Meet Rachel.
Organizing Intern at Represent.Us
When Rachel Brewer started work as an organizing intern with Represent.Us in May 2016, she brought some major activist experience with her. While studying Government and International Affairs at George Mason University, she founded the university’s chapter of Represent.Us, recruiting a base of students to engage the student body in the issue of money in politics. When she graduated, the university had an active chapter, 400 student signatures in support of the Anti-Corruption Act, and the support of state legislators. Moving from Fairfax, VA to Northampton, MA in May, Rachel was primed to delve into her work as an organizing intern at Represent.Us’ national headquarters.
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Represent.Us works on a national level to build support for the American Anti-Corruption Act, model legistlation that aims to stem outside poltical spending, limit special interest lobbying, and ensure the public funding of elections.
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​Though it’s clear that Rachel comes to this work with a great deal of compassion, her interest in money out of politics is highly pragmatic. In August 2016, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Rachel in Northampton to hear about takeaways from her experience including avoiding activist burn-out, building a chapter, working as an organizing intern, and having fun in an office setting.
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This interview has been edited for clarity and succinctness.
-Bridget, Small Planet Intern
I know a lot of the work at Represent.Us has to do with the Anti-Corruption Act, can you break down what it's all about?
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The Anti-Corruption Act has four parts: to empower voters, to stop bribery, to make sure that our elections are accountable, and to make sure that they are transparent. So my work has focused on talking to people about creating local resolutions, basically a statement of support for the act.
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Although these seem like small steps, there are some really great success stories. In 2014, voters in Tallahassee, FL passed the first city-wide Anti-Corruption Act. We’ve gotten resolutions passed in 15 cities and towns throughout the US, coming out in support of the act. One of our chapters in Princeton, NJ passed a resolution back in 2014, and their mayor said to them: this isn’t a big deal; this is just symbolic. But the group kept pushing it, and once the mayor saw how much support they had, she voluntarily set up campaign donation limits on her own re-election campaign.
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If you had one piece of advice for yourself as you were beginning the work, what would it be?
Think short-term. When I first got started with this work, I got frustrated a lot because it felt like I wasn’t doing enough. I’d see friends getting arrested for sit-ins, or people shaking hands with politicians on TV, and I was just having a meeting on campus, so it didn’t feel like I was doing much to contribute. But as we started to have more events, and started to get bigger, I realized that if you stick with the work, even if you are just collecting signatures, even if you are just demonstrating your support online and sharing videos, you can have a huge impact. I think it’s something that is often forgotten; there is so much that needs to be done so it can feel like short goals just aren’t enough, but I think long-term victories are so achievable if you just keep small term progress in mind.
There were a lot of issues that I was politically engaged with when I first got to college. My freshman year I was involved with a refugee resettlement center and with a group doing work to bring attention to the student debt crisis. I came into my sophomore year looking for a way to manifest all of that energy into one. With organizing, and I’m sure you know this, there are people for whom it is a lifestyle, and then there are ways of getting involved that are less personally taxing, ways to get involved that don’t suck away all of your energy. So for instance, there was a lot of work that was going on on campus around sexual violence, which is an issue that I would love to get involved with, but it’s an issue that is so close to my heart that it would be really emotionally draining to work in.
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Money in politics, I think about as an issue that is so prevalent that it’s a really efficient use of my time. And I don't think that sounds super positive, it sounds kind of robotic, but if you want to make a difference, this is really the lowest common denominator of political work. So I actually found Represent.Us online, reached out to them about an internship, and they got back to me suggesting that I could start a movement chapter. The more I really learned about the issue of money in politics, the more I realized that it connects to every political issue you can think of. Whatever your passion may be, corruption in politics will affect that. So I spent some time learning about the issue, and then I got to work starting a chapter at George Mason.
Working at the Represent.Us headquarters, you’re in more of a movement-building role, but can you talk a bit about how you came to the work on campus?
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To be honest, at first, it felt like I really had no idea what I was doing -- I was just putting up posters around campus and asking people to sign petitions. It was tough at first, but really as soon as you find that first volunteer the group starts to grow exponentially. Especially for students the message we’re spreading is really compelling.
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Somewhere in my organizing someone said something really simple and compelling about the work that really stuck with me: no matter what your number one issue is, if democracy isn’t your number two issue, your work will never come to fruition. And that’s usually how I would talk to students about the issue. You can be passionate about undoing the private prison industry or about climate change, but at the basic level, it’s a matter of thinking about whether your elected officials are accountable to you, and if not, what are you doing to change that?
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So, throughout my time at George Mason, I focused a lot on talking to our other student government leaders and students to endorse the Anti-Corruption Act. In the two years that I was there, we were able to sign on 400 student supporters of the Anti-Corruption Act, and to get our state legislators on board. It was great, and it really created a good base for the students in future years after I transitioned out.
Talk a little bit about starting the George Mason chapter:
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Now that you work as an organizing intern, how has your work shifted?
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It was definitely a big transition -- when I was in college I was given a lot of support and a lot of information as a chapter leader. Now I work with the organizing staff and I am responsible for coordinating with the chapter leaders; I work on the other end and see how the administration works. It’s completely different.
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Mainly, I do a lot of work with the organizing team to coordinate and train volunteers. We get all kinds of people who call in to volunteer and I’m always learning about their backgrounds and what they go through personally. It’s really humbling to know that what we put out is resonating with so many people. What I think I’ve gained most from this is being able to listen in on organizers' conversations, to hear how they are getting things moving on their state-campaigns in Washington and North Dakota.
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I also help with administration: tracking what gets sent out to who, making sure that our volunteers are efficiently organized, getting together resources to help building coalitions, doing outreach in their communities and talking to legislators.
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