As a religion major and eventually a graduate student at Harvard University’s Divinity School, Jeremy Bird ‘00 probably had no idea how involved he would become in national politics.
From growing up poor in a trailer park in Highridge, Missouri to his role as Barack Obama’s general election chairman for Ohio, Bird knows a lot about change. He has lived it.
“I grew up in a conservative, Southern Baptist family,” said Bird, who spoke to a group of students and factuly and staff members in Korb Classroom Tuesday night. “My family is about 10% of McCain’s margin of victory in Missouri, my dad being the biggest Republican. What I remember the most growing up is sitting between the washer and dryer, listening to my parents talk about economics all the time. They would talk about at what point in the week we’d have to go to grandma’s house to get food, which was a huge pride thing for my dad who worked two jobs. That and the bible was really what I grew up learning about politics.”
Bird said politics first came alive for him as a young adult while he was studying abroad in Israel. Although Wabash didn’t have a program with any institutions there, Bird was encouraged to figure out a way to study there by Bill Placher, which he did Bird happened to be studying Israel during the 1999 political contest between Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and Ehud Barak’s Labor Party. He was affected by the engaging atmosphere.
“Student were energized about this election,” Bird said. “I would go in a cab, and the cab driver would be talking about it. I didn’t speak Hebrew very well so all I knew was they were talking about the candidates. My roommate was talking about it. It was everywhere, and people were voting. And I was thinking, I don’t even know who my state rep is. I don’t know who my senator is. Why have I never even thought of these things? I went to Israel to learn more about religion, and I got politicized.”
Although Bird went to Harvard for religion, he spent a lot of time at the Kennedy School of Government, and he was particularly interested in the organizing aspect of politics. His first experience with how people can change things was his work in Boston during grad school with education funding in conjunction with his class Organizing, People, Power and Change. Part of the class was actually doing community organizing work. He began working with a group called Boston Youth Organizing Project.
The group was working with inner city students at the time who realized their friends who lived in the suburbs were getting twice as much funding per pupil. When the mayor refused to address the issue in his budget, the campaign targeted the 12 city council members who had to approve his budget.
“We started having town hall meetings with the students,” Bird said. “They showed their books pictures of their school. Then we brought in kids from the suburbs, and they brought their books and showed pictures of their schools, and asked why their friends in the city weren’t getting the same education. We ended up getting $10 dollars more for the city schools. You can really change things.”
Bird graduated from Harvard in 2002, and he began working for Howard Dean in 2003. After the scream and his candidate’s defeat in the Democratic primary contest, Bird signed on to work with John Kerry in 2004. In 2007, he began working for Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign as the Field Director in South Carolina, in preparation for the primary. He said they changed the model for running elections in the state by refusing to give money to religious officials or politicians in order to get support. Instead, they organized and educated the public about the senator. Obama won the South Carolina primary by 29 points.
Bird then went to Maryland, where about Obama won, and Pennsylvannia, where he lost, before becoming the campaign chairman for the Ohio general election campaign, where Obama won 52% of the vote. Bird said he experienced different parts of the country, some of which he like and some of which disturbed him.
“During the primary I was thinking there is something wrong with this country, from the things we hard and the things they said, Bird said. “And then you realize it’s just a matter of relating to people. Once you create that relationship and talk about what’s best in people, you can even break through a lot of racism and a lot of things you think you could never break through. But sometimes I had just say just they aren’t going to vote for us, and not waste my time. They woke up on the fifth and Barack Obama was their president. I think it’s going to change their whole racial outlook, and especially that of their kids.”
Bird is now working with the Obama to figure out what to do with the organization that was created during the presidential campaign. He thinks may continue to do that or try to get a job in the administration.