August 13, 1968
by Janine Stephenson
We were fired!
Oh, they tried not to call it that. A woman I've never even seen before pulled both Becca and I into a room and told us that the campaign was letting us go.
"The Senator is encouraging all young people like yourselves to go home and become involved with your community." Or something like that.
Becca and I looked at each other. She had that "Is this really happening?" look in her eye.
"But we've been with the campaign since the very beginning. We traveled all the way from Madison, Wisconsin and missed a semester of college. And we bartered and ate peanut butter sandwiches and spent our own money to travel with the campaign. And now, you're telling us to go home?"
She said yes. Since we were under 20 years of age, we could not go to the convention.
Arguing was useless. She had it clear in her mind that we were just too young to go to Chicago. Even though we are not too young to have our boyfriends killed in a stupid war.
We walked out of the meeting quietly.I began to cry. Becca tried to be very comforting, telling me that the woman was obviously some know-nothing jerk. Becca said she would talk to Craig.
But I told her. I said that maybe Craig can't save us. Maybe this is the end of the line. Clearly they didn't care about what we did while we were here in Washington. They don't know what to do with young people. Which is strange because this was our campaign.
I told her to forget it. That we need to go pack our bags.
Outside of the office, a bunch of younger volunteers had gathered. They were also being sent home. I was surprised to see Baby John there. He told me that he decided to stop by to see if we had been kicked out of the campaign too. I told him that we had, indeed. Then I began to cry again, which I hate.
Anyway, Baby John said that we could go with a bunch of his poverty program friends in a van to Chicago. That, in fact, we absolutely needed to go because this was our campaign and our convention. "They can't fire you from your own campaign. What kind of nonsense is that?"
I told Becca that we oughtta go with Baby John. He's a great guy. She seemed to give it some serious thought, especially since she likes vans.
So I said for certain that I'd like to go. Becca said that she would talk to Craig, but that she really wanted to go with Baby John as well.
Who would've ever thought that we'd be stuck outside of our own convention? Baby John says that like everyone else in the country, we're disenfranchised. And just like everyone else, we're locked out of the political process.
