Chapter 12 - Growing Pains
Jeffrey was the first of the Writing Group to message the others about Elena’s draft. He was very complimentary of it as an essay - good tone, well thought through, and seemingly quite thorough even while omitting a lot of detail. But he wondered whether their regular audience for videos would balk at the length of this. In length, it was closer to a full white paper than it was to a mere executive summary. Would the audience have the patience to view the entire video? If not, should a shorter version of the speech be prepared? Both Jackie and Alice concurred with Jeffrey that these were the right questions to ask.
Elena was adamant about not producing a shorter version. She thought the full speech needed to be out there. And if people missed parts of it, well that is why she’d go on those TV shows. Then she could let the interviewer’s questions help to fill in the gaps for the audience.
There was a bit of non-productive back and forth among them on this matter, where Elena held firm while the others gently tried to move her from her perch. Eventually, Jackie suggested that they put in section headers, so viewers could watch a section or two, then pause to do other things and return to view a couple more sections, pause again, and then finish the viewing. Alice and Jeffrey thought that was a reasonable compromise. Elena said that she did not want section headers in the script that she would be reading from while making the recording, but she was okay if they were in the transcript that would be distributed along with the video. Jeffrey added that the timings associated with the section headers could be added as well, and those could be included in the video description.
That was the plan they kept to for recording the speech and posting it online. It would still be another day before the recording would take place, since some of the Writing Group couldn’t get away from their other work to be there until then.
In the meantime, Alice asked a question that Elena hadn’t anticipated. Alice wanted to know whether she could share the draft of Elena’s speech with her advanced writing class before the video was posted. Alice explained that at least some of the class likely would want to be trained as Liaisons, even after Alice made it clear that such training was entirely separate from her class and that whether they opted for the training or not it would have no impact on their course grade. The training would be an extracurricular activity. Alice wanted to get a jump start on that, if possible.
Elena agreed to Alice’s request. For the first time Elena began to see that they really needed quite a good number of Liaisons available, once the video of her speech was made public. But they couldn’t produce a large number of Liaisons ahead of time, because nobody outside of the Writing Group recognized the need. Elena also began to see that there would be a lot of pressure placed on Alice to get things functional as soon as possible. Elena needed a way to manage the situation.
Her immediate solution was to put some announcement up on the part of the Website where candidates for becoming an Affiliate would register their request to meet with a Liaison. There it said that initially, those requesting such meetings would greatly outnumber the available Liaisons who could take such meetings and that while they would try to grow the number of Liaisons as fast as they could, it would be necessary for Affiliate candidates to be patient about scheduling a meeting with a Liaison. They estimated that it could be several weeks before such a meeting was scheduled.
Elena wondered whether this would put a real damper into her plans. But she had learned from the Congresswoman that when there was bad news then get it out there asap so the public is aware of it. They will better make their own adjustments that way. Elena hoped that the vast majority of the audience would show patience, as she had requested.
Elena also encouraged Jeffrey to attend Alice’s training sessions, so soon thereafter he could offer his own sessions to the non-student audience identified through the Website, with the sessions held online. And Elena encouraged both of them to offer train-the-trainer sessions in the very near future, to help them grow the number of Liaisons at a faster clip. Elena did not enlist Jackie in this effort because Jackie was engaged with the new writer who had been hired for the Congresswoman and because in a pinch Elena wanted the flexibility to be able to call on Jackie to write a document for the Website that was needed in the moment. All in all, they definitely would be stretched as they entered this new phase of the operation.
* * * * *
The worries about the Elena’s speech being too long were unfounded. The video got more than twice as many hits as any that Caroline had done and the mean viewing time was almost 90%. People were listening to what The Minute Women had to say. Elena had been right about that.
Further, the volume of registrants for meeting a Liaison and becoming an Affiliate was also impressive, in spite of the very prominent warning on the registration page that it might be some time before such a meeting could be arranged.
The registration asked for name and preferred method of contact, also date of birth and profession. One thing that hadn’t been anticipated is that many adolescents who were still living with their parents wanted to become Affiliates, even though they were not yet ready to vote. Elena decided to let them know that they would have the meeting with a Liaison eventually, but because of their age they’d have lower priority in the scheduling. For those who were above voting age, the registrations produced a highly skewed distribution by age. Most were college age or a bit older. There were few in their 30’s even less in their 40’s and 50’s and essentially no senior citizens. Elena found this concerning, but for the time being she remained happy that the overall numbers were good.
Consistent with what Elena said in her speech, the registration did not ask for party affiliation or prior voter participation. Those bits of information would be requested by the Liaison at the meeting and the person would be instructed that offering up this information was not required to become an Affiliate. The approach was designed to encourage the person to feel there was no coercion in this process and that the person remained in control of the information throughout. The Liaison would also make a point of saying that the information so offered up would only be published in aggregate. Disaggregated information would not be shared with anyone outside of The Minute Women.
After about a month of meetings between Liaisons and candidates for becoming Affiliates, including quite a few follow up meetings that were held in groups, the distribution over party affiliation of those who became Affiliates was becoming apparent. Over 75% declared they were Democrats. Another 15% said they were Independents. The remaining 10% were evenly split between those who had declared they were Republicans and those who preferred not to share their party affiliation.
Elena wondered whether these results would continue as they expanded the audience of registrants who would meet with Liaisons. If this was a trend that would continue, then she feared they wouldn’t have mobilized enough Republican voters to make a difference in the election. Perhaps raising the voter participation rate of college students would matter in some states, but she was pretty sure they’d come up short if that’s all they could achieve.
They desperately needed to penetrate a largely Republican audience who would nonetheless be sympathetic to Minute Women principles. How to do that remained a mystery. Fretting about it caused Elena to have some sleepless nights. Her stress level was definitely rising.
* * * * *
Elena kept up with her commitment to appear on TV, aiming for late afternoon news or talk shows, trying for one appearance per week. After a few of these she settled down to established themes, much of which focused on that first meeting between the candidate to become an Affiliate and the Liaison.
She framed what she could with the analogy that the voter was a learner, learning happens much better if the person is relaxed rather than up tight, and that open conversation facilitates this. If through the Liaison’s encouragement the candidate willingly expressed the formative thinking that shaped current perceptions, then they were more than halfway home. They could use that formative thinking as a launch point for considering Minute Women principles and whether those supported the formative thinking, contradicted it, or went into yet uncharted waters.
The hosts were invariably charmed with Elena’s approach, as it was novel to them. Then Elena would do a bit of it with the host, to get out some biases that needed to be addressed. There were questions like - When was your last job interview? Was it stressful? Did you feel you were on stage? And then Elena would follow up with questions of the sort - Have you made a new friend recently? Was the first meeting like a job interview or was it something else? What made it click with this person?
Elena would then invariably say something like this. A job interview setting would not be good for meeting with an Affiliate candidate. They need reassurance that they are in control of the situation. At first they may be reluctant to believe it. It takes a while for them to settle in. Then a good conversation can follow.
Elena surprised herself by finding these TV appearances not very stressful at all. She felt in her element while doing them. However, afterwards she would wonder whether this was helping their work. Were they reaching an audience that they wouldn’t have reached through the Website and the YouTube videos? She had no way to know whether that was happening or not.
* * * * *
A curious thing happened that proved to be a turning point. While The Minute Women received a lot of correspondence, most of which Nicole would dispense with herself, this one was so off the beaten path that she brought it to Elena’s attention.
It was from the President of the PTA at a local high school. The note said that while they had tutoring by juniors and seniors for some of the freshman and sophomores who were struggling academically, it wasn’t as effective as they would like. They were aware of the approach that Liaisons took with Affiliate candidates and wondered if a modified version of that could be taught to the tutors, with the aim of improving the results from the tutoring.
In the note the PTA President requested that a Liaison come to the high school and meet with a few of them - the President and Vice President of the PTA along with a couple of teachers. The meeting would include giving a demonstration done by the Liaison method and then answering a variety of follow up questions.
Elena told Nicole, “This may be a long shot, but it could be an answer to our prayers. Let’s see if Jeffrey is available to do this. I’d like to tag along if he is. If so, it can happen at the school. Best to arrange this in the evening, so the students aren’t there.”
A few minutes later Nicole poked her head through Elena’s door and said, “They can do it tomorrow evening. There is a basketball game then in the gym on the other side of the building from the classroom where they’d like to meet. Is that okay? I verified that Jeffrey is available then and would drive over with you.”
Elena nodded that it was fine. She wondered how the people at the school would react to seeing her security guy.
When The Minute Women team arrived at the classroom, you could see those who were there spread their eyes wide open and their jaws dropped. The President of the PTA walked up to Elena, shook her hand and then said, “Ms. Campos, I saw you on TV last week. I wasn’t expecting you to be one of those who’d be at this meeting. It is an honor to meet you. We are grateful that you are here.”
Then she walked up to Jeffrey, shook his hand, and said “Mr. King, we’ve seen your face on the Website. We didn’t expect you either. It is a privilege to meet you.”
Then she asked, “And who is this other gentleman?”
Jeffrey looked at Elena, who then responded, “Please, it is Elena and Jeffrey. We prefer informality.” At this the names of the people from the PTA were shared as were the teachers’ names. They all shook hands.
Then Elena continued, “This other gentleman is my security guy. I’m afraid that after Caroline received those death threats, which were deemed credible, we’ve had to up our security substantially. I now always travel with a security guy when making a public appearance.”
“Let me explain my presence and Jeffrey’s presence. I would like to watch your session with Jeffrey and hope it gives enough background for a conversation to happen after you are done with him and have had all your questions answered. Jeffrey has done quite a few train-the-trainers sessions for the Liaisons. He knows the process extremely well. As we chatted on the way over here, he said he could customize much of it to your situation at the high school.”
Then Elena joked. “I never actually see Jeffrey doing any work. I want to make sure he hasn’t been faking it all this time.” The others laughed at this line, including Jeffrey.
Then Jeffrey began. He did a 10-minute session with the two teachers. One taught math; the other taught social studies. Then he did a different 10-minute session with the PTA President and Vice President. The overall idea was for them to see how the approach could be customized to the situation and to the participants. They also could get a sense of what it was like from the participants point of view.
At the end of this, Jeffrey asked: “Should I go on or are we ready for you to pose questions to us?”
They agreed that they could proceed to the questions. That part took another 20 minutes or so. When it concluded the PTA President said, “Elena, it’s your turn now. What is it that you’d like us to do for you?”
Elena explained, “Until now, the vast majority of our Affiliates are either currently in college or are recent graduates. We would like to have a pathway into a middle-aged audience, if possible. If you’ve got a kid in high school, that fits the bill. I wondered whether other PTA members would like to experience our training in conjunction with the type of demonstration that Jeffrey gave. As you probably know, our approach is for the Affiliate candidates to opt into such a session with a Liaison. So I was wondering whether you might offer this possibility to members of the PTA. Such sessions probably can’t happen at the school, but we can find a nearby location that should be suitable. And we do many such sessions online.”
One of the teachers asked, “What about getting other teachers to receive this training?”
Elena responded, “I would love for that to happen, but I didn’t know if soliciting such participation would violate school rules. If it could happen by word of mouth without an explicit solicitation, that would be great.”
Then the PTA President stepped in. “I’d be quite happy to promote the sessions that you offer. If incorporating your methods into our tutoring is successful, I’d like to promote that too. The PTAs at other nearby high schools surely would be interested as well.”
Elena expressed her gratitude for that response. “Thank you very much. That’s truly excellent. I hope you don’t find this too pushy, but I wonder if there is some state level organization to which your PTA belongs. Similarly, might be there be a national PTA organization?”
The PTA President smiled. “Given the goals you are trying to pursue, I don’t find that pushy at all. And I’m getting a better understanding of why you came to this session. Do you think you can reach a middle-aged audience nationally via the PTA?”
Elena responded, “Honestly, I don’t know. But the idea clearly has promise, so it is worth trying. And maybe making some progress with it will open up access to other organizations with a middle-aged audience. We already had it in our planning to try to gain access to AARP. The thing is, however, that making cold calls to such organizations doesn’t feel right and if we don’t already have an in with them, then it’s harder to do what we did here this evening. Can grandparents be members of the PTA?”
That got a laugh from everyone. They transitioned then to chitchat mode and talked for a while about more humdrum stuff. Then the security guy made eye contact with Elena and pointed to his watch. His shift was coming to a close and he didn’t want to work too much overtime. The meeting ended on upbeat terms soon thereafter.
* * * * *
Over the next month there were many Affiliate candidate sessions with PTA members and teachers. More than half of them opted to become Affiliates. Among those, over 20% identified their party affiliation as Republican.
Elena wasn’t sure this was sufficient to offset her earlier fears. Yet she had to admit, it was definitely progress.
Elena was adamant about not producing a shorter version. She thought the full speech needed to be out there. And if people missed parts of it, well that is why she’d go on those TV shows. Then she could let the interviewer’s questions help to fill in the gaps for the audience.
There was a bit of non-productive back and forth among them on this matter, where Elena held firm while the others gently tried to move her from her perch. Eventually, Jackie suggested that they put in section headers, so viewers could watch a section or two, then pause to do other things and return to view a couple more sections, pause again, and then finish the viewing. Alice and Jeffrey thought that was a reasonable compromise. Elena said that she did not want section headers in the script that she would be reading from while making the recording, but she was okay if they were in the transcript that would be distributed along with the video. Jeffrey added that the timings associated with the section headers could be added as well, and those could be included in the video description.
That was the plan they kept to for recording the speech and posting it online. It would still be another day before the recording would take place, since some of the Writing Group couldn’t get away from their other work to be there until then.
In the meantime, Alice asked a question that Elena hadn’t anticipated. Alice wanted to know whether she could share the draft of Elena’s speech with her advanced writing class before the video was posted. Alice explained that at least some of the class likely would want to be trained as Liaisons, even after Alice made it clear that such training was entirely separate from her class and that whether they opted for the training or not it would have no impact on their course grade. The training would be an extracurricular activity. Alice wanted to get a jump start on that, if possible.
Elena agreed to Alice’s request. For the first time Elena began to see that they really needed quite a good number of Liaisons available, once the video of her speech was made public. But they couldn’t produce a large number of Liaisons ahead of time, because nobody outside of the Writing Group recognized the need. Elena also began to see that there would be a lot of pressure placed on Alice to get things functional as soon as possible. Elena needed a way to manage the situation.
Her immediate solution was to put some announcement up on the part of the Website where candidates for becoming an Affiliate would register their request to meet with a Liaison. There it said that initially, those requesting such meetings would greatly outnumber the available Liaisons who could take such meetings and that while they would try to grow the number of Liaisons as fast as they could, it would be necessary for Affiliate candidates to be patient about scheduling a meeting with a Liaison. They estimated that it could be several weeks before such a meeting was scheduled.
Elena wondered whether this would put a real damper into her plans. But she had learned from the Congresswoman that when there was bad news then get it out there asap so the public is aware of it. They will better make their own adjustments that way. Elena hoped that the vast majority of the audience would show patience, as she had requested.
Elena also encouraged Jeffrey to attend Alice’s training sessions, so soon thereafter he could offer his own sessions to the non-student audience identified through the Website, with the sessions held online. And Elena encouraged both of them to offer train-the-trainer sessions in the very near future, to help them grow the number of Liaisons at a faster clip. Elena did not enlist Jackie in this effort because Jackie was engaged with the new writer who had been hired for the Congresswoman and because in a pinch Elena wanted the flexibility to be able to call on Jackie to write a document for the Website that was needed in the moment. All in all, they definitely would be stretched as they entered this new phase of the operation.
* * * * *
The worries about the Elena’s speech being too long were unfounded. The video got more than twice as many hits as any that Caroline had done and the mean viewing time was almost 90%. People were listening to what The Minute Women had to say. Elena had been right about that.
Further, the volume of registrants for meeting a Liaison and becoming an Affiliate was also impressive, in spite of the very prominent warning on the registration page that it might be some time before such a meeting could be arranged.
The registration asked for name and preferred method of contact, also date of birth and profession. One thing that hadn’t been anticipated is that many adolescents who were still living with their parents wanted to become Affiliates, even though they were not yet ready to vote. Elena decided to let them know that they would have the meeting with a Liaison eventually, but because of their age they’d have lower priority in the scheduling. For those who were above voting age, the registrations produced a highly skewed distribution by age. Most were college age or a bit older. There were few in their 30’s even less in their 40’s and 50’s and essentially no senior citizens. Elena found this concerning, but for the time being she remained happy that the overall numbers were good.
Consistent with what Elena said in her speech, the registration did not ask for party affiliation or prior voter participation. Those bits of information would be requested by the Liaison at the meeting and the person would be instructed that offering up this information was not required to become an Affiliate. The approach was designed to encourage the person to feel there was no coercion in this process and that the person remained in control of the information throughout. The Liaison would also make a point of saying that the information so offered up would only be published in aggregate. Disaggregated information would not be shared with anyone outside of The Minute Women.
After about a month of meetings between Liaisons and candidates for becoming Affiliates, including quite a few follow up meetings that were held in groups, the distribution over party affiliation of those who became Affiliates was becoming apparent. Over 75% declared they were Democrats. Another 15% said they were Independents. The remaining 10% were evenly split between those who had declared they were Republicans and those who preferred not to share their party affiliation.
Elena wondered whether these results would continue as they expanded the audience of registrants who would meet with Liaisons. If this was a trend that would continue, then she feared they wouldn’t have mobilized enough Republican voters to make a difference in the election. Perhaps raising the voter participation rate of college students would matter in some states, but she was pretty sure they’d come up short if that’s all they could achieve.
They desperately needed to penetrate a largely Republican audience who would nonetheless be sympathetic to Minute Women principles. How to do that remained a mystery. Fretting about it caused Elena to have some sleepless nights. Her stress level was definitely rising.
* * * * *
Elena kept up with her commitment to appear on TV, aiming for late afternoon news or talk shows, trying for one appearance per week. After a few of these she settled down to established themes, much of which focused on that first meeting between the candidate to become an Affiliate and the Liaison.
She framed what she could with the analogy that the voter was a learner, learning happens much better if the person is relaxed rather than up tight, and that open conversation facilitates this. If through the Liaison’s encouragement the candidate willingly expressed the formative thinking that shaped current perceptions, then they were more than halfway home. They could use that formative thinking as a launch point for considering Minute Women principles and whether those supported the formative thinking, contradicted it, or went into yet uncharted waters.
The hosts were invariably charmed with Elena’s approach, as it was novel to them. Then Elena would do a bit of it with the host, to get out some biases that needed to be addressed. There were questions like - When was your last job interview? Was it stressful? Did you feel you were on stage? And then Elena would follow up with questions of the sort - Have you made a new friend recently? Was the first meeting like a job interview or was it something else? What made it click with this person?
Elena would then invariably say something like this. A job interview setting would not be good for meeting with an Affiliate candidate. They need reassurance that they are in control of the situation. At first they may be reluctant to believe it. It takes a while for them to settle in. Then a good conversation can follow.
Elena surprised herself by finding these TV appearances not very stressful at all. She felt in her element while doing them. However, afterwards she would wonder whether this was helping their work. Were they reaching an audience that they wouldn’t have reached through the Website and the YouTube videos? She had no way to know whether that was happening or not.
* * * * *
A curious thing happened that proved to be a turning point. While The Minute Women received a lot of correspondence, most of which Nicole would dispense with herself, this one was so off the beaten path that she brought it to Elena’s attention.
It was from the President of the PTA at a local high school. The note said that while they had tutoring by juniors and seniors for some of the freshman and sophomores who were struggling academically, it wasn’t as effective as they would like. They were aware of the approach that Liaisons took with Affiliate candidates and wondered if a modified version of that could be taught to the tutors, with the aim of improving the results from the tutoring.
In the note the PTA President requested that a Liaison come to the high school and meet with a few of them - the President and Vice President of the PTA along with a couple of teachers. The meeting would include giving a demonstration done by the Liaison method and then answering a variety of follow up questions.
Elena told Nicole, “This may be a long shot, but it could be an answer to our prayers. Let’s see if Jeffrey is available to do this. I’d like to tag along if he is. If so, it can happen at the school. Best to arrange this in the evening, so the students aren’t there.”
A few minutes later Nicole poked her head through Elena’s door and said, “They can do it tomorrow evening. There is a basketball game then in the gym on the other side of the building from the classroom where they’d like to meet. Is that okay? I verified that Jeffrey is available then and would drive over with you.”
Elena nodded that it was fine. She wondered how the people at the school would react to seeing her security guy.
When The Minute Women team arrived at the classroom, you could see those who were there spread their eyes wide open and their jaws dropped. The President of the PTA walked up to Elena, shook her hand and then said, “Ms. Campos, I saw you on TV last week. I wasn’t expecting you to be one of those who’d be at this meeting. It is an honor to meet you. We are grateful that you are here.”
Then she walked up to Jeffrey, shook his hand, and said “Mr. King, we’ve seen your face on the Website. We didn’t expect you either. It is a privilege to meet you.”
Then she asked, “And who is this other gentleman?”
Jeffrey looked at Elena, who then responded, “Please, it is Elena and Jeffrey. We prefer informality.” At this the names of the people from the PTA were shared as were the teachers’ names. They all shook hands.
Then Elena continued, “This other gentleman is my security guy. I’m afraid that after Caroline received those death threats, which were deemed credible, we’ve had to up our security substantially. I now always travel with a security guy when making a public appearance.”
“Let me explain my presence and Jeffrey’s presence. I would like to watch your session with Jeffrey and hope it gives enough background for a conversation to happen after you are done with him and have had all your questions answered. Jeffrey has done quite a few train-the-trainers sessions for the Liaisons. He knows the process extremely well. As we chatted on the way over here, he said he could customize much of it to your situation at the high school.”
Then Elena joked. “I never actually see Jeffrey doing any work. I want to make sure he hasn’t been faking it all this time.” The others laughed at this line, including Jeffrey.
Then Jeffrey began. He did a 10-minute session with the two teachers. One taught math; the other taught social studies. Then he did a different 10-minute session with the PTA President and Vice President. The overall idea was for them to see how the approach could be customized to the situation and to the participants. They also could get a sense of what it was like from the participants point of view.
At the end of this, Jeffrey asked: “Should I go on or are we ready for you to pose questions to us?”
They agreed that they could proceed to the questions. That part took another 20 minutes or so. When it concluded the PTA President said, “Elena, it’s your turn now. What is it that you’d like us to do for you?”
Elena explained, “Until now, the vast majority of our Affiliates are either currently in college or are recent graduates. We would like to have a pathway into a middle-aged audience, if possible. If you’ve got a kid in high school, that fits the bill. I wondered whether other PTA members would like to experience our training in conjunction with the type of demonstration that Jeffrey gave. As you probably know, our approach is for the Affiliate candidates to opt into such a session with a Liaison. So I was wondering whether you might offer this possibility to members of the PTA. Such sessions probably can’t happen at the school, but we can find a nearby location that should be suitable. And we do many such sessions online.”
One of the teachers asked, “What about getting other teachers to receive this training?”
Elena responded, “I would love for that to happen, but I didn’t know if soliciting such participation would violate school rules. If it could happen by word of mouth without an explicit solicitation, that would be great.”
Then the PTA President stepped in. “I’d be quite happy to promote the sessions that you offer. If incorporating your methods into our tutoring is successful, I’d like to promote that too. The PTAs at other nearby high schools surely would be interested as well.”
Elena expressed her gratitude for that response. “Thank you very much. That’s truly excellent. I hope you don’t find this too pushy, but I wonder if there is some state level organization to which your PTA belongs. Similarly, might be there be a national PTA organization?”
The PTA President smiled. “Given the goals you are trying to pursue, I don’t find that pushy at all. And I’m getting a better understanding of why you came to this session. Do you think you can reach a middle-aged audience nationally via the PTA?”
Elena responded, “Honestly, I don’t know. But the idea clearly has promise, so it is worth trying. And maybe making some progress with it will open up access to other organizations with a middle-aged audience. We already had it in our planning to try to gain access to AARP. The thing is, however, that making cold calls to such organizations doesn’t feel right and if we don’t already have an in with them, then it’s harder to do what we did here this evening. Can grandparents be members of the PTA?”
That got a laugh from everyone. They transitioned then to chitchat mode and talked for a while about more humdrum stuff. Then the security guy made eye contact with Elena and pointed to his watch. His shift was coming to a close and he didn’t want to work too much overtime. The meeting ended on upbeat terms soon thereafter.
* * * * *
Over the next month there were many Affiliate candidate sessions with PTA members and teachers. More than half of them opted to become Affiliates. Among those, over 20% identified their party affiliation as Republican.
Elena wasn’t sure this was sufficient to offset her earlier fears. Yet she had to admit, it was definitely progress.
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