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John Kerry and Me - By Al Giordano
http://narconews.com/Issue67/article4644.html
John Kerry and Me
Thirty Years Ago, a Young Community Organizer Learned Electoral Politics from the New US Secretary of State
By Al Giordano
Part I of an Occasional Series
January 29, 2013
In early 1982 Charles F. McCarthy insisted that I meet his friend John Kerry, a 38-year-old attorney and candidate for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. The job of lieutenant governor is akin to that of vice president: you shake the governor’s hand each day, check his pulse, and if he’s not dying, you go back to your office and try to look busy. I was a 22-year-old community organizer in the hills of Western Massachusetts and could not have cared less about who would win election to a position with zero policy-making power.
Charles F. was the cigar-chomping “political boss” of the town of Greenfield, the capital of Franklin County, where I lived and organized. With his help, I had just spent the autumn spearheading a petition drive to put a referendum on the statewide ballot in November 1982 against nuclear power and low-level nuclear waste dumps. The law would require that before new nuclear plants and waste dumps in the state could be sited, specific environmental safeguards be met. Voters would have to approve new nuclear facilities by referendum. We pitched it as a pro-democracy initiative. The nuclear industry understood perfectly well that it would be the death knell to its future plans.
We had gathered 110,000 voter signatures across the state – a high percentage of them from rural Western Massachusetts—and this had apparently raised eyebrows and interest in Boston. “You are going to work for my friend Kerry,” Charles F. announced. Charles F. was crazy like a fox and prone to provocative declarations, so I didn’t take his statement seriously. My plan was to manage the referendum campaign and then pivot off that victory to close the Yankee Atomic plant in the Berkshire Mountain town of Rowe, which some of my neighbors and I had been organizing to shut down over the previous three years.
I would eventually do both things, but a setback occurred when Boston-area activists with whom I had allied to launch the referendum campaign decided to seize control of the effort, pushing me (and the rest of the Western Massachusetts organizers) aside. We rebels from the western hills had provided the grassroots muscle to get the referendum on the ballot, but anyone who knows Massachusetts politics and activism – and Bostonians’ belief that the sun orbits around them – is familiar with stories like this one. Months later, in June, when the Boston activists’ organization was in financial and organizational shambles, they would plead mea culpa and ask me to come to Boston and run the campaign. I did, and in November we were victorious, having passed the referendum with a winning 1,224,200 votes, to only 602,400 in favor of the nuclear industry.
<snip>
John Kerry and Me
Thirty Years Ago, a Young Community Organizer Learned Electoral Politics from the New US Secretary of State
By Al Giordano
Part I of an Occasional Series
January 29, 2013
Author’s note: After various months of researching and writing a book about my earliest adventures in community organizing and media during my teens and early twenties, came the news that one of the people I’ve been writing about, John Kerry, was nominated by President Barack Obama as the next US Secretary of State. Today, the US Senate foreign relations committee confirmed his nomination. I’ve known Kerry through three decades, worked for him twice, covered him as a reporter, argued and fought with him – including many times when he was a guest on my talk radio show – when I thought him wrong and have also had his back when he’s done the right thing. The following text is excerpted and adapted from the still untitled book. My main motive for these writings is to share lessons learned about organizing and media, strategy and tactics, and the experiences that taught those lessons, with the next generations of organizers and journalists. I’d also like to express my profound appreciation to my book editor, Katherine Faydash, for cleaning this chapter up so skillfully and ahead of schedule. – Al Giordano.
In early 1982 Charles F. McCarthy insisted that I meet his friend John Kerry, a 38-year-old attorney and candidate for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. The job of lieutenant governor is akin to that of vice president: you shake the governor’s hand each day, check his pulse, and if he’s not dying, you go back to your office and try to look busy. I was a 22-year-old community organizer in the hills of Western Massachusetts and could not have cared less about who would win election to a position with zero policy-making power.
Charles F. was the cigar-chomping “political boss” of the town of Greenfield, the capital of Franklin County, where I lived and organized. With his help, I had just spent the autumn spearheading a petition drive to put a referendum on the statewide ballot in November 1982 against nuclear power and low-level nuclear waste dumps. The law would require that before new nuclear plants and waste dumps in the state could be sited, specific environmental safeguards be met. Voters would have to approve new nuclear facilities by referendum. We pitched it as a pro-democracy initiative. The nuclear industry understood perfectly well that it would be the death knell to its future plans.
We had gathered 110,000 voter signatures across the state – a high percentage of them from rural Western Massachusetts—and this had apparently raised eyebrows and interest in Boston. “You are going to work for my friend Kerry,” Charles F. announced. Charles F. was crazy like a fox and prone to provocative declarations, so I didn’t take his statement seriously. My plan was to manage the referendum campaign and then pivot off that victory to close the Yankee Atomic plant in the Berkshire Mountain town of Rowe, which some of my neighbors and I had been organizing to shut down over the previous three years.
I would eventually do both things, but a setback occurred when Boston-area activists with whom I had allied to launch the referendum campaign decided to seize control of the effort, pushing me (and the rest of the Western Massachusetts organizers) aside. We rebels from the western hills had provided the grassroots muscle to get the referendum on the ballot, but anyone who knows Massachusetts politics and activism – and Bostonians’ belief that the sun orbits around them – is familiar with stories like this one. Months later, in June, when the Boston activists’ organization was in financial and organizational shambles, they would plead mea culpa and ask me to come to Boston and run the campaign. I did, and in November we were victorious, having passed the referendum with a winning 1,224,200 votes, to only 602,400 in favor of the nuclear industry.
<snip>
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