This interview is the latest in a series at Daily Kos called Five Questions. We’ll put five questions to a wide variety of politically engaged people, both the renowned and some you’ve probably never heard of.
Bob Haisman became a political activist in 1960 at age 15, working alongside his mother to elect John Kennedy, and he hasn’t stopped since. He’s actively worked in every Democratic presidential campaign since then and has recruited members for the local Democratic Party of Oak Park in suburban Chicago, registered voters, and traveled to Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio to help spread the word about candidates on the eve of many presidential primaries.
Haisman has been involved in peace and justice advocacy work for more than 50 years, beginning with protests that eventually led to several arrests during the Vietnam era. He regularly volunteers at the local food pantry and local overnight homeless shelter and has served multiple terms on his church’s “Faith In Action” committee in each of the last four decades. Professionally, Haisman taught high school history and humanities for 30 years at Hinsdale South High School in suburban Chicago. He joined the local teachers’ union during his first week of teaching and went on to hold every local office, from negotiator to local president. Haisman then served on the Board of Directors of the Illinois Education Association/NEA and was elected IEA president in 1993 (with 71 percent of the vote in a three-candidate race) and again in 1996. He retired from teaching in 2000, but he never stopped being what he described as a “vaccine against cynicism” for his students.
SHER WATTS SPOONER: What inspired you to get involved in political activism?
BOB HAISMAN: My parents were involved in Dorothy Day’s Catholic Workers’ movement, so I learned from an early age about justice and activism. I walked picket lines with my father at least three separate times when his plant was on strike in the ‘50s and ‘60s. My mother was our Democratic precinct captain until she was in her 70s! I started helping her walk door to door when I was 7—carrying a thermos, an umbrella, and her extra candidate literature—during Adlai Stevenson’s first campaign against Eisenhower in 1952. I loved campaign work—it was in my DNA! Plus it was time with my mom. As I entered my teenage years, she gave me more and more responsibility. In 1960, my Mom and I campaigned for John Kennedy. We worked two precincts—because the neighboring precinct captain had died in June of 1960. My mom made every one of the “first contacts,” and I was the delivery boy. But I actually got to talk to folks when my mom was running behind. It was a different era—my mother “worked” people until she got their commitment to vote for Kennedy. She made a minimum of five contacts at every house in the precinct. My mother made sure everyone was registered to vote—everyone—even the small handful of Republicans who found their way to our west-side precinct. My father was “the closer.” He was a union man—a factory worker who never graduated from high school, who drank too much and as a result he slurred his words a lot. But he had the absolutely best three-minute, six-minute, and ten-minute talks on why every person needed to always vote Democratic, all three invoking the memory of FDR. I internalized them, but I so wish now that I would have had made tapes of my father’s legendary “FDR Talks.”
While the election of John Kennedy was a “Democratic thing,” it was also deeply significant to my whole family that a Catholic had been elected president. My dad celebrated Kennedy’s election with a number of “boiler-makers” with his cronies. My mom gave thanks for Kennedy’s election by saying the rosary (all day!) and by going to a special Mass at our parish church. So it is no wonder that the assassinations of John, Bobby, and Martin almost did us in.
SWS: Give us an example of something you did that really made a difference. What’s been your biggest sense of accomplishment?
HAISMAN: While I often say that “I’m not a member of an organized party—I’m a Democrat,” there have been victories to celebrate over my lifetime. Prior to 2008, I had asked my wife, Janet, to put “President, Illinois Education Association/NEA 1993-1999” on my tombstone. After 2008, I asked her to have it say, “He worked to elect Barack Obama President in 2008.”
I was fortunate enough to meet Barack Obama and to lobby him on educational issues when he was a state senator from Chicago’s South Side. He was a star in the Illinois Legislature. I helped in a small way with his bid for the U.S. Senate and in the famed five-way Democratic Senate primary in 2004. Janet and I took a local Democratic Party bus to the old state capitol in Springfield to witness Senator Obama’s announcement that he was running for president. It was a cold, cold day in January of 2007, but his speech electrified the crowd! I worked hard to help elect Obama—first, unofficially with “Teachers for Obama” all over Illinois. (The IEA had not yet endorsed, because there was a very active primary going on.) Eventually I landed in 2008 at the national headquarters in downtown Chicago, working with “Teachers for Obama.”
I was present in the “boiler room” at the national Obama headquarters the night of Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses … manning the phones … recording results, precinct by precinct, county by county, backing up the network TV results. I vividly remember sitting with a roomful of seasoned volunteers, in stunned silence, when it became obvious that Barack had upset Clinton and Edwards in Iowa!
Over the nine months following the Iowa caucuses, I talked to Obama organizers (green college kids working their first campaign) and teacher leaders all over the U.S., trying to help them organize Obama voters before their state’s primary. It was challenging, exciting, and a lot of work. Obama had pledged a “Fifty State Primary Campaign,” and we delivered. We had excellent leadership and organization from above. I was a worker bee, not a senior policy adviser. It was hectic, and the hours were long, but it was the sort of organized chaos that I love.
Three things stood out for me: As Obama actually began to look like he might successfully challenge Senator Clinton, I noticed the building and office security tightening up—sixfold. No one ever confirmed it, but there were credible rumors that the death threats against Barack, his family, and his campaign offices were taking on an ever-increasingly vicious racial overtone.
I also noticed the high ideals and ethics demonstrated by senior leadership. These were MADE a part of our campaign culture. There was no anti-Hillary talk, no jokes, no negative e-mails allowed. Period. We were repeatedly told that if we were ever caught being guilty of an anti-Hillary smear tactic or some nasty internet anti-Hillary garbage, we would be fired that day and asked to leave the national offices immediately. We did joke a bit about being “fired,” because no one was actually on a salary or even a stipend, but we appreciated the message.
Then there was election night—an unusually warm November night for Chicago. Janet and I and 300,000 of our closest friends got to meet the Obama family and celebrate in Grant Park on Chicago’s lakefront. People were ecstatic! There was no fighting, no drinking, no counter demonstration. People hugged and congratulated each other and sang “We Shall Overcome” until one in the morning … magical! What was my biggest sense of accomplishment in 50-plus years of political organizing? Helping elect Barack Obama President … twice.
SWS: What’s been your biggest disappointment? What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever encountered on the campaign trail?
HAISMAN: Carter—losing to the actor; Mondale—losing to the actor; Dukakis—losing to Willie Horton; Gore—winning, but losing to Bush II; Kerry—being swift-boated by Karl Rove; Bush II—starting the wrong war in the wrong place and those who opposed this not being able to organize the American people to oppose that war; Bush II—engaging in pre-emptive war, war crimes, and torture in the name of the American people and never being held accountable.
The weirdest thing(s)? Working-class, union people voting Republican. Interacting with anti-choice, pro-gun, anti-Obama racist protestors and realizing that we do not speak a similar language. Realizing that people I never met before—whom I have never hurt—could hate me so profoundly and quickly.
SWS: Several times, you’ve said, “This is my last campaign.” Yet when the next election rolls around, there you are again, gathering signatures to get someone on the ballot, traveling to Iowa before caucus night, making phone calls to voters. What keeps you going?
HAISMAN: I believe in our democracy. I believe in the separation of church and state. All my life I have taken seriously the first lines of the Declaration of Independence—“All men are created equal.” I take seriously the words on the Statue of Liberty—“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” When our democracy is in danger of being led by a demagogue and perhaps becoming more of an oligarchic republic where only the very rich have a voice, then I have to get involved. As much as I want to stay in bed with the sheets pulled up over my head, repeating, “It’s Only a Movie”—as much as I want to watch reruns of The West Wing and confuse it with reality TV—I have to act! I have six young grandnieces—they are the reason I worked so hard for Obama, [Illinois Sen.] Paul Simon, [Illinois State Sen. and gubernatorial candidate] Dawn Clark Netsch, Carter, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry.
We have to leave the world a more JUST place for those who follow. My father told me again and again that “one person can make a difference” … and I believed him! What keeps me going? Those grandnieces—Maisie, Victoria, Camila, Autumn, Lindsey, and Sage. None of them can vote yet, so I have to fight for a better world till they can take over for me.
SWS: You were a high school history teacher. Did your activism affect how you taught history? Did you share your activities with your students, and do you think you inspired them? What do you think the future of political activism is, and how can you get more (and younger) people involved?
HAISMAN: WOW—BIG QUESTION! I taught in DuPage County, and I had tenure, thank God! I felt it was my professional obligation to show those kids what a Democrat looked like. I honestly tried to inspire them every day to do something … good … great. I tried to show them examples from history of one person starting a reform, an improvement toward a more just world.
Yes, my activism affected how I saw history and taught history. There is so much cynicism, so much bad news, deceit, corruption, examples of man’s inhumanity to man—I wanted to be a vaccine against cynicism. I struggled to personalize history, to make being in my class an emotional experience. I did not ignore the dark, the heavy, the villainous, but I tried to emphasize that men and women of good will could band together and overcome great odds and create something good. I tried to identity heroes and exceptional leaders that were a force for good—for progress and civilization, not barbarism or exploitation. I tried to show that the arc of human history moved toward progress and “the good.” I taught that one person can make a difference, especially if he or she could successfully organize followers—regular people—to help them do good and fight evil. I tried to show my students that there are good people in every culture and society—no country is all good or all bad. Human beings have to choose to do good—and, more often than not, they do choose to do good.
The future? Young people! I view history from the long horizon view. During the 1930s and ‘40s, the young defeated the Depression, Hitler, and the Nazis. In the 1960s, the young made a difference as they pushed the discriminatory and racist ways of the past into the dust heap of history. There are always counter-attacks from reactionary forces, but we regroup and move toward the horizon again. There have been Obama’s young people, Sanders’ young people, the civil rights victories, victories of gay America—primarily brought on by the courts and young people. I believe young people will find their way to doing good, to improving society. I’m going to try not to stand in their way. They do not want or need my words or leadership—they can lead themselves.