"Ma'am, please take us off your list."

Montgomery, Alabama –Richmond, Virginia (really quite far) Playlist: Hillbilly Elegy, S-Town, Eric Church I have arrived in my hometown of Richmond, Virginia. The place where I learned what politics is all about. In many ways, this trip is shaped by the people here who taught me what it meant to be of service to others. I think to understand me, to understand my outlook on this trip, you first have to understand the experiences that Richmond provided me. When I was 12, I took a civics class at Moody Middle School from a woman named Mrs. Carol Kenzer, an outrageously kind, and generous woman. It was a class that wasn’t taken seriously, smudged in between study halls for one semester. The course was overcrowded and underappreciated. Mrs. Kenzer saw in me a passion for public service and a fascination with the mechanics of government she was teaching. She encouraged me to get involved in the 2008 campaign to elect Barack Obama. I was 12, pudgy, pre-pubescent, and overly eager. I found it hard to believe that a Presidential campaign would want the assistance of an inexperienced, over-weight, tween—thankfully, I was wrong. My mom and I would travel across town several nights a week to join the most diverse group of people I had ever seen make calls to voters we may never meet. We worked at tables held together with duct tape, sat in chairs donated by local churches and businesses, ate food prepared with love by the little old ladies who considered me family. I started by making signs and posters for the office, but they asked me to do more, to make calls, to knock on doors. I learned from my boss, Chris Boiling, an up and coming field organizer who now runs the State Democratic Party. He taught me that anyone, yes even me, had a role to play in the democracy, It was not a role reserved for those of voting age. And really, you just haven't lived until you've cold called strangers as a pre-pubescent middle school boy. "Ma'am, please take us off your list," they would say. I would deepen my voice and respond, "Oh yes of course." But I would persist and tell them that I would one day inherit the mess of a political system that had plagued generations preceding my own. Complete strangers found solace in my story—my hopes were their own. It was in these personal connections that decisions would be made, votes would be cast, and elections would be won. I realized that elections were not just a way to decide winners and losers but a method of elevating the conversation and building community.

I found out Senator Obama was coming to town and I couldn’t quite contain my excitement. I practiced again and again what I might say. I grasped for the right words to say thank you, even then, for giving me a purpose. Then the schedule for the rally came out… in the middle of the school day. My mother was adamant that political rallies (even with your heroes) were strictly after-school activities. She would not budge. I decided if I couldn’t go I would write a note and hopefully someone would get it to him. I showed my mom the letter the night before the rally, and something had changed, the weight of the election had begun to set in; history was being made in our backyard. School could wait; we were going to that rally. I arrived clutching that note and a quick sketch I had done of the President while I couldn’t sleep the night before. I proudly showed to it everyone around me in line, each of whom helped me cut so I could make it a little closer to the stage. For reasons I’ll never understand, they wanted the Senator to have that picture as much as I did. He finished his speech and made his way down to the rope line. I used my short stature to duck and weave my way to the front of the barricade and stuck my arm out amongst the crowd in a last-ditch effort to reach him. Before he could shake my hand, a secret serviceman snatched the paper out of my hand. I was sure it would end up in the garbage, but at least I had tried. My parents were waiting for me outside the venue; they had watched from the rafters as I inched closer and closer to the stage. As I approached, they introduced me to the small group of African-American women that had assembled, and we’re giving a play-by-play of my handshake with the man who would become the first black President of the United States. One of them asked if she could touch my hand, I obliged, and as she reached out, she closed her eyes, and I thought she might faint. That day meant something entirely different for her, something I’ll never fully understand. Her hand in mine will always be the handshake I remember most from that day. The next day, I came home to a manila envelope with my name on it. A woman had called my mother to inform her she had a gift for me, the little boy with the note she had met in the crowd at the rally. She had been lucky enough to meet the Senator backstage and watched as he signed my picture. She took it; fearful it would never get mailed back to the address I had included (I wanted to be prepared.) I opened the manila envelope to find my drawing of the Senator painting Virginia blue with a note, “Great picture- Barack Obama.” I had found a community of my own in these rally’s and phone banks, in knocking on doors, in believing in a cause so much more significant than myself.

This empowered me to participate in elections in every cycle while I lived in Richmond, working on school board, congressional and state-wide races, helping to elect incredible leaders like Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam. In 2012, I took on more responsibility and became a neighborhood team leader in the Obama re-elect under the leadership of Alexsis Rodgers, a college student who had taken off a semester to work on the campaign. Few people have shaped my perceptions of politics more than Alexsis, and she now works for the Virginia League for Planned Parenthood. I was co-leading a team with Michele Murray, a woman with children my age who battled a preexisting condition that Obamacare had covered and provided her life saving medical care. We were an unlikely duo, but we were a dream team. She focused on the details, and I riled up the people, we spoke to local and international media about our story and were featured in the Washington Post and on the Today show. More importantly, we built another community of passionate individuals who built each other up and empowered one another long after the ballots had been cast. That sort of community leaders to a 7% increase in Democratic turnout in the six precincts we oversaw. We could do anything.

Mrs. Kenzer unfortunately passed away shortly before that election and few days go by where I don't think of her fondly for the profound impact she had on my life, an impact made by simply believing in me. What I have since learned is that far too few kids have the privilege of such support, I was an anomaly and I am a better person for it. For all the positive things Richmond taught me, there were also harsh lessons about the bitterness of race relations and segregation throughout our city. The former capital of the Confederacy, Richmond racial issues are deeply rooted and difficult to navigate as the city moves towards a more progressive future under Democratic leadership. Monument Avenue still defines the landscape of our city, an antebellum street with oversized statues of those who defended the Confederate cause (as well as Arthur Ashe in an odd attempt at inclusion.) My high school has a Confederate soldier as it’s mascot. The Confederate flag still appears on the class rings of my peers. It was something that shocked and disgusted me, and with the help of that political community, I tried to do something about it. I worked quietly with administrators and the school board and drafted a plan to change the mascot to something we could all be proud of. When the news was leaked, the project fell apart. It became a national news story overnight, I started to receive death threats, calls for my suicide, and I lost many friends. Doing what I believed was right came at a tremendous personal cost, and I learned that apparently, this was part of how our system operated. Politics is always personal. I am confident someday soon that mascot will change, and our school will grow more near the values inclusion and diversity that are so necessary. This city built me up, tore me apart, and put me all back together again. It truly shaped what I think the state of our politics is and how we move forward, together. I will be here for a few days talking to some of those same people, learning from them all over again.