Campaign Before You Can Walk
Campaigning as a part of family life.
For those who don’t my name is KCM (Katie) Campbell-Morrison and I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. Throughout my childhood many of the most important adults in my life were in public service. My dad was the City Planner for the City of Cleveland until 2001, my mom was a public official serving as a State Representative, County Commissioner and the Mayor of Cleveland form 2001-2005 and my grandmother was the General Secretary of the National Council of Churches from 1990-1999. As a child of the 90s my family was in the public eye for the better part of my formative years which created an odd effect of simultaneously being on the inside and outside. I knew way more about Cleveland development, politics and international affairs than is strictly necessary for a child yet always felt like I was on the outside never quite fitting in. It is a strange feeling for seemingly everyone around you to have an opinion about your family, seems to know you and your family’s jobs are front page news.
Needless to say my childhood was not normal — although whose really is? However, it was was weird to share family stories of how your mom was the first pregnant legislator in the Ohio State House of Representative and the Speaker was convinced she would give birth on the floor. Childhood photos are filled with images from campaigns, toddling across the desk during Congressional hearings and meeting political leaders. I attempted to color the municipal scale model for the new Browns stadium to better fit my personal ascetic until my father told me the model was mmuuucchhh more expensive than my allowance and I could not afford to replace it. I knew words like constituent, campaign finance and ethics violation before I knew the difference in spelling between dose and does. Although to be fair I am pretty sure I couldn’t spell does until I was roughly 13, spelling is not my strong suit.
This feeling that everyone knew something about my family but no one really knew me as a person gave me the nagging sense I was different than my peers. There are just some parts of your life that are hard to relate with when you are waiting for your police escort to pick you up after school while your friends wait for their step-mom. We had a closet full of Tootsie Rolls to throw out during summer parade season, if a stop light was out my dad would immediately call his office to get it fixed — heaven forbid I complimented a flower I would get an hour long lecture about why that flower was placed there and what it meant for neighborhood development. My grandmother would casually mention her dinner with Yasser Arafat as if he was just the guy from downstairs and seemingly every Friday evening my parents had a black tie affair. In my house campaigning was a way of life, public service was a given and strong female leadership was an expectation rather than exception.
Like many of you I have seen a treasure trove of political autobiographies telling the story of those who were in positions of power and many books about the spouses that stood beside them. But what about the children? What about those of us who were taken along for a ride not by choice or marriage but by luck of the birthing lotto. The stories by children like me whose lives were simultaneously extremely protected and extremely exposed.
I know there are much more significant things happening in our world as we reckon with the systemic dehumanization of Black and Brown lives in our country in the face of a pandemic, state sanctioned violence and rampant political corruption. However, I hope this blog may inspire you to reflect on the lessons you learned from your parents, how the oddities of your own individual experience shaped your personhood, if power and privilege played a significant role in your upbringing. How do we teach our children about civic responsibilities through our actions and words. What are they seeing from the inside we may be too close to recognize?
This is a blog about the view from the inside.
