American Dream | Achieving the Dream

What is the dream and who can achieve it?

The United States of America is the land of great opportunity, in which people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and give their children better than they had.  This idealistic vision is the American Dream. In addition to improving chances for children, the Dream also typically includes home ownership, having a chance to get rich and achieving a secure retirement. The Dream finds its roots in our Declaration of Independence which states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  As humans, life has been given to us.  Liberty is established through the social contract.  The Pursuit of Happiness — that is the promise of the American Dream.

The term was made popular by James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book, The Epic of America.  According to Adams, the term was “that American dream of a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank.”

However, the idea of the American Dream is neither simple nor universal.   Americans oddly tend to hold contradictory views of ways to achieve success.  We simultaneously think that people should get out of the system what they put into it (an idea called meritocracy), and that people should be able to pass wealth generationally, thus effectively nullifying a meritocratic system.  The tensions between these widely held views are what makes the Dream complex.

The American Dream is the great American story.  It is given power at least partially by what Max Weber called the Protestant Ethic, which taught that hard work and prosperity are signs of the achievers’ place in heaven and of God’s favor towards them.  The Protestant Ethic contributed to America’s financial success.  We worked hard, saved and spent frugally.  Protestantism also affected how we view work.  Martin Luther taught that all work, not just ordained ministry, was a sacred thing.  In a sermon, Luther preached that, “every occupation has its own honor before God, as well as its own requirements and duties.”  This dedication to work from the 16^th century is evident to us in the 21^st through the nation of workaholics.  Once Americans decided work was a positive, we took it to the extreme.  Because of this Protestant framework, Americans came to view work as an opportunity, not merely a necessity.

Stories of the American Dream are ubiquitous in the American Experience.  Indeed, they portray some of our greatest figures such as Abraham Lincoln who was famously born in a log cabin and rose, due to his intellect and work ethic, to become one of the nation’s most visionary presidents.  In the present day, two O’s tell the story of the Dream: Oprah and Obama.  Oprah was famously raised in poverty in Mississippi before she became the queen of day time talk and just about everything else.  President Obama continuously touted his credentials as an American Dream president, the son of a Kenyan and a Kansan during his historic 2008 presidential campaign.  Using his unusual past to his advantage, he continuously said on the trail, “In no other country on earth is my story even possible.”

The Dream mentality is so all-encompassing that it can be found almost anywhere.  Some of our great American art personifies the Dream.  Citizen Kane and The Godfather II, two of our greatest films portray rags to riches stories.  Recently, the Will Smith film The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) showed some of the heart-breaking realities of chasing success.  In one moving scene, Smith and his son find themselves homeless and spend the night in the public restroom of a Bay Area Rapid Transit station.  Another scene from this film epitomizes the Dream mentality.  Smith’s character teaches his son that the Dream is a possibility for those who work for it.

You got a dream… You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period.

Will Smith’s character endures barrier after barrier to achieving success but it is this belief in the Dream that propels him forward.  This spirit of opportunity and drive is necessary in working toward the Dream.  Without it, the goal seems unachievable.

However, that same drive can turn against those who devote their lives to it.  F. Scott Fitzgerald’s acclaimed work, The Great Gatsby is also about the American Dream and the potential pitfalls of too much success.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy–they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

Excess is not a concept included in the Dream. Rather, the Dream is to have enough to be comfortable and give your children a little better than you had.  Enormous wealth is a bastardization of the Dream, an unintended consequence of unbridled ambition.

Dream stories serve to inform us of possibility.  Last year we heard an American Dream story recounted over and over, that of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.  An e-mail from President Obama to his supporters recounts the now familiar story.

And then there is Judge Sotomayor’s incredible personal story. She grew up in a housing project in the South Bronx — her parents coming to New York from Puerto Rico during the Second World War. At the age of nine, she lost her father, and her mother worked six days a week just to put food on the table. It takes a certain resilience and determination to rise up out of such circumstances, focus, work hard and achieve the American dream.

In Judge Sotomayor, our nation will have a Justice who will never forget her humble beginnings, will always apply the rule of law, and will be a protector of the Constitution that made her American dream and the dreams of millions of others possible. As she said so clearly yesterday, Judge Sotomayor’s decisions on the bench “have been made not to serve the interests of any one litigant, but always to serve the larger interest of impartial justice.”

This story shows who can achieve the American Dream: anyone.  According to the Dream, we all have the opportunity to achieve it.  Our own hard work and moral fiber will help us along the way.  As Americans, this story is our story and permeates every aspect of our society.  We are constantly told that we can achieve it.

But, is that true?  For some, pursuit of a Dream turns into the American Nightmare, faced with the inability to break into a closed system no matter how hard they work.  The ideology of the American Dream has been used to justify the inequalities of our society, as if those who have not been able to get ahead do not deserve it and have not worked hard enough.  This is where the tension between meritocracy and inheritance becomes important.  For the argument that those who get ahead deserve success to be logically sound, everyone would have to originate in the exact same place.  But, we don’t.  Those with privilege start out light years closer to the finish line.  The next installment of this series will examine the barriers and impediments to achieving the American Dream.

On the Trail: I Got a Job

If you are regular readers of this blog, then you know that I have been writing about my work as a volunteer on a congressional campaign.  I have covered a number of topics including: the power of money in politics, the unconventional workplace of a campaign and the ambiguity that comes with not being in a traditional work environment,  the pace of campaigning, and being the baby of the campaign “family.”  It’s been a very useful outlet for my experiences ‘on the trail’ and hopefully you got a sense of what it’s like.

However, my heart rejoices to tell you that I have been hired on with the same campaign to work as the Press Secretary.  I have been on the job for about 10 days now and I am still very excited.  Our primary is June 8th so we have about three months of lead up before the election.  Because of my involvement as a staff person on the campaign, I have to temporarily forgo my reflections on the process.  It wouldn’t be quite right for me to be reflecting from the position as a staff person.  Maybe I will have some reflections after the race has run its course but until then I will be blogging on other topics.  Thanks for reading.

But wait, there’s more!  I cannot help but write a few words about the difference between being staff and being a volunteer, in the most general sense.

First, the boundaries are much harder to define.  When I was working as a volunteer, I only worked the time I had and if it did not work with my schedule, that meant that I could not be there.  Now I schedule things around the campaign and there are campaign events almost every night.  Therefore, making plans for anything personal is very difficult.

Second, spending time with the same group of people day in and day out is exhausting.  I see my fellow staff and core volunteers more than I see my housemates and I spend about twice as many hours in the day with them as I do sleeping.  I know that by the end of the campaign, I will be on their last nerve and they will be on mine.  But, spending all that time together also results in strong bonds.  We’re there to encourage one another.  Example: Yesterday three of my coworkers went to Panda Express, the Chinese restaurant literally around the corner from the office.  “Do you want anything?” one of them asked.  Jokingly I said, “yeah, I’ll take your fortune cookie.”  When they arrived back thirty minutes later I received three fortune cookies, one from each of them.  Indeed, we go to Panda Express so often I’ve started collecting the fortunes and taping them to my laptop screen.  The two fortunes added today say, “BEAUTIFUL THINGS AWAIT YOU” and “NOW IS A GOOD TIME TO FINISH OLD TASKS.”  I have more to add.  I know that these will be long month and looking up at encouraging words (even fortune cookie wisdom) delivered from friendly hands will keep me trudging on.

Third, I am perpetually exhausted.  Any political race is daunting and ours is no different.  The sheer amount of work to be done seems almost unachievable in such a short period of time.  I also had the wisdom to start work and move across town on the same day, which led to me shoving books and knick knacks into boxes while fielding calls from my candidate and my campaign manager.  Then all my possessions spent several days in boxes while I worked 15 hour days to try and get my bearings.  I pushed myself on Saturday (first day off) to unpack and organize everything.  Sunday morning I woke up with a cold.  Such is life, at least for the next three months, and hopefully beyond.

That is all for my campaign reflections.  I look forward to filling you in after the race has been run (and won).

Who Would You Let in Your Political Bed?

It was Charles Dudley Warner who said, “Politics make strange bedfellows.”  I suppose that all depends on with whom you are sleeping, politically of course.  The truth of this quotation is that politics is all about coalition building.  If you want to create or change a policy, you need support.  But, in this game there is more than one ball in the air.   At any given time, a multitude of issues are being discussed, organized around and acted upon.  Political parties help to build coalitions and cohesion.  You will usually be on the same side of the aisle as those with whom you share a political party.  However, as watching health care in the US Senate has taught us, parties often find themselves trying to play “red rover” with the other side.

However, coalition building is difficult because some issues cut so close to the bone.  Can a gay pro-life representative join forces with a homophobic pro-life representative on their shared interest against abortion?  Taking a stand with another elected official is a serious statement.  But, are there some issues that prevent you from even standing up with another person?  For me, homophobia is a huge barrier to allyship.  Gay culture and people have always been a big, positive part of my life so I take issue with people who would seek to tear down the LGBT community for whom they love.  Other complete no-go issues for me are misogyny and racism.  Are there issues so dear to you that you could not work with some one who opposed you on them?  Or, in other words, “Who would you let in to your political bed?”

I have been reading Teddy Kennedy’s memoir, True Compass over the last couple of weeks.  He was constantly faced with the challenge of finding allies to support the issues which mattered to him, such as health care and immigration.  Here is a small section of the book.

Eastland’s racial views posed a moral problem for me.  Civil rights became one of the defining causes of my career.  How could I seek guidance, or cooperate in any way, with a proponent of segregation?

My decision regarding Eastland-in fact, my abiding impulse to reach across lines of division during my career-took strength from the concluding phrase of Lincoln’s first inaugural address, on the eve of the Civil War.  I decided to put faith in ‘the better angels of our nature.’  I worked with James Eastland; in fact, the two of us became friends.  Then and always, I would work with anyone whose philosophies differed from mine as long as the issue at hand promoted the welfare of the people, and I would continue to await those better angels, and to remain confident in ultimate justice.

I would like to believe in the better angels of all of us.  In fact, I would imagine that for the issues of racism, misogyny and homophobia, both sides would benefit from some relationship with the other.  When we isolate ourselves, we stop seeking to dialogue with the rest of teh world.  But, it is through dialogue and learning from those who differ from us that we learn the most.  As I have written, diversity is the servant of dialogue. Maybe bedfellows is too intimate of an analogy.  But, we can share a handshake, a meal and a conversation with even those who differ the most from us.

Third Podcast Highlights “Don’t Look Away,” the event that started it all

Today we offer part 3 in our podcast series concerning domestic violence.  Part 3 is a collection of highlights from Don’t Look Away: violence against women and human rights in Oklahoma.  This event was held last April as a collaboration between The Xenia Institute and the OU Women’s and Gender Studies program.  This first collaboration created many friendships between the two entities and started a conversation on domestic violence issues that will continue for some time.

As we prepare for tonight’s event, When It Hits Home: an evening concerning intimate partner violence, we found we should take a look back at the event that started it all.

Don’t Look Away podcast

I Embrace Religions, Except Other Interpretations of My Own

In school, I majored in Religious Studies.  I learned about Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform), Buddhism (Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana), Islam (Sunni, Shia, Sufi), Sikhism, Ba’hai, Jainism, Hinduisms, and more.  I eventually came to the conclusion that all religions are seeking the ultimate truth.  In addition, I concluded that many religious traditions share common elements but emphasize them differently.  I can recall very clearly having this revelation in high school Sunday school while talking about non-attachment in the Buddhist tradition.  “What’s the one day that Christians focus on non-attachment?” my teacher posed to the group of us.  My mind was completely blank, is that something we talked about at all?  “Ash Wednesday,” he said, “when we receive the imposition of ashes and are told ‘Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.’”

I like to think that I am ‘beyond tolerance’ (as a t-shirt of mine says) when it comes to religious traditions.  I’m not just interested in “a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one’s own.”  I want to embrace the diversity.  Even atheists and agnostics intrigue me.  The claim that there is no God or that any ultimate reality is unknowable are themselves statements about religion.  I love to talk to those people over a cup of coffee, not because I’m a believer and want to convert them, but because they have valid opinions too.

Having said that I can sit comfortably with a great diversity of religions and not only tolerate them, but embrace their perspectives, there is one tradition with whom I cannot sit comfortably, a conservative interpretation of my own.  Perhaps it’s from the years of being asked as a child in Oklahoma if Episcopal was Christian, or having someone speculate that my youth group van was decorated in race car type flames because we were going to hell, but I cannot speak respectfully with those Christians who would close the church to women’s ordination or full participation of homosexuals, among other things.

However, I could talk to other traditions that hold these exact same views.  What is it about my own tradition that creates such a blind spot?  Perhaps it is because I perceive Conservative Christians as an incorrect interpretation, whereas I am not similarly inclined to pronounce the same opinion  in say, the Orthodox Jewish tradition.  Indeed, it never even occurred me that Conservative Christianity was a religion of which I needed to be tolerant until a few years ago when my mother pointed it out.  I had been completely intolerant of a branch of my own tradition.

A friend and Hindu chaplain writes of his experience talking to the one religion which irks him.

I fashion myself a pretty tolerant and accepting guy, but there is one “religion,” I must admit, that I simply can’t stand.  Its doctrines and practices make my blood boil. Its champions bug me, its devotees test my patience.

So it’s not surprising that a recent attempt to dialogue with one of them left me feeling like I’d just spent time acquainting my head with a brick wall.

Here, he is writing about fundamentalists but I think that his experience is relevant to my own since fundamentalists of my own, Christian, tradition are some of those with whom I find myself least able to communicate.  Maybe it’s the lack of give and take in the conversation.  Maybe it’s my own prejudice against a culture by which I was largely surrounded as a child.

An author at Paliban Daily argues that it is in the very nature of religion to be intolerant.

Religions don’t bring that same spirit of tolerance and understanding to the table. They insist on it but they will not reciprocate. They can’t. It is against their very doctrine and dogma. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, in particular, are political systems as much as they are theologies. They come with prescriptions, not only for their adherents, but for society at large. Tolerance can only be a one way street. Their doctrine, being divine, cannot be open to compromise or negotiation. They share many of the same bigotries and prejudices against women, foreigners, homosexuals and any who don’t agree with their beliefs and superstitions. Regardless of the good people want to see from religion, or have been trained to see and expect from religion, the truth is that the fundamental structure of religion is authoritarian, uncompromising and not open to negotiation. God’s laws and prescriptions cannot be edited, abridged or altered. God’s laws and teachings cannot be subject to the laws of man, society, or the state, and, most definitely, not compromised with another religion’s equally divine prescriptions and demands.

I disagree with this assessment.  Religions can embrace their traditions and suspend their claims of absolute truth.  Letting go of absolute truth claims is the only way that two people can sit down and discuss anything.  And so, it is with this appreciation that I suspend my own claim on absolute truth in the Christian tradition.  If you’re willing to sit down, so am I.

On the Trail: Life Comes at You Fast

I have been trying to think of a way to illustrate the pace of a political campaign.  I think this morning is a good example.  Right now it is 1pm.  I’ve been awake for 5 hours (most of which I spent at a public library applying for a job with the census, completely unrelated to campaigning).  Usually I take mornings pretty slow, drinking coffee, reading blogs and planning the day.  That was pre-campaign.  This morning I have been on 10 phone calls, sent 10 e-mails and received 9 e-mails, all pertaining to the campaign.

Why the flurry of activity?  We had planned to have a meeting tonight but ended up postponing due to scheduling.  For me, that means calls to those who were planning to come (and the hostess) as well as an e-mail to everyone telling them that the event will be postponed.  Finally, I will field questions and comments that resulted from these notices of postponement.

In campaign time, everything moves faster because of the huge amount of work that needs to happen in a small window of time.  It’s all about keeping balls in the air.

A couple weeks ago, I had done some research that is being published on our campaign website today.  But, while I was sleeping last night, there was a question about some of the research.  When I woke up, I had three e-mails to the effect of, “hey, fix this.”  The idea isn’t that you flag it and come back to it later, as is usually my custom.  For campaigns, it is imperative that you get things done in that moment.  Everything needs to be done now.  In another example, this morning I was asked to make some calls.  A half hour later I got an e-mail, “don’t forget to make those calls.”  One more example, I’ve twice been awoken in the morning by the buzzing of my phone.  Once it was the candidate herself, once it was the events manager.

The underlying message: time is of the essence; now is the only time.  Sometimes the immediate requests come off as demanding.  I want to say, “I’m busy right now, leave me alone!”  But, I remember that it is my choice to be on-call and I learn more helping to put out fires than I would being an occasional volunteer.

A fellow blogger writes in her 20 pieces of advice for campaigns,

13. There is craziness in every campaign. One of the differences between winning campaigns and losing campaigns is that the winners know how to manage the craziness.

I am absolutely trying to learn to manage the craziness.  When there is always more research to do, more e-mails and phone calls to  make, it is difficult to put down the computer and the cell phone.  I watch my fellow supporters, who only stop working when they are no longer to physically stay up and do work any longer.  The fear is that if you rest for too long, one of the balls in the air will drop.  Not just any ball, but THE ball, the one that tips the election.  When we are done, we all want to know that we put the greater good above our own comfort and made a great save that kept the ball in the air.

Blogging, Get in the Game

Here’s an exercise: sit down at a blank screen, choose a topic with which you have some familiarity and write 600 to 1,000 words. Make sure to research anything that may need fact checking and link to relevant sources. Also, don’t forget to search the blogosphere to see what others are saying about your topic and incorporate their ideas into your work. Your piece cannot be simply a news story and it must have a voice but not too much voice because it cannot be completely about you. This is the art of blogging. I suggest this exercise because if you are much of a blog reader, you should try your hand at blog writing. It will completely change your perspective.

Before writing for Xenia, I didn’t read many blogs. I would occasionally glance at a few but I almost never left comments or became engaged. It was through writing that I came to the blogosphere and since then it has been a steep hike of a learning curve. The week that I was first quoted by another blog was the same week that I e-mailed my editor, Barbara, asking her if I was doing it right. It is very difficult to judge your own performance as a blogger. Is quality of blogging measured by number of reads, number of comments on the blog, or the number of people who mention it to you later? What if you are blogging about something that you feel morally compelled to blog, but everyone hates it, are points awarded for moral fortitude?

One of the hardest things to learn to deal with as a blogger is the resulting responses. Every time I or another blogger click “Publish,” we are leaving ourselves vulnerable. It is like saying, “World, here is what I have to say about this.” Who knows what the result of that will be? After a year of writing for Xenia, I feel like almost all of what I am and stand for can be found on the web.

One of the first pieces I wrote for Xenia is called, “Needle Exchange and Human Dignity.” It describes and defends needle exchange for intravenous drug users, a practice that is hugely controversial. Will that piece someday come back to haunt me? There can be no equivocating when your position is in written form and accessible to anyone with Google search.

Blogging comes with great personal risk. Any time someone is willing speak up and say, “World, here is what I have to say about this,” he or she is left open for criticism. A few months ago I wrote a blog called, “Is Europe the Homeland?” about why Americans are so much more likely to visit Europe than other places. I used the phrase, “cultural narcissism,” arguing that Americans like going to Europe because it is so much like the U.S. Within the day, I had received several negative comments, basically telling me I had no idea what I was talking about.

Thankfully, that road goes both ways. Some blogs have received positive feedback, such as my recent blog on gender queerness. Nothing is more reassuring than hearing that you are on the right track, and for Xenia, the right track is inspiring thought, reflection, and dialogue.

The beauty of public discourse is that you and I are both empowered to share our ideas, thoughts and opinions. Everything adds to the discussion. The First Amendment guarantees all of us the right to speak freely and the Internet has democratized the means to publish those thoughts.

As a fellow writer, I commend you if you are willing to stand up and say, “world, here is what I have to say about this.” If you have not stood up, now is a good time to start.

You can see better on the sidelines if you know what it is like in the game.

American Dream | Prologue: Dream a Little Dream

To tell the story of The American Dream is to tell the story of an American’s dream.  And so, unable to synthesize any story but my own, I will use it to illustrate.

I am Caitlin Frazier, 23 years old and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma.  I grew up in an upper-middle class household on the west side of Norman, Oklahoma. I went to amazing schools, and when I was in high school I participated in orchestra, choir and took Advanced Placement classes. My parents supported me through college, and I graduated without a cent of debt. Afterward, I was able to move across the country and participate in a year of service as a community volunteer. I consider myself very lucky. I also have one sibling, an older brother who is currently pursuing a doctorate in mathematics, which he will complete in 2012.

But the present is not where the story begins; it’s where it ends.

Backtrack 55 years.  The date is February 6, 1955.  My father is being born at his grandmother’s house outside of small-town Drumright, Oklahoma.  Doctors are not present, only midwives, trained by tradition and instinct and prayer.  My father already has a brother, two years his senior.  Another will come along in two more years.  A girl will complete the quartet four years after that.

Previously, my grandfather had been in the Navy for four years on a destroyer escort, after which he and my grandmother settled in their native Oklahoma to raise a family. He worked as a letter-carrier, and she was a homemaker who later worked as a school cook.  Like most Oklahomans at the time, they raised a few farm animals and grew their own vegetables.  Money was very tight but love abounded.

My dad graduated from Drumright High School, the head of a class of 47 students.  He was the first in his family to go to college. At the University of Oklahoma, he earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering, putting to work the practical know-how of building things he had been taught by his father.  To afford college, my dad hauled hay during the summers and worked other odd jobs to save money. In 1980, my father married my mother, another recent University of Oklahoma graduate.  They started a family and in 1986, I was born.  Reference the first paragraph for how lucky I have been to have so much provided for me and have opportunities that my father lacked, like international travel and the luxury of being a full-time student without worrying about debt.

Quite simply, our story is The American Dream. My father, whose family struggled with money, was able to pass on opportunities to me, a young woman completely financially stable with the world at my fingertips.  An essential part of the Dream is that parents are able to give their children more than they had.  My great grandfather was a sharecropper in Davis, Oklahoma.  He died early in my grandfather’s life, so not much is remembered about him in the family. But I would imagine that he worked incredibly hard to make ends meet and had very minimal education.  My grandparents graduated high school but did not have the luxury of higher education.  My father (and mother) received both a bachelor’s and master’s.  My brother is working for his doctorate.  It’s a beautiful story, particularly moving to me as I am one of its characters.

The American Dream is one of the essential ideologies of the United States.  It is as American as apple pie, baseball and freedom. But, the Dream is so ubiquitous that its effect on us is very rarely pointed out. We swim in it all the time so we cannot see the water.

In this series, I hope to make you see the water.  The huge effect of the Dream was first pointed out to me three years ago and The American Dream has captured my imagination ever since.  Bookended by an introduction and a conclusion, this series will examine four aspects of the dream:

• What is the Dream and who can achieve it?
• Who is not able to achieve the Dream?
• How does American Dream ideology affect our everyday lives and policies?
• How does The American Dream empower us?  How does it hold us back?

I invite you to dream the Dream with me.  Please leave your own comments about your experience of The American Dream.

On the Trail: Which Boundaries?

I have written previously about the familial nature of political campaigns.   Spending so much time and energy with a group of people working towards a common goal tends to create resilient bonds. Campaigning is what Warren Bennis calls a crucible experience, a “trial and test, a point of deep self-reflection that forces [people] to question who they are and what matters to them.” The beauty of campaigns is that this crucible experience is a shared one. There is a natural support system to uphold you during this process. The result of these bonds and shared experiences is community.

As with any community, regulating behavior is key. There must be some common understand of what is within and without the boundaries. What level of relationship is acceptable among the staff, volunteers, and the candidate? There is no handbook on this one.

Campaigns are amorphous and difficult to categorize in terms of normative behavior. Which set of social norms should dictate action? Those used in the workplace, among friends, in other community organizations? None of them quite fit.

For the staff, the campaign is a work environment. But, workplace norms do not necessarily apply. For instance, you would not usually invite your coworkers into your personal space to collaborate. But, this is exactly the kind of hospitality I have experienced. A new campaign friend of mine even made me a key to her home, one of the most generous gifts I have ever received. Not all the supporters are staff though. Most are volunteers who are not at all bound by work place conduct. This disqualifies work place norms as the norms that apply to campaigns.

Nor do interpersonal “friendship” norms apply. I cannot simply act how I want and expect others to understand as I would a friend because most other supporters are unknown entities. We do not know each other’s personal histories or backgrounds. In addition, whereas in friendship, one may select only those to whom you have an affinity, campaigns draw all types, including those whose personalities conflict with mine. So, the environment is not relaxed enough to completely let your guard down as you would with friends.

This leaves the category of other social organizations, such as those formed by common interest in religion, a particular cause, or hobby. This is the closest in tone to a campaign. The only major difference is that while most groups would meet at regular intervals over several years, campaigns are all compressed into a few months. I may talk to the campaign manager six times, the events coordinator twice and have 10 communications with other volunteers, all in one day. The multitude of e-mails, phone calls, and in-person conversations provides great opportunity for miscommunication to occur.

The delicacies of working with volunteers adds another layer of complexity to the social dynamic. Volunteers are difficult because they must be appropriately appreciated or they may cease to be involved. Also, volunteers would usually rather do what they want to do than what you need them to do (they are not getting paid after all). Imagine a man coming to an event to help work the registration table. He’s very excited to be working for your candidate! But, it also turns out that he is rude and off-putting to guests as they arrive. It takes a deft volunteer coordinator to extract him from that situation and still make him feel useful and appreciated. Now, multiply that situation by hundreds and you can see how feelings might get hurt.

The best way to describe the norms of behavior on the campaign trail is complex. I imagine that I will grow weary of the internal politics eventually but it is the totality of the interactions that build the community, not just the positive ones.

This is part of my series On the Trail about volunteering on a congressional campaign. To access the complete series, search “on the trail” in the Xenia search window.

What’s in a Text?

If you know me then you probably know that texting is my preferred means of communication.  I have even been know to say that if you don’t text, we can’t be friends.  This isn’t because I’m discriminating against non-texters.  Rather, I have much more difficulty communicating with people who don’t text message. Therefore, we are much less likely to be close.

Recently, my love of texting has come under scrutiny.  As the youngest of the volunteers on a political campaign, I am surrounded by non-texters!  I have had to keep my thumbs in check and actually call people when I need to communicate something to them.  The salutations and farewells on phone calls take up much of the time.  I could have sent a text in one tenth of the time and not ostracized the people around me by having a phone up to my ear.  I will admit that there is a time for phone calls, especially when you need to exchange a lot of information and receive feedback immediately.  But, to inform someone of a small piece of information, texting is the best.  (It turns out that it is also good for raising money for disaster relief, as the Red Cross has raised over $5 million for Haiti in a texting campaign.)

Then the question arises, how is texting different than e-mail?  If everyone had e-mail on their phones (which I certainly do not), then why text?  Both exchange written messages instantaneously and anything that could be put into a text message could certainly be put into an e-mail (although the vice versa is not equally true).  A blogger at Associated Content makes this point.

Why text/mms when you can email? The only reason why I can see texting beating email at this point is because not everyone has phones that have email on them. But when you and your friends both have email capable smart phones think about it why would you text him? With email you can still send an “instant” message to your buddy, but you can type out a message of unlimited length and you can easily insert images or other files along with the email. So if all your friends have smart phones why wouldn’t you just send an email?

I have been thinking about this question and have arrived at an answer: text messages have a different tone than e-mail.  This begs the question, “why?” to which the answer is: because they are almost always deleted within a few weeks of being received.

While e-mails are cataloged and recalled years after their received dates, texts are long gone.  Cell phones only hold a certain number.  I’ve had phones that held 30, 200, and 400.  But, eventually you have to delete messages.  Most people “delete all” every month or so at which time those texts go into oblivion.  Sure, some people keep old texts.  I myself have one from 2005.  But, 99% of texts that have been sent to me have been deleted.

The subconscious knowledge that the text will most likely be deleted and never resurface allows a level of candor and intimacy that is not found in most e-mails.  I have received and sent texts with incredibly private details of my life.  I have completely bared my soul.

Cell phones are the perfect receptor for text messages because they are such closely held personal objects.  Some one else might get on my computer and happen to glance at my e-mail, or see over my shoulder in a coffee shop, but no one can see a text message I am reading or composing without my knowledge.  The screen is simply too small.  I would never read the texts on another person’s phone.  That would be like reading a private diary.  This level of privacy once again facilitates candor and intimacy in text messages that cannot be communicated in e-mails.

I would like to briefly note that I do not use text abbreviations, nor do I forgo punctuation in text messages.  I enjoy words and sentences in their entirety.

This is my argument for the power of texting, that candor and intimacy that can be created by just 160 characters that no one else will ever see.

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