An inside look at a millennial challenger for Congress CA-12
Walking the California Democratic Party Convention with a VICE News Reporter & Nancy Pelosi’s Challenger
…so this is what democracy looks like!
I recently attended the 2019 California Democratic Party State Convention, as part of the Agatha For Congress campaign. Agatha Bacelar is a candidate for US Congress, CA-12 in San Francisco. I can hear your brain revving up and your chin lifting so let me just say yep, CA-12 is the district Nancy Pelosi represents.
I’ve often found political candidates to be paradoxical in interesting ways, and Agatha is no exception — she is both a fan of Nancy and the anti-Nancy: a continuation of the same strong tradition of female leadership, but with key differences: Nancy has held the seat longer than Agatha, a 27-year-old “millennial”, has been alive. Agatha is an immigrant and a child of the public school system, a digital native inheriting historic crises of mass shootings, opioid addiction and inequality. Perhaps the greatest difference is one of timing: Agatha and her generation (the largest voting block in San Francisco) bring a sense of urgency and priority to issues like the need for climate action, out of control student debt, and the cost of living in a city where the worlds largest concentration of billionaires co-exists with an ever-growing and ever more desperate population of homeless.
It wasn’t my first big convention — I’m a longtime veteran of Comdex — but it was my first big political convention, and so stood out from all other convention experiences for some noteworthy reasons, the main one being we were accompanied by VICE News reporter Daniel Newhauser, who ran a profile of Agatha’s run for Congress this past week.
It’s a strange experience being shadowed by a reporter. He took no notes; this is the era of modern journalism, and mobile apps like Otter (thanks Dan for the recco!) can free up a journalist from the need for a notebook to jot answers in — who needs notes when recording everything and listening at your leisure is an option? It was impossible to understand the angle of his story by his questions, which were few, not probing, and often surprising (is that denim? he inquired of Agatha’s dress).
During the convention, as in the story itself, there is far more attention paid to the fact of Agatha’s race than to the motivations for it, which is perhaps not surprising as the fact of the challenge is, for many, news enough. Maybe the VICE News editorial staff thought their audience of millennials wouldn’t care — a reasonable assumption given their historically lower turnout at the polls vs. other age cohorts — but at Manny’s last night a 25-year-old spotted Agatha and came right over to congratulate her on her candidacy and then asked “Why are you running? The article didn’t really say.”
Bern, baby burn
Also on the noteworthy front: the Bernie support signs were everywhere. I was going through my pictures and darn if there wasn’t a Bernie button or sign or grinning volunteer with button and sign in every single one. The convention was a Bernie tsunami. The man has devoted volunteers.
The Bernie volunteers were numerous but so were Planned Parenthood supporters, and Medicare For All vocalists. Also some Impeachers (who tended to show only where Nancy Pelosi was speaking).To my eternal and pleased surprise there was even a nerdy contingent of open source software supporters.
Democratic star sightings were frequent: Nancy, Kamala, and Amy were rousing presences at the women’s caucus. We saw Beto late Friday night outside in front of Moscone and a palpable ripple went up and down the moonlit sidewalk, “That’s Beto! Hey, Beto!”
Agatha stopped him and they chatted —she campaigned for him back in Texas in a statewide Get Out the Vote campaign with Inside/Out that required sleeping rough in a van for a few months. Beto thanked her, and thanked the reporter with us who previously wrote Beto O’Rourke made me a punk playlist. (This is a reporter that likes music, I have the video proof of him dancing not too badly for a reporter type at the Latin Caucus reception).
People on the sidewalk broke around us left and right and Beto effortlessly juggled acknowledging them all with chatting with Agatha and the VICE reporter and smiling all around at each of us and letting his campaign manager keep it moving down the sidewalk because politics is all about time, moving on to the next thing to get the exposure you’ll need to raise the money that’s required to get your message out. It all comes down to one voter at a time — that’s another message of this convention.
There was an overall sense of meta community. The last time I experienced anything as strong was at the first Nike women’s marathon in San Francisco. I’ve run many many marathons but never one with all women, and the experience was surprisingly political. It was the first time I’d ever felt women as a community accomplishing a goal simultaneously, and it made the marathon far more fun than any twenty six mile slog through city streets has a right to be. Even in the portapotty line, the difference of an all-women’s marathon was evident. I’m trying to qualify for Boston, I announced, as I ran up to the crowd in line waiting to go. Sometimes this will get you to the front of the line, but more often, some guy (and it’s always a guy) will just shake his head and assert “we’re all trying to get somewhere, lady.” At the Nike women’s marathon they cleared a path for me and I was in and out in less than a minute, and as I ran away to rejoin the race it was to a rousing chorus of “You go, girl!” (and yes, I qualified).
I felt this same energy in the women’s caucus, a room easily three times the size of every other caucus gathering at the convention, replete with early arrivals, every seat taken, and standing room only and people two and three deep around the edges and the back of the room. The crowd was there for a glimpse of Nancy Pelosi (a sighting that felt like a reasonable certainty given her daughter chaired the meeting).
I heard someone mutter no wonder Joe Biden didn’t come, he couldn’t compete with this and I had to laugh because no he couldn’t. That was a fierce crowd, the anger against the recent abortion bans was a palpable current of energy flowing through the room. When Amy Klobuchar stood onstage and called in her clear midwestern clarion voice to Kamala Harris, “May the best woman win!” I felt goosebumps as the crowd of women erupted. But the greatest reaction was reserved for a slight blonde woman who took the podium with the simple remark, “Hi, I’m Planned Parenthood’s lawyer” it was the loudest, most extended applause I heard all weekend, and I could feel the urgency of being women together facing this moment. This was political power on display.
You seem nice
There were plenty of rivalries present, and while some evinced a “rising tides lift all boats, we’re all in this together” spirit, there were plenty of others with a “you’re with us or against us” tone. In the former vein, Agatha met up with — or glimpsed from a distance —the three candidates declared or considering to declare candidacy for CA-12. You seem nice, said one campaign worker for the man who placed third in the last CA-12 primary. I was struck by the comparison to myself in my twenties, how unlike this enthusiastic young girl before me with her campaign t-shirt and clipboard, working the crowd for her candidate.
At her age I had heard a lifetime of how ‘dim’ the Democrats were — my parents found the Democratic niceness of acceptance and inclusion to be dangerously weak and irresponsible, so naturally I thought that too. It was a confusing time; I even voted for Ronald Reagan. When I finally broke away from the politics of my parents and learned to think for myself, I ended up all the way in California and a vegan to boot. There were lots of people like me at the convention, I’m sure, but it was the young activists like the campaign worker before me that I found the most energizing, regardless of the fact that she worked for Agatha’s challenger.
Issues, redux
For the most part at the Democratic convention I was surrounded by people who were vociferously for the same things that democrats are basically all for, but in disagreement on the urgency of the path to get there. But climate and healthcare were two topics in which the voters were in more vociferous agreement with each other than party leadership was with the voters. It was disturbing but not surprising, and it is this disconnect that has driven candidates like Agatha forward despite the odds…. and, it must be said, if the odds were calculated based on what people want vs. what people holding power want, this convention would probably have featured different speeches.
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A recent CNN survey reveals three-quarters of Iowa Democratic caucus participants said that their candidate must treat climate change as the greatest threat to humanity. But at the largest gathering of democrats in the state of California, the environment as an issue was not on display, much less the environment as emergency.
It makes me mad when I see plastic garbage in the street, my daughter says to me one day as we watch on the news another dead whale split open, it’s stomach packed with plastic. She’s seventeen, eschews all single use plastic, and only buys clothes from consignment shops.
The omni-presence of climate action as a topic in my household contrasted sharply with the convention, where climate was another issue among many but could not by a long stretch be thought the leading issue, and not the leading topic of any leading candidate taking the stage. No one led with climate, except Jay Inslee, who ruined it by saying dumb stuff about socialism that made everyone boo and forget the climate again.
I am vast, I contain multitudes
The fantastic spectrum of diversity was awe-inspiring. You couldn’t help but stand there and look around you at this slice of humanity in all of its unique and individualistic glory. The power of organization was fully on display -if you want to know why authoritarians inevitably try to restrict the ability for people to gather, go to a convention, where the power — which comes from the energy of the people themselves — is palpable, and catching. People who aren’t inclined to chant may find themselves suddenly bursting into a full-throated Medicare for all! (I did).
Democrats aren’t all alike anymore than any group of humans sharing values are necessarily all alike. What some jokingly call a circular firing squad, I tend to see as a natural artifact of the diversity the party not just embraces but also seeks out. Homogeneity is easy. It can seem harder — and it is, often, harder — to come to consensus when there are many seats at the table taken by many different voices. When people feel their voice is welcome, when people have the courage and tenacity of civic participation, it takes longer to get to agreement, longer to figure out the way forward, especially for problems long in the making like inequality and healthcare affordability and climate change, for example.
We didn’t get here overnight and different groups are differently impacted. The process of democracy should welcome all voices and so no, the vast squabbling mass of democratic voters doesn’t distress me at all, because when you actually listen to them, they are mostly in agreement on the issues. It’s the politics of representation where things get louder, and the conversations about *that* are happening not on the stages in the front of the room but in the hallways between the rooms.
To challenge Nancy Pelosi is to court controversy, even if you have no intention of courting controversy. Trying to move any object in place for 30 years will take effort, and that goes for people in positions of power too. As Agatha shook hand after hand, introducing herself and her candidacy, the sameness of the reactions were predictable and even funny: excitement lighting up the eyes at first, and then when the question “where” was answered by “San Francisco” the interlocutor’s chin would lift and a guarded ‘ahh’ would sometimes be the only response. It was the reception we expected in this venue, of course, but what we didn’t expect was the number of people following us to slip a card into our hand, quickly recite a number for later texting, or jot a quick email with a hurried “get in touch”.
No matter what anyone tries to tell you, resistance is not futile.
She doesn’t stand a chance
I heard the progressive caucus leader tell the reporter that Agatha’s real chance would be in 2022. We were unperturbed; it was the same message he cheerfully delivered the week before over breakfast, along with the admonition for every candidate who wants to be taken seriously: show me the money! Money is the Rome of politics — all roads lead there eventually.
No doubt the cool reception was at least in part attributable to a new rule announced by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that prohibits the organization from conducting business with “political vendors” that support primary challengers to incumbents like Nancy Pelosi. It’s a rule that seems designed to stop another AOC from emerging, and freshmen of the 116th Congress including Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Ro Khanna of Californi) have decried the move as undemocratic.
I’ve always supported Nancy, said one bearded gentleman wearing a t-shirt promoting open source software, and we agree and everyone is friends. Running against Nancy is not the same as being against Nancy. She’s been a star in the anti-Trump firmament, something the country needs — and in fact should be getting from more leaders, not only Nancy whose been effective where so many have been impotent. But at the same time, waiting no longer feels like an option when we’re faced with such urgent problems, and a society becoming more and more automated, connected, and digitized can only benefit from leadership that is internet native. A world that has connected two billion people with two billion more coming online in the next decades is a world in which the status quo, like the center, cannot hold. Surely there’s room for new voices, the next generations with the future on their mind?
The man leans forward and lowers his voice. “I’m with a group, and can’t talk here, but wanted to say: what you’re doing is reaaaaallly important.” He quickly recites his email and with a wave disappears into the crowd gathering to hear Kamala Harris speak.
One voter at a time.
No outlet for power
Free speech was on full display — chants and buttons and signs and t-shirts (a favorite: Pelosi for President 2019) but also the personal as political as very personal: tattoos of Tulsi and Kamala and the notorious RGB were spotted, indigenous clothing, and hair every color of the rainbow (my own was dyed blue for the occasion). But the best place to hear freedom of speech in action was not in the caucus sessions or speech rooms, but in the hallways and foyers where people gathered to get their bearings.
Most conventions I’ve attended since 2008 or so feature ‘charging rooms’ where attendees can plug in their devices and continue to network. It’s a commonplace accommodation for a modern workforce that has gone entirely digital, but there was no such accommodation at the Democratic convention, plainly revealing the generational gap we see in the party itself.
The need for a sense of security on the question of healthcare affordability was also on full display. The lack of seating was trying for the old, the weak, the recently recovered; there were people with canes wheeling oxygen along side them like loyal pets. Crouching on the floor next to an outlet to power up my phone, I found myself among a forest of legs belonging to older men and women leaning against the walls for support enumerating aches and pains and griping about the lack of seating while their younger compatriots scrambled around looking for a stray folding chair.
It was an interesting operational oversight for the party of the people to make, given the importance of the 65+ voting block to the party. That they were feeling overlooked and uncared for was unmistakable, and I wondered how long before the Medicare for All chanters following Christine Pelosi from caucus to caucus would find some chairs and sit down for a long conversation about why the insurance industry — who contribute handsomely to Speaker Pelosi’s campaign each cycle — remain at the center of a healthcare system.
Recently a friend of mine posted on Facebook that when his Parkinson’s advances he will have to commit suicide in order to save his family from medical bankruptcy. It’s not the first such message I’ve seen a friend post. There’s something deeply wrong with our politics when this doesn’t qualify as a startling thing to say, much less plan. A conversation about Medicare For All is clearly way over due.
Such a conversation would have had plenty of takers at the convention. Research from Debt.org reveals even with assistance from Medicare, the average 65-year-old couple (which were numerous on the Moscone floor) faces $275,000 in medical bills throughout retirement. Meanwhile one in three millennials skip doctor, dentist and hospital visits, because they don’t have the money to pay the deductible. With 65+ the number one donor class to Nancy Pelosi, and millennials the number one voting block in the district, I expected Medicare for All to be a major topic of conversation, and it was — but only among the protestors of the status quo at the fringes of the convention.
