Opportunity

About three months ago, on the advice of a new friend named Kevin, I attended a meeting of the Lake County (Ohio) Democratic Party. The group meets at the Bricklayers Union Hall in Mentor, Ohio. It’s the kind of industrial park that is abundant in Lake County. Concrete roads to handle heavy load traffic and industrial deliveries, non-descript brick and cinderblock buildings, “go away” landscaping designs, void of life on a Saturday morning and with antique cars in the backs of parking lots under tarps, stored by the business’s owner or by close friends in need of space to hide purchases from divorce attorneys. My father spent most of his life working in industrial developments like this all over North East Ohio. His colleagues would obsessively back their cars perfectly into place so they could leave as aggressively and as quickly as possible once their shift was over. I remember the smell of Bridgeport lubricant as early as five years old. It was a part of my DNA growing up. The sound when my father would come home and the metal shavings stuck in the treads of his work shoes would scrape on the cobble stone entry way of my childhood home.

I sat in my car wondering why I was back in that kind of an environment once again. I watched as cars parked all up and down the curbside in front of the hall. It was a more aggressive attendance than my friend had prepped me for. The initial idea was for me to come to the meeting and the chair of the committee might give me time to speak to the attendees. I had had coffee with Kevin a couple weeks earlier as I watched the liberal mass and social media-sphere lose their minds as project 2025 became reality. I didn’t spend that coffee bloviating about Trump or conservative conspiracies. I merely asked Kevin who was in charge and asked why there wasn’t a plan. Kevin had consistently held office as a democrat in a county that used to vote blue with confidence and reliability. I needed his opinion on whether or not I should consider running for Congress. He asked me about my background and listened politely. I told him that my conviction was to prove that the working class deserved a better choice than fear, anger and sadness.

It wasn’t until we spoke about my industrial experience, including building and growing production facilities in China in the craft beer industry bookended with a childhood that was surrounded by the manipulation of metal in the industrial pursuit of growth and a recent consulting contract that put me next to the fourth generation CEO of a metal fabricator in Cleveland that Kevin’s curiosity became enthusiasm. I described why I chose to live in central China right out of college and how similar the environment in the mountains of Hubei Province felt to the agricultural wealth and the industrial base of the Cleveland area. That smell of end mill lubricant once again popped into my head as a common theme. When you meet working class people striving for upward mobility by laboring in environments that if you closed your eyes might as well be the same as your very own home, you start seeing a commonality to all human beings. The desire for their children to have a better chance than the generation before them. A hope that those same children will work smart and not hard, will trade resentment when the clock is punched to excitement to tackle new problems tomorrow. Humans all share the same 90% of their humanity, culture makes us unique, but humans are all human.

Kevin wasn’t sure if I was really sure I wanted to run for office, or rather, he wasn’t sure if he wanted me to run for office, he acknowledged the uniqueness of my story and the reality of my wife and kids being the perfect targets for mudslinging, but he also was adamant that the things that would make me a target also made me a strong potential candidate. His invitation to come to the meeting, where I found myself curbside and unable to yet peel myself out of my car, was an opportunity to see if my ability to communicate my story to him could translate to a larger room of people that had no idea I existed before I appeared in front of them. I told him I’d be happy to come and see if there was a “there” there.

I sat in my car watching others pull up with home-made signs to sell and looks of indignation on their faces. I wondered if this was a huge mistake. I also had a pestering cough and knew exactly how many cough drops were in my pocket. This also wasn’t the first time I wondered why I insist on throwing myself into weird situations. During Justin Bibb’s candidacy for the Mayor’s office in Cleveland I had arranged for a tour of my employer at the time. Michael Ripich and I would give then candidate Bibb and his team a tour of one of the largest format metal fabricators in the world. Photos would be taken, a short speech in front of team members, typical campaign stuff. It seemed so obvious while I was arranging all of the moving parts. But then I found myself sitting in my car before that event with the same thought in my head, “what am I doing?” No one asked for this. I knew it would be of value, but at the same time wondered if during the tour someone would ask, pointing at me, “why is this guy here?”

Half-way through the tour a reporter that had been following now Mayor Bibb for an article published on Governing.com turned and asked me “why are you here?” Far from my worst nightmare, the power of being talked at versus being spoken to is always underrated. I simply told him that I had arranged this tour, and I was hoping that Justin Bibb could represent generational change for the city of Cleveland and ultimately the region. Three and a half years later I found myself stepping into another “well let’s see if this will work” style scenario. Kevin met me at the door of the Bricklayers’ Union to tell me that Justice Bill O’Neill was also at the meeting following his announcement earlier that month that he would be running for a seat that I was considering. I took my pocket full of cough drops and my Starbucks coffee and found a seat in the back of the room to listen and figure out exactly what needed to be said in that moment and how to say it.

The room itself was what you would expect. Loud posters of protest were plastered to the walls that barely represented the anger oozing from the souls in attendance. I listened to some of the Robert’s Rules of Order type banter. The beginning of the meeting had a lot to do with the current Republican congressman, Dave Joyce, not showing up to town halls and the assumption that he wouldn’t show up at debates either. The first speaker was a rep with an update from the AFL CIO. My eyes wandered to signs describing MAGA as ‘brain damage’ and huge block letters declaring “RESIST” and various usages of words like MORON etc. At some point during the AFL CIO presentation someone asked a question. I can’t remember if it was a Q&A or just a frustrated attendee blurting it out. But someone asked “what can we do to convince the working class they are voting against their own interests?!?”

I watched a room of well-meaning liberal advocates and activists sit silently as the guy from the AFL CIO attempted an answer, so I just kind of yelled out “Stop calling them morons, that’s a good start”. I wondered if I would be asked to leave, or at least have my potential invitation to speak to the room evaporate because I broke some cardinal rule of meeting-ing. Despite my doubts, no one seemed particularly upset and the meeting moved on with a speech from Justice Bill O’Neill. He’s a nice enough guy. I’m sure under certain circumstances he would be a good table buddy at a charity event. As a political candidate he struggles to connect his irritations with the current political landscape with the angst exhibited by the public. I do mean THE PUBLIC, not necessarily just the anger on the left.

I listened to his talk with an open mind and hoped for more. There were some canned lines about “not letting a South African run our government” that rang oddly jingoistic even in its full context. He wanted the room to know that they didn’t have to worry, he was here now, and he would fight for them instead of continuing to enjoy his retirement on the golf course. He also wanted to assure the room that Dave Joyce was a good man and a friend of his. The resulting groan very much sucked the air directly out of the room. When Justice O’Neill had finished, the chair announced that there was another speaker who was considering running and then introduced me.

I walked to the front doing my best Mark Twain, making fun of the fact that I was the guy that couldn’t stop coughing, “I have two kids and kids are gross.” Always start with a joke. In three minutes, I described my upbringing, asked the room to realize that the working class needed a better plan that represented a stronger future for all of America. That we must stop telling them that what they believe to be the truth makes them dumb. That we must come up with a better option or we need to be happy with losing. I then challenged Justice O’Neill to use his Amex card to rent out some billboards in Lake County calling Dave Joyce a coward for not debating him. To resist is to passively aggressively disagree, to fight is to take ground and build a coalition. To resist is to surrender to the idea of scarcity and die defending something of dwindling value. The best defense is a robust offense. Several people reacted, but I put my head down and walked as quickly as I could back to my room temperature Mocha.

When I returned to my seat, I assumed the room was happy to be rid of me. I don’t tend to hear reactions, I get told about them by confused people who don’t understand why I can’t hear positive praise. Authoritarians train you to assume you are in trouble. I’ve always been in some sort of trouble. Whether in church, at school, at various en loco parentis environments, with the governing authority of China, with investors, with the CCP again and then ultimately, in my own mind, with everyone that I meet with moving forward, I am always expecting punitive action. I once asked a friend who oozed confidence if he thought people without confidence could convince themselves to be confident. He thought about it for a minute and then confidently said “yeah, hell yeah, of course they can, they just have to believe they can.” That always makes me laugh, when people ask me why I think I’m in trouble, I remember that and think, “well, if you’ve never been held captive and told it was because you were in trouble, I guess it’s easy to assume you can just believe in yourself.”

I had another commitment and felt the need to escape as quickly as possible. When I arrived at the exit there was a group of people waiting for me. They helped me answer the question about whether or not there was a venue within the Democratic Party for a message that fought for a plan, fought for the working class and fought for a will to put up a fight. It’s not an easy decision to throw yourself into harms away, up against a machine that has been designed to devour those willing to simply try and fight. It’s not easy to eventually throw yourself into an environment notorious for rejecting those motivated by principle. The only reason I haven’t announced a candidacy or committed to running for any office is because I wonder if there is anyone else out there who is having trouble sleeping due to their desire to advocate for the future of my little family. I look at the faces of people and wonder if they deserve to feel the cold reality of indentured servitude and an unwilling, and eventually unpaid, service to capital. I wonder if the middle class is something that can be saved. I wonder if it’s too late. I wonder why there is no plan already.

In a quiet moment, my son asked me if I was thinking about running for office and how much more of my time that would take away from him. I thought for a minute and told him that any citizen has two choices, the first being they can put their own little tribe in a position to climb the tallest tree to safety during a flood, the risk being that the flood may reach a point deeper than the highest tree. The second choice being to build a fleet of boats so that everyone can float above the deepest floods and rebuild society together. To be selfish in the case of your own family’s safety or to be selfless in the hope that society makes the right decisions after the flood recedes.

Either way, it’ll be hard for anyone to retire to the golf course if no one plans for a future to avoid the flood in the first place.