I’m sure you’re already sick of hearing about everyone’s mom today, but I have to tell you about mine, cause I wouldn’t be doing this work without her.

I was raised in a very political household. My earliest political memory was at five going to an Al Gore rally on Halloween (Al Gore being in LA on Halloween probably should have been a red flag, but anyway). I was dressed as Ozma of Oz and on my dad’s shoulders and I had a crick in my neck all day that wouldn’t go away.

My next memory is when I was seven and I was so angry at my mom for not taking me trick or treating cause she had to keep phone banking. She didn’t stop for weeks. In 2012 she even got the attention of the Obama campaign as one of their most dedicated callers.

I’m not gonna keep taking you on a journey through my life, but one more. I was in 5th grade, and we had to learn a skill from our parents. I spent the project learning how to phone bank. It was for Stanley Tookie Williams who was on death row. I was 10 and chose to learn to phonebank to save his life. (sadly, he was executed anyway.)

It’s funny, even with that being my history, I never imagined I’d be working in politics. But, it’s in my blood. I was raised by an activist, so it’s really not shocking that I became one myself.

Politics is not fun, like it used to be. It’s scary and life and death every single day, but it’s still something special I share with my mom.

In fact, you might not know this, but my mom is one of my volunteers. She helps me find elections to put in the election guide.

She helped me brainstorm pretty much every big idea for this project. Daily Dems Doing the Work, Making Noise and Fighting Back was her idea after I ranted about no one talking about what Dems were doing the week after Trump was inaugurated.

And she’s still doing her own thing politically too. She’s a big protest person, but there aren’t a whole lot of protests around us weekly, so she created one. It’s been going for about two months now and they get about 20 people weekly, and I’m just so proud.

When I was growing up, she was the one who put work into making me an activist and now it’s my turn to be the one saving the world. Show her what I learned from everything she taught me over the years.

So, mom, Happy Mothers Day. You know this already, but I would not be doing this work without you.