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Jim (Watertown, MA)

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My entries to this blog will be cross-posted to my LiveJournal (http://boshek13.livejournal.com) and as notes to my facebook (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=205200232).

Attention Residents of Watertown, MA:

By Jim - Mar 2nd, 2007 at 10:35 pm EST

Earlier this week, I created the group here on barackobama.com, "Watertown for Obama." I hope you'll all search for it and join (since I don't know how to send invites to members on this site instead of via e-mail, and I presently don't have e-mails for my friends list; go figure)!

Because I have to balance this campaign with classes and a part-time job, I am seeking a co-coordinator to assist me in the organization of things. If you are interested, or know anybody who might be, please let me know! You can e-mail me at watertownforobama@yahoo.com! Even if you don't wish to co-coordinate, you can still e-mail me at the above address and request to be put on a mailing list to be kept informed of various volunteer activities that will undoubtedly be taking place over the next 13, or better yet, let's make it 21 months!

Additionally, for anybody who is on facebook, I have created a facebook group by the same name, "Watertown for Obama." Check it out!

Just to give you a bit of information about myself, I am 21 years old, (22 in just a few weeks!) and a history/government major at Bunker Hill Community College. After completing my Associate's Degree there, I am planning on majoring in Political Science at a four-year institution in or around Boston and earning a Bachelor's degree.

I have lived on Franklin Street here in Watertown for nearly 18 years, since I was only six years old. I attended Hosmer Elementary, Watertown Middle School, and Watertown High School. I bussed tables for six and a half years at the Verona Restaurant in Watertown Square, and now work as a waiter at the Cambridge Homes assisted living facility beside Mount Auburn Hospital.

Recently, I was very active as a volunteer in the Deval Patrick campaign, and after the primary election in September '06, I became Watertown's canvassing coordinator, in addition to volunteering for the Rachel Kaprielian campaign at the same time. If I may be so bold for just one second, I will guarantee that you can expect nothing but my absolute best and hardest work for this campaign in the upcoming months. But my absolute best is only so much. This campaign cannot be about me and what I can do, it must be about each and every person who volunteers with us. This is your campaign, and ultimately it is your willingness to bring your ability and willingness to work to this campaign that will put Barack Obama in the White House. I look forward to meeting and working with each and every one of you.

Of course, don't forget to invite your other Watertown friends to this and/or the facebook group, and let's get bring home a solid victory for Obama in both the primary and general elections!

My best wishes to all of you, and let's get this party started!

Sincerely,

James Scafidi

Watertown for Obama

watertownforobama@yahoo.com

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First Entry: Born Again Democrat

By Jim - Feb 10th, 2007 at 2:40 am EST

Greetings! This is my first entry in my new blog here at barackobama.com. For those of you who don't know me already, my name is James Scafidi, I'm 21 years old (22 on the 31st of next month), and a resident of Watertown, Massachusetts. I am a student of history and government at Bunker Hill Community College, and I am hoping to transfer to UMass after achieving my Associate's to major in Political Science.

During election season '06, I worked as a volunteer for the Watertown arm of the campaign to elect Deval Patrick for Governor of Massachusetts. Following Patrick's primary election victory, I became Watertown's canvassing coordinator and also began volunteering for our State Representative's re-election campaign (Rachel Kaprielian).

I am a long-standing opponent of the war in Iraq, having opposed it from its very conception (just like Obama). While I was in high school, I was constantly harassed and threatened over my opposition to the war; having made my position extremely clear in my LiveJournal, I was called, "traitor," and told that I "should be shot." Because I was opposed to the war at a time when Republicans and Democrats alike were in favor of it, I felt alienated from both parties and found solace among the ranks of socialist and communist groups such as the International Socialist Organization, the Revolutionary Communist Party-USA, the Communist Party of the United States, Black Tea, and others. I believed strongly in their passionate defense of the working people and their struggle against capitalism and corporate greed. I mislabelled myself a communist for a long time, believing that the communist ideology most closely matched what I believed in.

Over time, however, I became more and more uncomfortable with certain elements of that ideology. Revolution, for example. The socialst and communist factions preached revolution instead of reform, an ide that deeply worried me, because I am not a supporter of political bloodshed, but rather of open debate and democratic discussion. Moreover, though many communist writings spoke of the need for such democratic discussion, they also called for the exclusion of non-communists from such discussion, a matter which further disturbed me. It struck me as supreme hypocrisy that the communists could speak of "democratic discussion" for everybody, and yet only for communists.

I began to question in my mind if I truly belonged with these people. Eventually, I realized that, in my conversations with members of these communist organizations, I was carefully monitoring my own speech. I was afraid to express my concerns about revolution and exclusion of so-called "reactionaries" and "counter-revolutionaries," probably even more afraid than I had been to speak against the war in Iraq among friends who identified as Republicans or Democrats.

I eventually stopped going to communist-organized events. I had decided that communism was not what my heart truly wanted, and for a short period of time, I was without a party.

And then, one after the other, the Democrats rallied against the war. Of course, I was stil wary of the Democratic Party, since they had previously supported the war, and, with John Kerry winning the party's nomination for President, there was a period when I viewed the entire Democratic Party as flip-flopping on the issues, struggling to "out-Republican" the Republicans.

And then I took a course at my community college on State and Local Government. I had registered for the course to meet a general education requirement, but over the course of that one semester (Fall 2005), I found myself amazed by the capacity of ordinary citizens to influence government at every level, a capacity I never realized that I had. The next semester, I took the subsequent course, Government and Politics in the US. By the end of that academic year, I had been brought back into the political mainstream, and had taken a more active role in following what was going on in government at both the federal and state levels.

Over the course of my State and Local Politics course, the name Deval Patrick had come up, very briefly, just after the caucuses, when he was still generally unknown, publicly speaking, and yet had swept the caucuses. I didn't think much of it until the summer of 2006, when I decided to do a little check on the various candidates for Governor.

Deval Patrick's message of getting those who had "checked out" of civic life to "check back in." struck me immediately. Not only did I believe in the platform of the Demoratic Party in terms of state issues, but that idea of "checking back in" really resonated after my experiences in the few preceding years. I decided I would volunteer, taking some literature to share with friends and coworkers. I was put in contact with the coordinator of my town's campaign, and informed him that I would do what I could, though I had very little time to contribute.

Before I knew it, I was nearly a full-time volunteer, often staying up till well past midnight writing LiveJournal entries, posting campaign-related notes to my facebook, engaing in online discussions, doing what I could to assist in organizing canvassing and leafletting operations in my neighborhood, etc. I hadn't simply "checked back in," I had become a living, breathing, campaign ad.

This pattern only continued, and, before the November elections were over, I had become familiar with the positions of a junior Senator from Illinois, who reminded me a great deal of that re-engagement in civic life that I had undergone, and, shortly after Patrick's election day victory, I picked up a copy of The Audacity of Hope. I read it in a week flat, and decided that I was going to support Barack Obama in his campaign for President. I sometimes joke that I decided before he did that he was going to run, because I bought an Obama for President campaign button on cafepress.com a month and a half before he formed an exploratory committee, when he was still saying he was "undecided."

I subscribed to Obama's podcast, and was struck by how candid he was in speaking about his opposition to the war in Iraq, pointing out that he had opposed the war for as long as I had, which came as a profound revelation for me, that a Democrat had opposed the war before it began. I had agreed with the Democrats on just about every other issue, but their support for the war in Iraq had been the key element of my alienation from the party. I now saw my folly; that I was young and still naive enough to discredit the entire party over a single issue. I began to see where my allegiance truly was. I began to see that I was truly, a Democrat.

And here, you have the story behind why I call myself, "Born Again Democrat."

But it's not enough to just call myself a Democrat. No, I regard it as my duty to myself to be ever engaged in civic life, to not be an apologetic Democrat, but a proud and active Democrat. Not just to be one myself, but to put them in ofice. We've won back the legislature; let's not stop here. It's time to recapture the White House. It's time to make history.

Let's get to work.

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