since then.

p.s. I have loved Joe Biden since then too.

[claypool4prez]

8. You know

I initially registered as a republican in high school. The whole town was republican. Our country had just invaded Iraq when I turned 18 and there in the cafeteria was this booth where you could register. Well the one next to it was the booth for the Marine Corps.

So I started out as a repub, but never voted for one and switched my registration six months later and voted for Kerry.

Didn't get involved or volunteer until the midterms of 06 though.

[mod mom]

7. stolen election in 2000

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. Seeing an old black man being cursed and spat upon by white kids on a school bus.

I was 13, born and raised in L.A., poor, born into a "Red" family, but being raised by an ultra-conservative step father. We had moved to Florida and I got to see blatant racism for the first time. I was on that bus and it convinced me that there was something wrong about a humiliating a person.

In early 1965 I was at a Marine Crotch firing range waiting for the silhouette targets to be "pulled" so we could blast away at them. I decided that I wasn't going to kill my fellow man because LBJ and a bunch of other politicians and generals wanted me to.

Those were the beginnings of my "activism".

[asdjrocky]

10. For me it was Angela Davis in 72.

When I was 12 and in middle school I decided our school need a real newspaper - the one that came out once a month wasn't good enough for me and they only covered stuff that happened at the school- so I decided to start one. It never worked out, but I went to see Angela Davis speak and brought my small tape recorder along, you know, being a reporter.

I'll never forget the looks I got walking into the small theatre where she was to speak. Here I am, this little white boy walking into a room full of Black Panthers and other black militants. I sat in the back, behind this huge brother, turned on my tape recorder and began to listen.

Honestly, to this day I don't remember a word that she said, but the guy in front of me would say, "Right on, right on" every time she made a good point. When I listened to the tape of course it got nothing of the speech because I was all the way in the back. What it did record, nicely, was the man in front of me saying, "Right on, right on."

It may sound funny, but those were the most important words to me for a long, long time. I listened to it again and again until I could say it and sound like him as much as possible. A ridicules notion when you think about it, a 12 year old white boy trying to sound like a big, full throated brother, but that's what I did.

So when or why did I become an activist? When I was 12. Why? Because on that night I decided these were the most cool people in the world.

You know what? I was right.

[stillcool]

11. Roe v Wade, The election of 2000...

and the most important of all...the internet.

[claypool4prez]

12. more on it

The night they passed the Military Commissions Act I was listening to the radio, and the host was going off on the implications of the act and that it canceled Habeas Corpus. I realized I could be locked up for printing anything deemed "shady" and at that time I was a working at a radio station putting together a special program on 9/11 that featured Bob Bowman and Dr. Barrett, two 9/11 truthers. So that scared the shit out of me.

Throughout the night I tossed and turned in the bed, hearing the desperate pleading and alarming coming out of the radio speakers. I fully expected to wake up to a town gone mad. Chaos in the streets. Riots. Protests. Sit-ins. Marches. Walk outs on campus.

I mean, they had just taken away our right to a trial by jury for Christ sake.

The next morning I walked out of my apartment door to a scene that hadn't changed. Everybody was going about their business, same as usual, walking to class, taking out the trash, as if everything was the same. Standing there perplexed, I was motionless. A girl who lived a couple of doors down came out of her apartment as I was standing there, noticed my confusion, and asked what was wrong.

In the simplest of terms I explained that we could be dragged away in the middle of the night, arrested on a crime we didn't commit and could be kept in a cell for the rest of our lives without our family or friends even knowing what happened.

She said, "That sounds like Nazi Germany. But that will never happen here." Then she turned and hurried down the stairs on her way toward her first morning class.

"It just did happen," I yelled back. Within an hour I found out where the county democratic party's headquarters was at, and had signed up to canvass and phone-bank for the 2006 midterms. By the next week there was a Dennis Kucinich sticker on the back of my car.

The rest is history.