anima lavoy

Note: The following entry is part of an on-going series of content that I am producing as part of the Millennials Changing America tour. The tour, which is taking place between October and December of 2008, is traveling to over 30 cities throughout the US and attempting to collect as many on-the-ground stories about millennials-in-action as possible.

White Wine, White Supremacy, and late night cell phone connections.

My conversation with Anima LaVoy, founder and executive director of Swing Semester, has been somewhat long in the making. After missing an opportunity to meet with her in Washington, DC and Cincinnati, Ohio, and after an eventual realization that our paths will again just miss crossing in Seattle, and then again later back in the East Coast, Anima and I finally connected late last evening. For her, working in Cincinnati, it was just about 11 and she had been leaving a series of planning meetings. "I just had a couple of glasses of white wine," she explained. "This is a really honest opportunity for an interview."

On my end, passing through North Dakota, I was just returning to the motel from a truck stop diner where an old man told me about his son receiving two life sentences back in the 80s for being at a meeting that sounded like it was somehow related to a militia movement and a domestic terror plot ("ideas that were popular at the time"); how, despite serving in the military, he tells young people not to join as it is soiled with corruption (along with the church - an opinion he hesitantly held, as he is a God-fearing man); and how the Aryan Nation has some pretty good ideas, though people just have a hard time hearing "the truth." It was nearing midnight, I was ready to pass out, but, in addition to near-misses country-wide, Anima and I had finally connected after nearly 20 rounds of phone tag.

"Quakers, Universalist Unitarians and Jews are on the cutting edge."

Despite growing up in Washington, DC, where her mother worked in politics, Anima, now 27, would find that she didn't much care for the subject until 2003. "I had realized that I was dissatisfied with the Bush Administration and I wanted to do something." She grew passionate, angry, and driven, but she hadn't really paid much attention to the political landscape until that moment. She was soon exposed to the concept of the swing state: "It was from that vantage point that I would see myself in Indiana and realize that as a liberal white Christian, my vote didn't really mean much. I was really seething about Bush at that point, but I wasn't quite sure what to do."

After some research into the mechanics of the modern swing state phenomenon, Anima rallied hard, gathered her friends, folks from her school, and in related networks (she notes how lucky she was to be connected with Quaker school networks, as, half tongue-in-cheek, she claims that "Quakers, Universalist Unitarians, and Jews are on the cutting edge [of progressive political organizing]"), and she fired up as many people as she could to move to Ohio and work for progressive political advocacy groups and organizations. She worked to find statewide host families for the newly change-oriented, and she hooked them up with jobs at organizations like the NAACP, ACT, and other organizations peripherally interested in a Kerry win. In working as a collective force with these organizations, this politically progressive born-again organized efforts which led to the knocking on 140,000 doors.

Sort of like Mary Poppins, only politically-driven and less creepy.

Looking back on the makeshift, yet effective 2004 experience, Anima worked hard to grow the organization for the 2008 Presidential race. She had been quite excited by the progress made in her initial organizational attempts, where Swing Semester had maintained 100% canvasser retention-rate — a nearly unheard of number, and she hoped to enhance Swing Semester's impact on participants and, of course, the election.

This year, Swing Semester is operating in Cincinnati and Denver, and this time around, participation in the program is tuition-based (though there are scholarships and subsidized tuition available). Further, participants can leverage participation in the program for substantial college credit. The program provides a syllabus that confronts a lot of the questions that incoming workers have about political philosophy, a passion of Anima's. "Our syllabus brings together some of the works of George Lakoff, Ken Wilbur, Eric Liu, Nick Hanaur, and others and it gets people discussing, and reaching to understand the context of their work." The one issue that they center their attentions on as a collective, Anima explains, is food. "We realized that if you really get how political food is, and how related it is to social justice, the economy, healthcare, etc., you see that you become political three times a day."

"In 2004," she explains, "Swing Semester was kind of scrappy, but it was totally mobilizing. This year it's a full time experience. Students can get academic credit and we've got 40 members this year, aged 19-26," which is nearly a 200% increase from the last time. "It's totally exciting."

I asked Anima if she is at all interested in figuring out how to sustain the momentum that she was building, and to look beyond thriving on the every-four-year engagement model:

"Do you know how Mary Poppins just came in out of nowhere and would then leave? And she didn't really screw anyone in that process... She just helped and left? That's how what we're doing feels right now."

"Sometimes you just gotta say, 'What the f**k, make your move.'" -Joel Goodsen

Anima went into the 2004 election knowing relatively nothing about the electoral process, and she came out a substantial organizer. She was able to do so, in part, because her energy inspires awe, and, her enthusiasm is infectious. Her impact was also made possible because, as she explains, she stopped finding excuses to not get involved. "I just had to do it," she explains. "And I had to explain to other people who were working at jobs they were otherwise dissatisfied with that they did too. I had to sell the idea of doing the right thing over doing what feels necessary, like taking a job that doesn't feel right, or whatever." And it was from that jumping point (and the series of convince-others-to-jump-too points that followed thereafter) that Swing Semester was born, reared, and sustained.

First off, thanks to Mike Connery for allowing us to guest blog here at Future Majority. My name is Jeff Kramer and I'm part of the national staff at Swing Semester, guest-guest blogging for Anima LaVoy, our executive director.

Forgive me for a moment for asking you to spend three minutes of your life watching Fox News, but bear with me. Watch the following video (if you dare).

(if the embedded video doesn't load, click here)

What happened to patriotism? Where and when did this concept become so marginalized, so bastardized, so meaningless? How have we allowed this to happen? We have officially arrived at the lowest common denominator - blind, hysterical, raving jingoism. Is it truly the idea to say America is the "greatest, best country God has ever given Man on the face of the Earth" loud enough and often enough to make it true? Let's forget the fact that cultural imperialism does not equate a country with greatness and evaluate the message. Is America about "baseball, apple pie, and kicking your f***ing ass"? Do we ignore every fault, every misstep, every mistake?

As progressives, we must not. We must not let patriotism be defined by others who seek to use it as a weapon and as a wedge, to divide and not to unite. We must not let patriotism be reduced to propaganda as seen in the video above. It must be returned to something meaningful, something important and something true. Patriotism must be defined as Jane Addams once did, "Unless our conception of patriotism is progressive, it cannot hope to embody the real affection and the real interest of the nation."

At Swing Semester, we seek not only to reclaim and redefine patriotism but activism as well. Our mission is to create citizens and true patriots that care about their country in a tangible and real way. We offer the nation’s first political immersion program, providing a bridge from interest to action for college students, recent graduates, and other young people who care deeply about their country and want to be a part of American history. This September, over 250 passionate young people will venture out to eight cities in critical “swing” states for 10 weeks of intensive electoral work. For those taking off school, academic credit will be available. Participants will live with host families, work in field campaigns, and engage in critical thinking to better understand this country and themselves.

We are in this fight for the long term to achieve the literal definition of this website, a future majority of informed, true and progressive citizens. Join us at www.swingsemester.org (launching tomorrow!).

We'll leave you with a quote from Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer's book The True Patriot, one of the texts on our program syllabus and one of our partners:
"I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves … too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: "Our country, right or wrong!" They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: "Our country — when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right."