(Courtesy of West Virginia Can’t Wait)
Brittney Barlett is a 29-year-old English teacher in Lewis County, West Virginia. She was always interested in politics, but it became more than an interest in 2018, when thousands of West Virginia teachers and staff went on strike for better pay, benefits, and schools. They not only transformed West Virginia politics but helped spark a nationwide revival of the labor movement. In less than two years, she has gone from the picket line to volunteering for her local Democratic party to running for House of Delegates, and she is now helping organize other educators to do the same.
What’s unique about Brittney’s story is that it’s not unique. She is one of 84 (and counting) pro-labor candidates who are running for office in West Virginia in 2020, as part of the West Virginia Can’t Wait movement, a coalition of community organizers, educators, and citizen leaders who are building a pro-labor electoral infrastructure in a state fed up with both parties. Despite how it may look from the outside, West Virginia is neither a red nor blue state: The same voters that gave Donald Trump his second largest margin in the nation also favor Bernie Sanders over Trump. The 5 percent of West Virginians registered as “Independent or Unaffiliated” a generation ago has risen to nearly 25 percent. With historic rates of suicide, mental illness, and drug overdose deaths, the people of the state are desperate for a different kind of politics.
From the beginning, we wanted to build something that would last beyond one election, and beyond one candidate. We hate the way politicians lie to voters, positioning themselves as the answer to all of our problems. Never in American history has one politician achieved the kind of change our state needs. It takes a movement. Stephen Smith is running for governor of West Virginia, but we don't think one governor is enough: We need thousands of people all standing together. So while David Dayen, the editor of the American Prospect, has described Mr. Smith’s gubernatorial campaign as “the most important election of 2020,” our campaign page is, simply, wvcantwait.com; the Facebook page is wvcantwait, and Mr. Smith’s Twitter account is @wvcantwait. Naming the campaign this way lets us to tell the truth: One person is not enough.
The campaign is also more than one party. Mr. Smith is a Democrat, but many of our leaders are Republicans and Independents. Most don’t trust any political party, and for good reason. For generations, leaders of both parties have successfully diverted more and more wealth from the people of the state to out-of-state corporations. Our fight is not left versus right, but the wealthy Good Old Boys Club versus the rest of us. Rejecting easy party labels not only allows us to invite more people into our campaign, it allows us to tell the truth: West Virginians have been punched in the nose by both parties. Our success depends not on putting our faith in the elites of either party, but in building our own power.
As David Dayen has written, West Virginia Can’t Wait is “kind of a throwback to the political machines of yesteryear, which would run candidates as a slate”:
Only this time, the machine is allied with the people, over the powerful. If this can work, it opens up an entirely new style of politics, one rooted in something so simple it’s absurd that it seems so novel: respecting the wishes and needs of the electorate.
So what does it look like?
In addition to focusing on the movement, not an individual, and rejecting a “left-right” or “Democrat-Republican” frame, five strategic decisions separate the WV Can’t Wait Campaign from traditional electoral campaigns.
1. Redefining the political calendar. The West Virginia election season traditionally starts on Labor Day, 15 months before the election; we held our first statewide organizing meeting more than 30 months before election day. For nine months, we flew under the radar, while a small core team methodically conducted more than 800 face-to-face conversations (and four statewide meetings) with potential volunteers and county captains, allied candidates, and community leaders. We asked everyone we met what a campaign would look like if we were trying to win a people’s government, not just one race. We asked everyone what role they would want in such a campaign.
The time was ripe. The hope of thousands of West Virginians had been re-awakened by the West Virginia educators strike. Our eventual candidates for governor and Congress (Stephen Smith and Cathy Kunkel) were part of a team that raised $332,000 for a strike fund. More than a dozen of our other first-time candidates were teachers, bus drivers, or administrators – who found themselves radicalized during the strike. The strategy that emerged below was the result of those 800+ conversations. By the time the campaign went live in late November 2018, there was a strong volunteer team in place and a plan for how we could continue to maximize our time before the official political season began.
2. Asking West Virginians to be leaders with real responsibilities and independence, not just “volunteers.” While the big city political machines of yesteryear boasted precinct captains, West Virginians tend to organize themselves by county and community. So the campaign has more than 94 separate teams, each directed by volunteer “captains.” There are 55 county teams (“Jefferson County Can’t Wait,” etc.) for West Virginia’s 55 counties, and 39 constituency teams, representing groups of West Virginians routinely ignored by the political establishment (Veterans Can’t Wait, People in Recovery Can’t Wait, Educators Can’t Wait, Small Business Can’t Wait, and so on).
These teams have real authority, initiative, and are built to last longer than one election. While they organize town halls that candidates attend, they develop their own issues and priorities, manage their own Facebook groups, hold local meetings, and are responsible for organizing their own voter contact drives and service projects. They decide who our candidates meet with when they come to town, which means fewer political gatekeepers and more recovery groups, food pantries, community members, and small businesses. Some are more active than others, but their strength comes from the genuine control entrusted to these leaders.
“Seniors Can’t Wait” Captain Polla Rumberg has called the process of becoming a captain “terrifying,” but she says it with a smile on her face. There is no way to win a people’s government without normalizing courageous action.
3. People write the platform. Across more than 11,000 face-to-face conversations with voters; through 600+ additional visits to union halls, congregations, recovery programs, and small businesses; and after an elaborate system where county and constituency teams submitted more than 200 draft policy ideas online, the WV Can’t Wait campaign first began to put together a draft policy platform by listening. We joined the picket line with a group of nurses and CNA’s in Beckley, West Virginia, and their observations became a bullet point about nursing ratios on our Worker’s Bill of Rights, for example. The rough framework for our education plan dates back to a happy hour with teachers in Fairmont, West Virginia.
After a writing team comprised of staff and leadership made sure the numbers added up, a draft was prepared and presented back to our captains and volunteers during 47 “platform parties,” inviting another round of feedback and edits. More than 1,000 responses emerged from those and were incorporated. From there, a convention of the most active County and Constituency Captains ratified a final platform, with 32 detailed plans, that will shift more than $2 billion annually from the wealthy and out-of-state companies to local infrastructure, education, small businesses, and working families.
Everyone in the campaign was involved throughout the process, but no candidate or staff member (including us) had a vote. For something this crucial, we wanted to lean on the people who had done the most organizing work.
4. Every campaign event is a leadership training. To date, the campaign has held 164 “Town Halls,” but these are not traditional, candidate-centered meetings. Every Town Hall includes an interactive, popular education training about the history of West Virginia’s economy, an in-depth introduction to our campaign strategy, and an opportunity to practice the skill the campaign believes is most crucial to its success: one-on-one, face-to-face conversation with someone else in attendance. More than 6,000 people have attended these trainings.
The campaign also conducts bi-weekly skills trainings online, weekly volunteer briefings via Facebook Live, and quarterly day-long strategy meetings open to the public (which also include in-depth training modules). This January, we’ve added seven “train-the-trainer” sessions for our top leaders, as we gear up for the primary on May 12.
5. Prioritizing candidate recruitment and training. One of the oldest strategies in representative democracy is finding other candidates to run together, up and down the ballot. But for generations, political elites have lamented the lack of a “bench” of up-and-coming candidates. We are building our own: At every Town Hall, training, and visit, in countless social media posts and emails, we encourage candidates to run for office with us who will sign our WV Can’t Wait pledge. To those who sign, we offer access to free day-long candidate training; regular communication with Stephen and other members of our team; access to our county and constituency captains; use of our social media platform to recruit new donors and support for their campaigns; and of course a ready-made policy platform that has been well-researched and vetted by people across West Virginia. Perhaps most important, they get access to a community of support comprised of other mostly-first-time candidates who are wrestling with the same concerns.
We hoped we might recruit 15 or 20 candidates. To date, 84 have signed the pledge. In contrast to our current state and local government, they are disproportionately working class, women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Moving Forward
Like any good experiment, many of the campaign’s most important successes emerged from early failures. At the beginning of the campaign, we discovered that our volunteers often didn’t know how to talk to their neighbors or family across political divisions. We have all been taught to see others as enemies because of their party affiliation or who they voted for. Our volunteer teams were stagnating. Some teams spent more time talking about how hard it was to talk to their neighbors, than actually talking to their neighbors.
We had to find big, bold ways to remind each other that our enemies were those at the top, not each other. Two trainings have become foundational to the campaign: a practical workshop on talking to people who disagree with you, and an activity that has volunteers act out the history of the West Virginia economy (complete with out-of-state landowners and corrupt politicians stealing the wealth of the state from everyday people).
We’re Not Waiting
Ten months away from the 2020 general election, the Can’t Wait movement is starting to see internal and external success. In addition to the infrastructure we’re building, Mr. Smith led the first public poll of the primary, finishing ahead of two sitting elected officials who started the campaign with more establishment support, name recognition, and personal wealth. We have also raised more money than any of our opponents on either side of the aisle (and secured more small donations than any governor's campaign in West Virginia history). Our staff came together to form the first campaign union in West Virginia history.
When a traditional politician wins an election, their life gets a little better. Their donors and friends get a little more access and power. But for the rest of us, things stay pretty much the same (or get a little worse).
Our campaign was built to last beyond the election, no matter how much governing power we win. By constructing the campaign in this way, we not only increase the chances that our candidates win on election day, we set ourselves up to achieve real victories the other 364 days each year. Win or lose, some of our leaders will go into government not just as candidates but also staffers, advisers, and appointees. Win or lose, others of us will continue to push from the outside. The movement is built to last and grow. Some of our candidates will win, and some of our platform will be adopted by our opponents along the way, but most importantly, thousands of people will have a taste of their own power. And countless volunteer teams will choose their next fights, fueled by a mix of triumph and disappointment.
People will say this plan is impossible. It is up to us to do what generations have done before us and change what is possible.
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Read more stories by Katey Lauer & Stephen Smith.