We need more activists in office.
Five years ago today, my life changed irrevocably. It started out a normal, unremarkable day. I was at work early; three people on our floor made coffee regularly because we were always the first in the office. I don’t remember if it was me that day, but I do remember standing in the enclosed break room space, with the hum of the vending machines and the rich, sharp smell of coffee seducing my nostrils.
I only have two clear memories that I know for sure happened that day. I was dumping (way too much) sugar in my black coffee as I stared absent-mindedly at CNN’s coverage of riots in a suburb of St. Louis. There was no sound, just the delayed, fractured closed captioning of the coverage. I watched it for a while, struck by an image of a young Black body in the middle of a neighborhood street. I watched a lot of the coverage over the coming days and weeks, so I don’t remember if that’s when I saw that the body has been in the street for four hours, but I do remember the feeling when I sat down at my desk.
It was uneasiness.
My second memory was my coworkers. My desk was right outside of the break room, and as people stopped in to drop off their lunch, or get some coffee, or gorge on vending machine junk, they paused at the TV. And then they stopped by my desk.
The traffic was steady. By midday, that uneasiness had turned to frustration and anger. By mid-afternoon, I was searching all I could about what was happening on Twitter and Facebook. By the next morning, I felt a simmering, helpless rage.
The moment I realized the police that had just unloaded multiple rounds into Mike Brown’s body had left him to die, bleed and rot in the street — in the hot August sun — for four hours in his neighborhood… friends, family watching them close ranks to figure out a narrative about the murder, a way to cover it up... I felt my soul shift and crack. It was like I was punched in the gut, pain radiating in my body, my lungs gasping for air it can’t feel, my heart feeling like it was crushed and shredded in my chest. And most importantly, the tears that gushed from my eyes cleared away the cataracts of privilege that had blinded my entire life.
Over the course of the week, dozens and dozens of people stopped by my desk at work as the coverage continued. And by that weekend, I was confronted with my first existential question. To go, or not to go?
I had long suspected my boss wanted me gone. I didn’t stay in my place, and I spoke too freely. And most importantly, I suspected that being involved with the protests in Ferguson would be the reason he needed to get rid of me. And so I stayed in Omaha and tried to do what I could where I was, and keep my job at this prestigious company for as long as I could.
A year later, I had a different job, and I’d built up a reputation as a Black Lives Matter activist — though I still wouldn’t self-identify as an activist for quite a while longer. I had always wanted to make the work a better place but now I knew there was no way I could continue down the path I had started on in order to do it. I didn’t want to.
I began getting involved. I helped organize rallies and listening sessions and events. I protested at town halls and busy intersections. I wrote think pieces, and drafted demands, and mobilized a following that had been building steadily through it all.
And I burned out, quickly, fiercely, and almost completely. I have this dark period in my life where I stopped living for awhile — I rarely ate, I slept a lot, and I’m not entirely sure how I survived other than the fact that I was lucky to have people in my corner.
I had fought the system in so many ways and kept butting up against the barriers meant to keep people like me in their caste. If you ram your head against a wall enough times, it will eventually knock you out.
So as I healed, I really began to consider what my actual purpose was. What did I want to change, really? If my goal was better policing, more accountability within police departments, increased transparency with their internal investigation process of misconduct, etc., then I had to start with identifying what those things tangibly, logically meant. Representative diversity on the police force. An outside investigator to review police misconduct. Body cameras. Etc.
Which led me to analyze the laws themselves… and that’s where I stopped because right here is where everything stalls. The policies and laws that guide and enable our systems are the limitations to any progress we hope to achieve as a community. And at the end of the day, it’s up to our legislators to craft the kind of legislation people actually need.
And let’s be real, we need public servants, not career politicians. We need people in office that do the hard work of representing the diversity of the district, rather than working on personal or party agendas, or worse, putting forth the legislation of special interest lobbyists before the change the actual American people demand.
So in my evolution from activist to candidate, I joined in systemic change advocacy efforts to actually affect progress in our community, like the ballot initiative for Medicaid expansion for over 90,000 Nebraskans who fall in the coverage gap. We actually passed it, and immediately politicians did what they could to try to stop its progress.
Let me repeat that: on a ballot initiative that was passed with the largest statewide turnout in our history, politicians STILL tried to block it from being implemented. Not because it’s a bad idea, but because of partisan, personal and special interest political agendas.
I’m tired of the hard work of advocates and community organizers and activists going to waste because of crappy politicians. And honestly, I’m tired of waiting around for a better politician, because here’s the thing — we don’t need more politicians. We need public servants. We need structural change. We need people like you, and me, who run. Who win. And who break the system, so it can start working the way it was always meant to: a nation that thrives with the consent, and active participation, of the governed.
So here’s the thing, the TLDR:
I took the challenge. I’m running for Congress, and I need your help. I need you to tell me what YOU want me to fight for when I get there. Is it Medicare for All? Is it a complete abolition of the prison industrial complex? Is it better health and human services for our veterans? Is it to fix our broken immigration system?
I really want to know. Please send me an email at mo@morgannfreeman.com. You and I? We are the change we’ve been waiting for, and it begins here. Today.
