Something about Oregon Bus Project Chairman Jefferson Smith brings people together.
For example, while he was a student at the University, he volunteered as a basketball coach at Roosevelt Middle School and took his team to the finals. Smith packed the middle school gym with 150 of his Beta Theta Phi fraternity brothers and their friends, creating a cheering bloc of Pit Crew fame.
“Our fans were louder and probably significantly more inebriated,” he recalled.
The team won, and one of the players went on to become a star player at Sheldon High School.
So it really wasn’t much of a surprise when Smith, three years out of Harvard Law School with bright prospects, decided to start the Oregon Bus Project, a grassroots political organization that now has more than 4,000 volunteers.
Smith will be speaking to a number of groups in Eugene, including the University College Democrats and the greek community at the University, on his whirlwind tour of the city to promote his group’s progressive platform. The College Democrats will host Smith on Thursday in the EMU Rogue Room at 5 p.m. The Interfraternity Council and the Panhellenic Council also are hosting a speech by Smith, open to all students, Thursday at 5:30 p.m. in Columbia 150.
Senior political science major Samantha Bouton, co-chairwoman of the College Democrats said her group supports every tenet of OBP’s platform.
“Jefferson really speaks to what’s important to the College Democrats,” Bouton said.
Smith said he started on the road toward founding the OBP after he turned down a $250,000 job with Wachtell and Lipton, a large firm in Manhattan, after he found out the firm’s biggest clients were tobacco companies.
In 2001, Smith returned to his native Oregon, but he was disheartened because he found a state with “broken politics.” A year or so earlier John Wykoff, director of the Oregon Student Association and one of Smith’s best friends, had pitched Smith an idea about restarting the Democratic Forum, a conference that had existed in the 1970s to bring together young, up-and-coming leaders.
Smith and Wykoff revived the discussion when he returned to Portland, and Wykoff suggested they add a completely different dimension to the project.
“He suggested … we actually have action to advocate for candidates we support,” Smith said.
Thus, the Oregon Bus Project was born “after a lot of hard work by a lot of people.”
“The inspiration was coming back to Oregon and realizing the politics are broken,” Smith said. “What drove me crazy was that the people of my generation weren’t doing much about it.”
In developing the project’s platform, Smith said they looked at the issues they cared about, which happened to be “hauntingly similar” to those of the Progressive campaigns of the early 1900s.
“It’s not left, it’s not right, but it’s forward,” Smith said of the project’s label as a progressive group.
The project’s platform can be summed up in the “six E’s: Environment, economy, equal rights, election reform and ‘ealth care.”
Partially inspired by the Freedom Riders of the Civil Rights Movement, the project purchased a 1978 charter bus and carted around 4,000 volunteers, mostly young people, to support progressive candidates around the state. Experts told them they were crazy, and one even said “volunteerism is dead.”
But defying the critics, six of the seven candidates for whom the OBP dedicated their full support were elected.
“It demonstrated … grassroots campaigning can be very effective,” he said.
The OBP continues its grassroots campaign support and is planning to sponsor a “Trick-or-Vote” door-to-door voter registration drive on Halloween. Smith quipped that while many are too old to trick-or-treat, “you’re never too old to trick-or-vote.”
Another element of the organization is its grassroots media effort to communicate progressive values. The OBP currently puts out a ‘zine titled “Zephyr” and also will release a CD later this year featuring music by Oregon musicians and Everclear lead singer Art Alexakis, who is involved with OBP.
Freshman pre-psychology major Heather Brule is the co-chairwoman of the recently started Lane County chapter of the OPB. She said she was attracted to the project because it promotes values that appeal to everybody.
Co-chairman James Mattiace called the project “a fun and exciting way to get involved with politics.” He also stressed the importance of young people getting their voices heard.
“The power structure is not going to pay attention until you pay attention to the power structure,” he said.
For more information on the Lane County chapter, e-mail the OBP at [email protected].