THE CAMPAIGN: DAY 8
‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win’ — Mahatma Gandhi
It’s Monday and this blog is OPEN 👍🏾
Last week I made a video with my friends. It’s about my friend Danielle telling her own story. We decided to call it ‘Danielle’.
Danielle is just one of hundreds of Calder Valley Labour members who’s never been to a meeting. She’s a truly amazing, normal, working class person — a busy mother, nurse (12 hour shifts), a person with values, dreams and the potential to make the UK even more amazing, more cultured and a more successful place for working class people and minorities everywhere.
Danielle is a Labour voter, she was born and bred in Calderdale and can tell the story of the NHS in crisis with more integrity and passion than me or any other candidate will ever be able to.
Everyday she feels like she’s been held back by the Tories. She’s had enough of them in general and Craig Whittaker in particular. She’s desperate for a Labour government.
She gets emails from the local Labour party that encourage her to get active, but the activities aren’t an easy fit with the shifts she works or her childcare arrangements. Interacting with strangers on the doorstep, some of who might be hostile, also just isn’t her thing.
Our video target for the weekend was 200 views. Due to the diligence and hard work of Labour members in spreading the word, we went past the target within one hour of launching — ultimately achieving nearly 3K viws over the weekend. Let me repeat that in capital letters: NEARLY THREE THOUSAND VIEWS IN ONE WEEKEND.
Danielle is the classic Labour voice, she’s brilliant, honest and she effortlessly smashed it on facebook just by telling her own story in her own words. All we *the campaign* did was supply leadership, encouragement and organisation (cameras, a microphone, editing software) and gave her story access to the huge scale and power of our local Labour membership.
The video quickly spilled out beyond local members and generated hundreds of interactions and conversations (some inevitably heated) with people from all walks of life, within the Calder Valley and beyond.
It got the Tories riled. So we shot some more videos and posted them too.
Building a kind and supportive environment for people like Danielle to join the campaign and speak out, is a massively important part of long term, effective campaign strategy to dislodge Craig Whittaker.
He might try to dismiss Labour activists — even our candidate in the last election — but he can’t dismiss thousands of his own constituents sharing the story of his own failure and the emergence of our own campaign confidence and success.
Thank you Danielle, and thank you Labour members for making our first campaign together such a success.
