Lost causes are the only causes worth fighting...

second in a series of major life event/direction choices...

I felt I had achieved a great deal by Fall 1987. I had left my tiny rural high school and was in my sophmore year at a top university in Boston. I had chosen to major in physics, then computer science, and finally switched to "management science" as I realized I did not want to end up writing computer code forever. I got involved with student government and met some "activist" type people through a student activity that published a semesterly guide to classes and professors. I was starting to make friends and get to know some of the significant players in the academic community.

I was also becoming more and more interested in politics; I took a course on the Supreme Court and found myself fascinated by law and political science. I had always loved to read and write and these types of classes were exciting to me. I had always been interested in politics, but a real sense of justice began to awaken in me. Also, the 1988 Presidential campaign was starting to heat up and as I learned more and more about the issues, I found myself turning into a Democrat. The one candidate who made sense was Gary Hart.

But Hart had this little problem. He had been the front runner early in 1987, but then a photo of him with Donna Rice sitting on his lap appeared and the media went nuts. Hart told the media to "follow me" and they did... He withdrew in May after more photos were taken outside his Georgetown apartment.

By Fall 1987, the remaining Democratic candidates were a joke. The media referred to them as the 7 dwarfs. Hart was different; he had substance. It was a crying injustice that he was on the sidelines.

A friend of mine was really into Hart and organized a draft Hart movement on campus. Towards the end of November, Hart decided to re-enter the race. My friend convinced me to go with a group of students to Hart's re-entry speech in Concord, NH. What the heck, I thought. I'll hold a sign.

When I went home for Christmas, I was at a friend's house and saw Hart on the front of Time magazine--as "The Grinch who stole Christmas". I started reading the article and came to the big two-page photo of him giving that speech. And there I was, standing behind him holding a sign that said "Still the Best!"

My university has a winter intersession before the spring semester starts where students can take short classes, work, pretty much do whatever they want. I signed up to be a Hart volunteer and went off to the snows of New Hampshire.

It really was a lost cause. Hart had huge negative numbers in the polls and was not seen by the media (or anyone besides us "true believers") as a candidate. But there was an amazing group of idealistic people supporting him, and that enthusisam was contageous.

My first involvement with the campaign was to pack a small suitcase and hop on a bus to Concord. That weekend, we went out "canvassing"--going door-to-door with cards that indicated where the registered Democrats lived and then asking them if they would support Hart. We would then mark the cards with a 1 - 4 rating. Later, people would call these people up. Eventually, on primary day, we would call all the 1s and 2s and make sure they voted.

It was a real adventure. Many of my memories have blurred into the overall excitement and confusion of the time. I remember organizing the canvassing in Manchester and Nashua and creating a system to quickly hand out packets to volunteers who showed up on the weekends. I remember sleeping in many strangers' houses--in one case, using my heavy overcoat as a blanket to sleep on a hardwood floor.

During this time, I was still writing sporadically in my journal and as I review those writings now, some 17 years later, I find a great "reality check" against my memories and perceptions:

1. It really was one of the most passionate time of my life. I was 21 years old and really felt I could change the world. Prior to the Hart campaign, I had been really depressed, but my involvement with the Hart campaign and later that year, as I had to become self-sufficent in Boston, really made a profoundly positive change in my view of myself and the world.
2. Most of my thoughts were colored by hopeless attractions to women who did not want me. I had big ideas about how to change the world, but most of my ideas were about why some girl didn't want to go out with me.
3. When I look back, I am glad I did what I did, but the "bad ideas" are a lot more obvoius now. It was not that I did not recognize the possible problems--I just ignored them. I took more risks.

The biggest risk I took was that after Hart got 1% of the vote in New Hampshire, I decided to stay on with the campaign and "continue the fight" elsewhere, dropping out of school.

The first "elsewhere" was New York city, where I rode the red line trains up and down Manhatten all day, asking people to sign the petition to get Gary Hart on the ballot. That was probably the most thankless task anyone could have ever dreamed up. But what I remember most about it is becoming intimate with the City, with riding the Staten Island ferry back and forth, riding the subway all over the place, and really "experiencing" the city up close and personal. I was there for about a week. Living in New York for a week is a cool experience that everyone ought to have when they are 21.

Unfortunately, things went downhill from there. Organizationally, New York was a mess and I decided to go to my home state where I could stay with my Mom and try to organize for Super Tuesday. I did what I could, but things were pretty much over at that point. When Hart withdrew finally, I caught a ride back up to New York with a guy I had worked with in New Hampshire, then rode the bus from New York to Boston. I stayed in a friend's dorm room for a few nights until I found an apartment in Boston with a former student.

I needed income to pay the rent, and after a lot of volunteer political options failed to pan out, I chanced up on the "temping" industry which enabled me to make around $10/hour steadily for the spring and summer. I went back to school in the Fall of 1988.

The most amazing thing to me, years later, is how many little logistical details that today would pre-occupy me, didn't present much of an obstacle back then. If I needed to get from Boston to some place in New Hampshire, I just found a bus. There were always people to stay with or catch a ride with somewhere. I did not even have a car, and yet I was all over the state of New Hampshire. When you tell people you dropped out of school to work on the Hart campaign, they probably think you are insane...but I knew I could go back. Lots of people take a semester off. The only problem would be how to pay the rent, etc., since I was not expecting my parents to help on this adventure.

Some people might observe that dropping out was "taking it a little too far" or something. I had done 90% of my effective contibution to the Hart campaign already and by the time he lost in New Hampshire, it was obvious that there was nothing left to do except watch it collapse. But taking that step for me was the true liberating moment. Although it did in fact end the way I had predicted and suspected it would, I gained so much from the willingness to take the risk. When I look back on 1988, I see it as the year that I really grew up. I'm proud I had the guts to do it all.