Back in April of 2018 I was working in a cabinet shop in New Holland, where I lived at the time, and was dealing with a lot of big life questions: What do I want to do with my life? Where do I want to end up? Do I really want to keep making cabinets for 50+ hours a week?
Around that same time I got a flyer, which told me about how my congressman hadn’t held a public town hall in over 350 days. The flyer had all these groups at the bottom: Lancaster Stands Up, Keystone Progress, and Our Revolution. At the time I only knew of one, Our Revolution. It took me a minute to remember that Our Revolution spawned from Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016. I finally felt like the world had made some progress, “Bernie’s in my town,” I remember thinking. It was the first time that I had felt hope since the 2016 election.
That hope led me to start canvassing and connecting with my neighbors, trying to see where I fit into the revitalization of the Lancaster community and what more I could do. I really liked LSU and I just kept showing up, doing whatever I could to be helpful. In September 2018 I quit my cabinet job to become a paid canvasser for LSU and it was one of the best decisions I made in my life. Feeling like everyday I was doing something to better humanity made me feel whole.
After the 2018 election, I was nominated to the LSU Leadership Team. I never would have imagined that in nine months my life could change so radically, but it’s because people believe in things getting better that I’m here. Lancaster’s all I’ve ever known and that’s exactly why I want to do everything I can to help us grow as a community.
