Exercising Your Power: Why You Should Vote Local

Public Hearing is back with our third and final episode of our Civic Engagement in Worcester mini-series featuring our guests Doug Arbetter and Danaah McCallum. In this episode, we wrap up our conversation with Doug and Danaah and talk about how important it is to vote in local elections and how to get involved in your local government including creating a petition and reaching out to your Councilors. We also talk about the process of running for an elected position in the city of Worcester.   

One of the first ways that you can get involved in your local politics is by registering to vote! You can register to be a Worcester voter here. Not sure if you are registered yet? You can check your registration status here.  

 Public Hearing is a podcast from Action! by Design about our home city of Worcester, Massachusetts and the people we should be listening to—residents, artists, activists, community leaders, storytellers, and those most impacted by issues facing our city. Our mission is to cultivate community through equity, inclusion, and design, and that work starts at home.

Transcript for this episode

Hello Worcester and the world. This is Joshua Croke, your host of the public hearing podcast, a podcast and radio show from Action! by Design, about engaging communities to address social problems in a way that centers, equity, justice and the pursuit of joyfilled futures for everyone. This is our third and final episode of our mini season on civic in engagement in Worcester. We are here with Danaah McCallum and Doug Arbetter to continue our conversation about how to get involved in your local government and the ways in which our role as residents can influence how our cities grow and develop. And again, as a show, we are very much centered on a pursuit of equitable, just and joy centered futures and making the way decisions are made more accessible to folks who should be leading those decisions. The people who live in our communities and are most impacted by the challenges that we face in our cities.

Joshua Croke (00:56):

So Doug, Danaah, thank you again so much for being here. I'm excited to continue our conversation, and we want to, we've shared information with our guests in the past two episodes about the structure of our city government, right? We don't have a strong mayor form of government. We have a city manager who plays the role of an executive that is elected by the city council, which is a five district and six at large body of people. We have a school committee that is being reorganized to have five, six district seats and two at large seats. We talked about boards and commissions and the role that they play and how people can get involved in the process of being sat on one of the boards and commissions. We talked about some of the demographic voters in the city and how Worcester has a pretty low voter turnout for our local elections, which are in the odd year and not in alignment with our, like our state elections. There's a lot of other things that we discussed, but I'm gonna pause there and I wanna focus today's episode on what can do and what are the things that they can really do to make change within their community related to local related to and surrounding local government.

Doug Arbetter (02:15):

I guess I'll start. Thanks for having us back. So I think one key issue, I think we kind of touched upon it in a previous step stuff, but there's something called the petition and you can petition the city council for pretty much anything you're interested in. If you need a pot, like you're just, you can't get through to D P w and you need a pothole field, you can push it to the city council or like today mention she petitioned the city council to change like the noise or ordinance. And all you need to do is fill out a form, sign it, describe what you want the city council to do. And then you submit it to the clerk's office. And as long as it's in, by the th like Thursday end of business, prior to the next city council meeting, which happens on a Tuesday, it will be on the agenda.

Doug Arbetter (03:05):

And when the city council meeting happens as the petitioner, you get three minutes to speak on the petition and make your case why you want the city council to vote on it. And several things can happen depending on what the petition's related to. Sometimes people petition for a report from the city manager, so they may pass it and ask the city manager to, you know, it might be a report on, you know, how would changing the noise ordinance impact cons construction in the city or they may say, oh, it's related to parking. We're gonna send it to the subcommittee on the city council that handles parking issues, stuff like that. So that is I think the most direct way that you can try to influence policy in the city or get changes made is to go directly to the council.

Joshua Croke (04:00):

And so once a petition is filed and added to the agenda that opens up the opportunity for members of the public to call in as well to address that item, correct? Yes.

Danaah McCallum (04:11):

Correct. Yep. So in anybody, any member of, you know, whether obviously whether you filed the petition or not, you can speak on behalf of it or against a petition 

Doug Arbetter (04:22):

Any item on the agenda

Danaah McCallum (04:23):

Actually. Yeah. Yeah. Public should probably clarify that any item on the agenda as a member of the public, you have the opportunity to be able to to speak regarding that.

Joshua Croke (04:34):

Yeah. And I know that the process of public participation is something that I regularly challenge and I find it to be a little bit of an overwhelming thing. So for listeners and Danaah, Doug, correct me if I go astray in my understanding of this, but as for public comment, there's usually like a particular amount of time that public comment is open related to any one item or is it just general?

Doug Arbetter (05:01):

So it's two. So petitioners get three minutes in general. Other people calling get two minutes,

Joshua Croke (05:07):

Two minutes

Doug Arbetter (05:08):

I think there's, like total 30 minutes, but often the mayor will make a motion to suspend the rules, right. To allow for like longer like public. It's really great to have a mayor that supports public comment. But if you have a mayor that doesn't obviously like that can really block public particip participation, one recent petition that actually got passed by the city council, a local resident named Jenny pasilla petitioned this city council to, to make permanent the virtual like virtual call and have all the meetings remain virtual and allow participation to happen virtually through WebEx,

Joshua Croke (05:54):

Which I think that is huge. Yeah. And amazing. And I think selfishly, but also, I think it also fits more into people's lives to be able to like tune in and listen, or be involved and also like make dinner for your family. Or like, do you know, things that allow you to be engaged, but not have to like show up at the steps of city hall every Tuesday. Right. And so the, with the call and the other thing that I find challenging is like, it's for any like folks with like social anxieties or anything. That's, that's a huge one. It's like, okay, I have to go in front of like all of these people. And I have two minutes to like, make my case on camera, on camera or in front of all these people. And then nobody responds to me. They just say, thank you, sit down.

Danaah McCallum (06:43):

Yeah. What I would also just recommend for any per anyone who's participating is to simply not, I say simply, I use that not to mean simple, but to make sure that they actually write out what they're going to say ahead of time. I think if you write out what, you know, it's not, they're not the city council isn't really going to engage with you, the elections committee, they're typically not going to engage with you. So the point is just, you're speaking on this to have it all written out. So when you go to speak on your item, you're simply reading from a piece of paper as opposed to sort of try to explain yourself as you go or speak off the cusp or what, whatever.

Joshua Croke (07:22):

Right. And I'm recalling back to one of the issues that I called in about and was listening in. And I think it ended up being like a two hour public comment related to the additional funding that was gonna be added to the police department budget of like the $225,000 or something. And, you know, if you were listening in on this call and you heard the people calling in and their opposition, majority opposition to that funding, you would be like, oh wow, that's gonna have an impact. And the council's gonna change their mind, but it had zero impact. Right. So like, how do we prevent like the burnout of people being like, Ugh, well, I sat on the phone for two hours to contribute to this pool of people being like, yes, we agree. We agree that this shouldn't happen. And then it happens anyways, like how do we like fight that, like the, the disappointment that can come with trying to participate in that public dialogue, but not seeing that achieved

Danaah McCallum (08:21):

Run for office,

Doug Arbetter (08:23):

Run for office and elect folks and elect folks who do are, are who ran to be community counselors. Right, right. 

Danaah McCallum (08:34):

Yeah. I mean, think that's sort of, and I think that's one of the difficult things that, I mean, I dealt with that as a member of the board of election commissioners where, you know, we'd be proposing a, a, a change to a polling location and everybody would call and say, this is absolutely horrible. Don't do it. And the board would sometimes still move forward with it. And so I, I would say in those situations making sure that you know, as Doug said, we're advocating for people to be in office and to be in these board positions who are truly represented representing the interest of the community. And not sort of this, you know, sort of political, I hate to use the political machine word, but

Doug Arbetter (09:16):

I mean, and here's the reality of our council right now, is that on the majority of them, it, the roles are flipped, right? So it's like the, the city council exists to set up path, like our plan to endorse plan or five year plan of like what we want for Worcester over the next five years, 10 years and stuff like that. And, you know, they're supposed to be strategic leaders for the city, but what our reality is is that actually it's reversed. Right. So, whereas like they should set this in the administration and then the city should implement it. It's actually the city manager just doing both. Right. And we have a lot of yes. Folks. And usually it's the folks who have been on the council the longest who will pretty much just blindly, he, what the manager is proposing. And that's kind of what happened with that. You know, that was an item that was pushed by the administration. And quite frankly, like our counts, a majority of our council just doesn't have the guts to go against dead. That's what it comes down to.

Danaah McCallum (10:28):

And I don't know how we fix, I don't know how, I don't know how we, when I say the collective, we, I don't know how we help. I wish I had the answer to how, how we can sort of say to people, oh yeah, call in. And your voices will be heard. And then your voices will not be heard. 

Doug Arbetter (10:45):

I don't know. We need a mayor strong system. That's what we need. Yeah.

Joshua Croke (10:47):

Right. And, and this is like, this is like an area that's like my jam as like community engagement strategy and like looking at the role of tech technology and how that can support community members in like synthesizing and like building on the needs that are being communicated and articulated across different meetings and different like coalitions to organizations and things like that. And that's a lot of the work that action by design does is like we are saying like, okay, are going to tackle this problem. That's been identified from the community, like eliminating the school to prison pipeline. And then we are going to build a community of learning and practice to influence like what public perceptions of this issue is, like what folks are doing to kind of dis mantle or influence these, these issues. And it's like, all very much, like how do we gather the, you know, qualitative and quantitative information that's coming out of from like kitchen table discussions to you know, full coalition based meetings and like equally valuing all of those, those pieces of information and like trying to organize that in a way that can be received from a body like the city council and say, oh, okay, this is what the community is saying.

Joshua Croke (12:06):

Like, this is how many points of information that we have. So this should be guiding are our decisions. And if it's not, then it gives the community something to hopefully hold those bodies accountable for cuz they have, you know, tracked this, you know, information. But I could go on a whole tangent about that. But Dee, you mentioned, and as we're talking about ways folks can get involved and part to participate running for office.

Danaah McCallum (12:35):

Yeah. I mean, I, I definitely, you know, Doug has, has run for office and in the past and you know it's something that I threw out there. But not lightly. I mean, not everyone is, is suited for the process of what, you know, what it might take to run for office. But that is certainly a way that you can assure that your needs and the needs of the community and the values that you hold are represented as if you run for office. You know, I think we were able to see during this most recent election we had some city counselors who were really, really challenged in their positions. And you know, some came close to not, not being reelected. And so if, a lot of, you know, if we had put or not, we but yeah, we, or us, if we had sort of, you know, perhaps supported some of these candidates a little bit more diligently other than, you know, say liking a Facebook page or, or sharing a post here and there, we perhaps could have made some significant changes on the council this go around.

Danaah McCallum (13:49):

I am encouraged by what I saw at the, you know, the, this most recent election. We had some folks who were who were elected to the school committee some new members of the school committee, progressive members of the school committee as well, obviously, as we know on the city council as well. So I think there's some potential for some changes going forward, but unless more, you know, more key candidates or more folks like Etel run for office. I don't know how I, I don't know how much, how much change we can make unless some of the, some of those folks get involved.

Joshua Croke (14:26):

And so, and I want to ask about kind of the process of running, but before that would love to just maybe like rapid fire kind of talk about some of the way, the best way is like, if you aren't someone who wants to run for office, but you want to be a better supporter for folks running for office. What are the things that you can do that have, you know, impact in

Doug Arbetter (14:47):

Local elections? The most critical, critical campaign function that can, that a, a candidate's campaign could operate is knocking on doors with canvasing. I mean, in local elections, it's all about folks wanting to meet the person that they're gonna elect, or just have a conversation with someone who's working for that candidate and to hear like, why they're so passionate, why they're working for that candidate and to see their passion. I mean, if you look at Dante’s campaign, when he ran for school committee, I mean he and his team knocked on thousands of doors and sin with two who just recently got elected to the city council two and their campaign knocked on thousand like a thousand doors a week. And two be, was, came a higher place than Mo Bergman. Who's been on the council for a few terms now. So it just go was to show.

Doug Arbetter (15:52):

I mean, and when I ran for city council, I mean, you know, when I started, you know, I started at nine one and then I moved to, like, I just went in order in terms of when I started knocking on doors and I kind of ran of time towards the end. And I mean, it's almost a linear curve of, you know, I won nine one, like amongst all the candidates and then, you know, nine, two, I think I came close. And then like, once I, like, I got, it was just me for most of the time and to the end. And then you can see kind of like, you know, nine, I just like, didn't get to nine, four. And like, that's where, like my, one of my opponents like did me in, and I just like, couldn't knock on the doors there, but it just goes to show that like, clearly there's a cause like there is a relationship between on the number of doors you knock and the people you meet and they're like, you know, they wanna cuz it's, it's not really about it's, it's weird.

Doug Arbetter (16:38):

Local politics is weird. It's, it's not about like the ideology that you see at the national level. Like I had folks who were support, I was the most progressive candidate in that race and I made it clear when I was on the doors, but folks liked me and they put my signs on, in their yard. And like, when I lost the preliminary, like the Republican can, like, they had the Republican candidate signs on their yard and you're like, how does that happen? But like, it's a, it's just like, that's local election. It's all about, it's the personal, it's really the personal

Danaah McCallum (17:07):

And the, and I would say also the residents don't forget you when you knock on, on their door. You know, I re I remember volunteering for a city counselor's campaign at one point and somebody saying, oh, no, I I'm definitely voting for him. He not, he came and he knocked on my door. So they value that they definitely value that connection.

Joshua Croke (17:28):

Yeah. And one of the funny, like anecdotes for listeners that I didn't realize until this year was like people talking about out like the preliminary election versus like a primary election. And because like our elections are nonpartisan, right. There's like, it's not party affiliated or that's not like really a central point of, of our, our election. So, so you're saying if you're someone who is not looking to run help door knock.

Doug Arbetter (17:54):

Exactly. Right, exactly. Yep. Door knock even make phone calls to remind, like, to remind people, oh, like early voting started and even just like to have conversations like with folks and like, you really get to learn and appreciate like what people care about in local politics, you know what I mean?

Joshua Croke (18:10):

Yeah. And I, one of the things that I saw out of two's campaign was like getting a text message of like, do you have a way to get to your polling station? Like, do you need like

Doug Arbetter (18:21):

Right. Sign up to like pick people up and drive them to the polls for a campaign, you know? And you get to just meet the folks, like, you know, you're just like an Uber for the day and right. You

Joshua Croke (18:29):

Get to like, and it might seem, it might seem like a smaller, simple thing, but like the morning where the day, the week of elections, I will go through my phone and copy and paste a text message to friends and people that I know in the community that says, Hey, did you get out to vote? Or like, do you have a plan to get out to vote? And it's amazing how many people are like, thank you so much for like reminding me. Right. Know? And like, those little things are really important, especially again, on the local level where someone can be elected or not elected over like 12 votes. Right. Like 12 individual votes.

Danaah McCallum (19:02):

That's correct. Yep.

Joshua Croke (19:04):

And so what's the role of like social media and like modern, you know, media marketing and stuff in this as well. Cuz I've seen candidates really fail, like to the point of like barely having a website to having like a stronger web presence. And does that have, you know, an impact? I,

Danaah McCallum (19:21):

I mean, I, I don't think you can ever count out. I don't think from this point going forward, you can count out social media as having an impact. I mean, majority of people are getting a majority of their news, whether it be fake news or not from social media. So if you don't have a social media game, it's gonna be hard and harder for, for anyone running to office, running for office to keep up and I'll let Doug, I know Doug was, you know, through his pack. I know they did a lot, lot of stuff on social media. So I don't know if you wanna talk about how, how you, you know, what you all did there.

Doug Arbetter (19:57):

Yeah. I mean, I mean the way you can tar, I mean Facebook, when you do Facebook ads, I mean just how you can target populations of folks. And honestly, the funny thing is, is that I would prob I would, I would bet that like, honestly, the majority of most active users on Facebook right now are probably the folks that are voting. You know, that like middle aged gen up folks are actually probably more active on Facebook than younger kids now. And I think that, and, and, and I think that's the reality. So it's becoming a very effective tool at marketing because of the demographic who now uses Facebook.

Joshua Croke (20:35):

Right. Right. So running for office. Yes. I know, you know, the process very well. So could you talk us through like, say, someone says, I want to run for office, where do they start? What are the things that need to happen?

Doug Arbetter (20:50):

All right. So so the first thing I'd say is, you know, find some folks that, you know, wanna help you. It's great. If you can get someone who can serve as a campaign manager, but first and foremost, when you know that you wanna run, you wanna start fundraising. You have to. So for school committee, it's done locally. So financial reporting is done locally. So you would go to the city and request like organization, like to, to, to incorporate your committee as an official like campaign committee. If you're running for city council, those are what we called depository committees with the office of campaign finance for the state of Massachusetts. And so you have to go on their website, download a form, which is a statement of organization. And, you know, fill out like committee to elect a Gar better who your, you have to have a treasurer who can't be you.

Doug Arbetter (21:47):

And then you sign the form and you submit that. And so when that form gets processed, like your organization is officially created, you can then use that. And then you would also go and go to the IRS website, get your employer identification number. Not that you're gonna employ anyone necessarily, but you have to get that E to open a bank account. And then you would go to any local bank, take your statement of organization, your E information, open a account, and then you can start fundraising and your treasure will go through the necessary trainings in February of an election year. The city will release nomination papers. So for school committee, I believe they need 300 sign, cuz they're all at large, they need 300 signatures from registered voters in the city of Worcester to be able to get on the ballot for district level counselors.

Doug Arbetter (22:46):

You only need one 50. It's like one 50 or 100. I think it's, I think it might be half it's, 50 or one fine it's one 50 or 100. And then, so you have from February to may to collect those signatures, and then once you submit those signatures the city clerks, the elections division, a city clerk's office will go through your nomination papers, confirm that they're legitimate. And then they will confirm that you'll be placed on the ballot. And then that's pretty much it until so, so in Worcester, if if there are more than two candidates running for a district seat we have something called a preliminary election where it will happen in election will happen in September. And the top two will proceed to the November election for at large, if for the, at large race, if there are more than 12 candidates, there will be a preliminary election in September at same time for any other, it's just one preliminary election and the top 12 will proceed on the November ballot.

Joshua Croke (24:03):

Got it. So, so if you are listening and interested in running for office follow those steps, there's information on the city's website, I'm sure. And in

Doug Arbetter (24:13):

Massachusetts office of campaign finance

Joshua Croke (24:16):

And the Massachusetts office of campaign finance. Awesome. And the other thing that I think a lot of people might not think of is the importance of being involved in those supporting roles, such as like the treasurer or the the campaign manager. And those things are like so crucial, cuz I've had conversations with people who are like, I'd be interested, but I don't know who would help me do those other things. Right, right. And so that's really, really important. We're almost again at time for our final episode here, is there any other wisdom that you would like to impart on our listeners about being involved in their local government and in their community?

Danaah McCallum (25:02):

I would just say don't be afraid to ask questions. I think oftentimes people are afraid of what they don't know or they fear asking questions or looking stupid or whatever the case may be, but don't, don't be afraid to ask a silly question.

Joshua Croke (25:18):

That's why I have a radio show cuz I just get to ask questions on behalf of the listeners, not myself, but I learned no, I'm just kidding.

Danaah McCallum (25:23):

Well, I mean, I think, I think obviously for, even for those of us who are involved, there's still a lot of things that we don't know or things that we need to look up or things that we're still not 100% confident in. So I think it's just you know, don't, don't be, don't be afraid to get involved. Don't be afraid to ask questions. I think you'd be surprised that what you can learn in a very short period of just from, you know, some minor engagement in the process.

Doug Arbetter (25:52):

Yeah. And, and I have to say, even though we, we kind of ragged on it, you know, the counselors being part-time based on my experience, I mean the counselors have, are pretty accessible. I mean, when you email them, you do get responses from them. So like if you have questions and or you have like an idea about something you wanna petition, like email your district counselor, maybe set up a time, like, they'll go get coffee with you. You know, if you want to talk about it, like they will make time and figure it out to meet with you. Or even if it's just a phone call or, if you wanna Skype them or zoom them or FaceTime them, like they'll do it. You just gotta ask. Right. And, and you can share your idea with them and either like if you're not comfortable enough petitioning the council, like your district council can like put an order on your behalf, on the agenda. So

Joshua Croke (26:41):

Great. Yeah. And remember if you are not registered to vote, registered to vote, encourage everyone, you know, to be registered, to vote and remember to send them that text the day of, or the week of voting to get them out to the polls and that's all everybody. Thank you so much to Danaah and Doug for joining us these past few episodes, I hope you've been energized and inspired to it more involved in your community, despite how confusing some of this stuff can be. Hopefully we've been able to alleviate some of that confusion over these episodes. Remember when we're talking about local politics, it is irrefutable that every vote counts. So tell everyone, you know, and make sure they're registered to vote and actually turn up at the polls. Thank you for listening to Public Hearing our podcast radio show that airs Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on WICN 90.5 FM Worcester's only NPR affiliate station and can be heard wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm still your host. Joshua Croke. If you have ideas for the show, send us a message @publichearing.co our audio producer and our music creator is Giuliano D’Orazio. Also thanks to Molly Gammon and Anh Dao who also support the production of this show. Public Hearing is created and produced by Action! by Design. Learn more about our work @actionbydesign.co that's dot co and not.com and as always, thanks for listening.