Lundon Calling

Anyone who tells you that hard work is the key to success in life is only telling you part of the story.  It takes hard work and a little help from your friends.  Actually, a lot of help.

And that help — plus yes, some serious hard work — is what made it possible for my friend Simone Bell to jump into a five-way special election for a vacant Southern statehouse seat at just about the last minute and pull it out from under some real contenders who had a headstart not just in time, but also in fundraising, political support and just about everything else you’d put on your list of What I Need to Win A Statehouse Race.

The help came from black lesbian bikers who knocked door-to-door weekend after weekend.  It came from family members who shelved their lives and careers in Detroit and elsewhere to move into Simone’s house and cook, make phone calls, attend meetings and play chauffeur.  It came from people who knocked on the front door and stuffed $5 into Simone’s hand.

It also came from the Georgia transgender community: Cheryl Courtney-Evans, who turned Simone’s front porch into her own campaign call center; Chanel Haley, who claimed a spot on Simone’s sofa and seemingly never left it as she phone-banked her way into ultimately running the campaign phone banks; and Vandy Beth Glenn, who stood with me on a cold street corner on the morning of Simone’s victory, urging voters to send Simone to the very Legislature from which Vandy Beth had been fired when she announced her intention to transition from male to female.

The help came because Simone has spent 20 years doing the kind of community organizing that some folks still don’t seem to understand even after they elected a President with that on his resume.  And as anyone who works in any kind of community can tell you, when you put yourself out there the way Simone has, you make a lot of friends.

It started when Simone realized she had a passion for equal access to healthcare.  It continued when she and her partner, Val, moved to Atlanta’s Reynoldstown neighborhood and helped longtime residents do things like shut down a bar that had opened across from an elementary school.  And it brought her to Lambda Legal, where she traveled to 13 Southeastern states as an out black lesbian, organizing local communities who had experienced horrors such as the partner-visitation tragedy at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami; the arrest and outing of 40 gay men in the Tri-Cities of Tennessee/Virginia, some of whom lost their jobs (one even committing suicide); and the firing of Vandy Beth Glenn.

So while I was standing with Vandy Beth on that cold street corner holding my Simone Bell sign and complaining about my numb feet, I might have been feeling a little bitchy, but that was just on the surface.  Deep down, I was so proud of my brothers and sisters who had hit the big pause button on their own lives to help Simone get to the finish line.

Simone’s campaign proved that when you put yourself on the line for people, they give it back to you tenfold.  What we may have lacked in time, money and clout, we gained in beautiful people who showed up weekend after weekend to knock on doors, make phone calls and pull together house parties.

In a normal statehouse campaign, you probably have about three core volunteers; Simone had more than 70 before we gave up counting.  Now that the campaign’s over, I might be feeling a little lost — but I’ve got 70-plus new friends, and dang do we feel powerful!