When I flip my turn signal on, I always do the routine head swivel to check my blindspots. Same goes for pulling out of a parking spot, turning into bike lanes, etc. Like most people, I try to be incredibly aware of the things I can’t see, and eliminate those blindspots. It makes me feel more comfortable.
So when I sat in front of four experienced community advocates who did actual endorsement work to ask for their stamp of approval, I was most definitely far from comfortable. Before me were Alex Mohajer, President of the Stonewall Democrats, Ebony Murphy Root, a Board member of the Heart of LA Democrats, Cyndi Otteson, a political consultant and former candidate for LA City Council, and Samuel Sukaton, who works for the California League of Conservation Voters and DSA-LA. They took some time before beginning the panel to scan a three-page endorsement questionnaire that my fellow interns and I had only a few hours to complete. As I watched them circle numbers and write notes in the margins, I realized that within a few minutes, they had identified all of our campaign’s blindspots. Mohajer opened up with a sharp question about our plan for addressing homelessness. Though our platform revolved around both housing and environment, the housing part focused more on homeownership for residents in our district rather than the unhoused population. When we answered with our general plan, they followed up by asking for more specifics, as if they could sense that our answers were flimsy.
Nicole Lu, the other intern from our cohort acting as a candidate alongside myself, and I found ourselves fielding questions like the homelessness one that we had no previously formulated answers to for the majority of the panel. We tried to remain as poised and appear as knowledgeable as possible, since obviously the candidates should have all the answers to every question when asking for an endorsement. There came a certain point, however, where it wasn’t possible to feign knowledge anymore.
“Do you know what crisis pregnancy centers are?” asked Murphy Root, “There are several in your district alone.” For a brief second I racked my brain trying to find some connection to the words she had just said and what I knew, but we ultimately answered that unfortunately, we had no idea what they were. And though we had no prior knowledge of what they were, we were interested in learning more about them.
The same thing happened later when Mohajer asked us what percentage of our staff identified as LGBTQ. In that moment, my answer would not be meaningful had I not acknowledged that as two cisgender hetereosexual women, we couldn’t represent everyone we needed to. To do that, we would need to begin asking LGBTQ staffers for their input, and making a sustained effort to diversify our team.
Throughout the panel, I found myself becoming more and more comfortable with answering “I don’t know.” Of course, this was only if I followed it with: “But I’d like to learn more.” When we finished up with a last minute pitch asking them to endorse us, all of our previous admissions of not knowing left me wondering if we would get endorsed or not. To my surprise, they wound up being part of the reason three of the four panelists voted yes.
“You can’t be expected to know everything. What matters is that you want to learn more,” said Cyndi Otteson, reflecting on her previous campaign for Los Angeles City Council District 14. For the panelists, our willingness to recognize our blindspots and eagerness to cover them was what set us apart.
Being an advocate will always require careful reflection of what I know, and what I don’t. And while it may make me less comfortable, recognizing my blindspots is much better than pretending I don’t have them.