With the United States Presidential election coming up this November, Marlborough students Clara ’18, Kate ’18, Olivia ’17, Maddie ’18, Clara ’18 and others have pursued their interest in politics through phone banking and planning events and other activities in support of the Clinton campaign.
Both Clara and Kate said their family backgrounds are the main motivating force for becoming involved in the Clinton campaign.
Clara said she is particularly drawn to the Clinton campaign because her parents are immigrants from Argentina.
“I think that deporting millions of immigrants who have been living here for years and years is just frankly inhumane,” she said.
Kate, on the other hand, is connected to politics through her mother’s prior job as the second Presidential Press Secretary for Bill Clinton. She grew up in the nation’s capital, Washington DC, which is the epicenter of American politics. She said living in Washington DC connected her to the American political system.
While working as an intern in Clinton’s political campaign office in Los Angeles, Clara worked the phones, making many calls convincing people to vote for Clinton in key battleground states, and also helped organize various phone banking events and other functions in Nevada. One of the top priorities has been to get volunteers to Nevada to encourage people to vote because it is a key battleground state in the election.
Kate, who also worked at phone banks, said she would be on the phone for hours at a time.
“Working was sometimes emotionally draining when speaking with people who strongly disliked your candidate. Often it felt like a customer service job,” she said.
Both Kate and Clara said that the actual campaigning process was sometimes laborious, but each learned about the political system and both came out of the work with important lessons.
Kate said her experience at the poll site made her keenly aware of how national politics are influenced by work at the grassroots level. Also, she said she grew to understand the true meaning of democracy when hearing extreme views while phone banking.
“It’s hard to hear these extreme views, but at the same time that is the whole point of democracy, that people can have ideas that are contrary to yours. The whole point of democracy is that anyone’s voice should be heard,” Kate said.
Clara said that although her actions may have not made a large difference overall in the outcome of the election, she gained insight into how the political system works, while standing up for what she believes in.
“At the end of the day you are convincing individuals to vote for someone, and it’s not a big impact all at one time,” Clara said.
