Lauren is one of many remarkable young field organizers in South Carolina who helped make this weekend’s Walk for Change a huge success. I spoke with her recently about why she was inspired to pass up a scholarship to a prestigious law school and work 17-hour days for the Obama campaign.Growing up as military brat, Lauren moved around quite a bit as a child, but her home base has always been South Carolina. Her family is originally from James Island and they currently live on Johns Island.
For centuries, these islands near Charleston remained isolated and lacked bridges to the mainland. As a result, the local Gullah culture has been preserved throughout the generations.
Lauren explains: "So many slaves came through the Charleston port – it was one of the biggest slave ports in America. Due to the slave trade, so many people from different regions of Africa were brought together in the same place. Over time, the developed a language they could all understand by mingling West African dialects with English, and created Gullah. With their isolation they maintained a lot of West African traditions, such as sweetgrass basket weaving and specific types of food. My grandmother and mama still speak Gullah but I speak 'Geechee' – which is more of English with a hint of Gullah. We’re proud of the history and we’re fighting to keep the culture alive."
From a young age, Lauren dreamed of pursuing a career in the law, and eventually enrolled at University of South Carolina. At USC, she was elected to the student senate, and started a social justice organization on campus. But she grew frustrated by the lack of interest and engagement by her peers. “I thought I was going to change the world, and no one really cared,” she says. “I got really depressed, but then I read Dreams from my Father and was blown away because Obama was once in exactly the same place I was, with people telling him what he couldn’t do.”Lauren worked hard and was accepted into 11 of the 12 law schools she applied to. She accepted Georgetown, where she had been given a $75,000 scholarship. But then she met Kevin Puleo, the Obama campaign’s Charleston Regional Director, who asked her to become a field organizer and help mobilize supporters in the Islands and in Berkeley County. “I knew that if I deferred from Georgetown I would lose my scholarship,” she says. “But this was an opportunity I could not pass up.”Working on the campaign has already been the experience of her life:
We have been able to mobilize people who have never ever in their lives been politically active. It means a lot to me to go have a one-on-one conversation with a 50-year-old who has never voted, who says to me, “This is the first time ever that I have felt that my world can change, even if its just a little bit, by casting a ballot.”
Recently, she went to Saint Stephen, a neighborhood that she describes as “very, very rural.” Most people in Saint Stephen are not political and campaigns often ignore the town because, she says, “you can’t go knocking on doors when the houses are ten miles apart.” But Lauren organized a community meeting and twenty-five people showed up, an amazing turnout for the area. Lauren describes what happened when she walked in to the meeting:
At first, they looked at us like we were crazy and it was pretty quiet in there. Then we start talking I start sharing my story. I said if it wasn’t for African-American activists in the civil rights movement and at other points in our history, I couldn’t have gone to University of South Carolina and I couldn’t have been here talking to them today. A lot of people were asking, “Is America ready for a black president?” I asked them “Are you ready for a black president? I don’t know about you, but I’m ready. Are you ready?"
And they started nodding their heads and they were like “Yeah we’re ready.” We all said “Are you ready? Yes, we’re ready!” And for the first time I saw the hope that I had – the hope that inspired me to take this job -- coming out in people. These are people who don’t even talk about politics, usually don’t even think about how politics affects their lives, feeling like they could change things for the first time in years.
Lauren believes that she and her fellow Obama field organizers are shaking up politics as usual in the Palmetto State. “We believe that we have to activate the average person, to do real organizing in communities, to listen to people. What we’re doing here is new, and people see that,” says Lauren.“We work 17 hours a day, going wherever we need to go, churches, host parties, door to door, wherever people want to listen,” she says. “We put our heart and soul into this every single day and I see the results. More and more people come into our office every day, full of energy, ready to volunteer and be a part of this movement. The people here are ready.”
For more on our campaign in South Carolina, check out SC.BarackObama.com.
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