City of Angels 25: My 'counter culture reach-out project' for Jimmy Carter 1976, to get Vietnam war era 'dropouts' to drop back in and vote for him

Saturday, December 30, 2023

My 'counter culture reach-out project' for Jimmy Carter 1976, to get Vietnam war era 'dropouts' to drop back in and vote for him

I got an A ++ on the paper I wrote about the project, which I found in a box last week after months of searching, scanned below:

I had wanted Carter for President since Spring '76 so I asked the professor of a course "Introduction to Public Relations" if I could do this project for credit. He said yes if I could arrange it with local Democrats, and I did. Here is the report:

"I have an idea," I said. "Why not create a counter culture reach-out project to bring in 'drop out' voters for Carter?"

I put in LOTS of hours. I was living with PTSD "since age five" as years later psychiatrists explained to me. My form of PTSD helped me survive; by filling my life always with so much work, I could never think about the trauma I was running from. Most of my life, I panted in a state of frenzy, rarely sleeping. I lived "Faster Than the Speed of Life" as I blogged about it a few years back.

I left out of the scan of a work sheet with phone numbers...

Many persons we approached were "hostile about the election, cursing us and the whole political system."

Similarities between then and now abound.

Post Vietnam war, a sizable number in my generation (I was born 1948) did not trust the government or want to participate in an election they did not trust. Hmm.

Winging it, I learned persuasion skills as I discovered them

Somehow I had money to pay for the ad below from my own pocket, to run three key days before election in The Sun, local counter culture tabloid. I was living only on low income grants and student loans... ah the seventies...

I did get results, and learned how to deal with bad reactions too

Some of this is kinda embarrassing, like my interactions with The Sun and with Daily Texan editor Mary Walsh, who nonetheless hired me the next semester. Also politically I'm not that same person I was in 1976...