politics

My new coronavirus-era gig doesn’t pay a dime, but it’s a total sanity saver—and I love it.

I never thought of myself as a political writer. As a matter of fact, there was a time in my life when I didn’t think of myself as political at all. For decades I’ve been in advertising, which is by nature commercial, not political.

Yet here I am, lead writer on the Shahid Buttar for Congress campaign.

If you don’t know Shahid (pronounced “SHAH-hid”), he’s running for Congress to represent San Francisco, in Nancy Pelosi’s current seat. A progressive Democrat who’s also a privacy protection attorney, he’s a veteran of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a kind of cyberpunk Justice League which successfully blocked the needless surveillance of Americans’ personal information.

It’s an uphill battle, but that’s the kind of challenge I like. Avis: We’re #2, we try harder. (Look it up, kids.)

The job is 100 percent pro bono/volunteer, and it’s taking up more of my time and energy than I anticipated. Between Slack, Zoom, and the actual writing process, I’m more drained at the end of some days than I was working for an in-house agency.

So why am I loving it so much?

Part of it is the way this work fits into my new sensibility. I was always politically aware, but as an observer, like a space alien curious about earthlings’ ways. In recent years, though, I’ve become more involved, and COVID-19, which affects an extraordinary range of life’s facets from healthcare to employment to the way we socialize, has only sharpened that involvement. (Shahid’s platform includes healthcare as a human right.)

Another part of it is that I’m just made to write. To paraphrase Twilight Zone and Star Trek writer Harlan Ellison, it’s what I’m for. Not having any assignments for a month or so should have felt like a fun break, but instead it felt like a piece of me was missing.

Finally, as a little bit of a celebrity stalker, I’ve enjoyed being on Zoom calls with minor political figures. I can’t say who they are, but if you follow progressive politics, you’d recognize their names.

Don’t get me wrong. I like receiving fair compensation for the work I do, and look forward to the day when I can do so again.

And I certainly would never work free for a for-profit company. That’s called slavery.

But with paying work hard to come by this summer, I have to admit nonpaying work is satisfying. It uses all the skills I used in advertising: Research, presentation, strategy and conceptualization, and writing itself.

Best of all, I don’t have to sit on a long train ride and go to an office I might or might not want to be in for 40 hours every week. I can just write, do virtual meetings, and have fun.

Find a cause you like and try it sometime.

Nostalgia is natural, but it’s hurting us. A lot.

It feels comfortable, like a favorite sweatshirt. Comforting, like a creamy cheesy winter casserole. It just feels right.

But it’s wrong.

We can’t go back to the way things were before the pandemic, because that way lies an end to everything.

We want to. Really, really badly. This has been such a disruptive experience on so many levels.

There’s the lifestyle level: Not being able to go out to restaurants, shows and clubs, not even being able to shop freely or get a haircut, being stuck in the same place.

Then there’s the more basic level of those who are laid off and suddenly lack healthcare (almost always tied to employment in the U.S., unlike other developed countries)—just when they need it most.

Some even lack money to pay their rent or even buy groceries.

And of course, for the unlucky, there’s illness and even death.

With all these changes going on, of course everyone longs to go back to simpler times. But they don’t exist, and never did.

Do we really want to go back to a time when this country had seven active civilian-killing wars going on? When Big Banks got trillions in bailouts, while regular people were thrown out of their homes and onto the streets? When there was a new school shooting every week, and a new group of promising creatives got gobbled up by hostile holding companies every month?

Or do we want to go back further than that, when American teens were being fed into the Iraq War hopper by the millions, in service of “evidence” that turned out to be a lie for Big Oil companies? Companies that now want yet another federal bailout because suddenly no one can drive, fly or take cruises?

Or even further than that, when it was routine for women and people of color to be treated as second-class citizens? When agency creatives, almost without exception, worked on cigarettes, disgusting unhealthy junk food, pollutive gasoline and gas-guzzling cars, or some other personal or planetary poison?

I don’t think any of us really wants to go back there. I know I don’t.

What we need to get to, rather rapidly, is a point where the future feels more comfortable than the past, because it’s the only real choice any of us has.

And we’re not going to get there by following big political organizations, on either the left or the right. One wants to go back to the 2010’s, so far away yet so tantalizingly close, while the other wants to go all the way back to the 1950’s. We don’t have the luxury of doing either.

We need a new way forward. And marketing needs to lead the way by:

  • Abandoning old models that don’t work any longer, such as basing all marketing strategies on short-term quarterly earnings
  • Asking questions about how our clients’ products and services fit into the new future we all face together, where we all either thrive or face extinction
  • Refusing to be satisfied with empty gestures that sympathetically intone “We’re together, even though we’re apart” while offering nothing to the increasingly large percentage of Americans struggling to make rent, buy groceries and receive basic healthcare
  • Being brave enough to call out denial when we see it
  • Understanding the difference between a brand—a promise that’s made to customers and truly kept, supported by marketing—and “branding,” a combination of logo design, trendy look and feel, and copy voice that’s meaningless except to other marketers
  • Staying aware, painful though it can be, of the inflection point we’re all living in, and making choices—in our jobs as well as outside of them—that build a more sustainable and equitable world