The DNC Committee Team Did Something

With a common call to action at the DNC Convention of “Do Something,” staff and volunteers set the bar high.

I am not ashamed to say that when my plane took off out of Chicago Friday afternoon and looked down at the scenery below, with a row of empty seats next to me (🙏🏼), I broke down in tears. Now, that could partially be due to the utter exhaustion from five nonstop days of working, but it was also a result of absolute pride. 

Tuesday night at the United Center, Michelle Obama charged everyone listening to “Do Something.” She meant ensuring we spend the next 70+ days getting off the couch (😉), off social media, and into our communities to secure victories for Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and all other Democratic races on our ballot this November. However, perhaps the perfect messengers of that call to action were the staff and volunteer teams who made the Democratic National Committee Convention a resounding success. 

From the moment I touched down in Chicago until the second I left, every single staff member and volunteer was phenomenal. The hotel staff kept the bar and market open beyond regular operating hours so that convention-goers could get what they needed, and then also had breakfast staffed and ready to go at an equally ungodly hour; the United Center volunteers who seamlessly passed out thousands of placards with record speed to ensure we were prepared to cheer on whoever our next speaker was; the security team who worked with our staff and delegation to make sure we weren’t getting blocked in by the dozens of media cameras directly in front of us on the convention floor. Every piece was executed with thought and appreciation for the moment we were all there to celebrate. 

The City of Chicago rose to the occasion as well. Mayor Brandon Johnson and his team crushed it. Even with perceived threats of protest, there was never a moment that I was concerned about the safety of our delegation. And the call from companies to have employees who could work from home be remote so as not to have additional traffic on the roads? Brilliant call. Small things like that made the difference this week. 

I spent the week serving as a page to the South Carolina Democratic Party, which allowed me a unique vantage point to some of these behind-the-scenes moments you certainly don’t see at home and that many of the delegates may not have noticed. On a much smaller scale, I greatly appreciate how much extra time it takes to coordinate the logistics of some of these pieces - I cannot fathom the undertaking it was to take it all on at this large scale. There could have been so many opportunities for things to fall through the cracks, and other than some growing pains on Day 1 (which genuinely felt like the first day of high school, with everyone a bit jittery and unsure), things went off without a hitch. That is no small task. 

Countless people worked to orchestrate a convention of historic magnitude, and I certainly could never name or acknowledge them all. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t shout out some with South Carolina roots who I know played a massive role in this colossal success: from the very top with DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison to Clay Middleton, Bre Maxwell, Timicia Grant, and Donnie Fowler, to volunteers like Mallory Ditmer and Maria Gmitro, and more (wow, what a bench we have SC - sorry to those who I may not even aware of!) The 2024 DNC will go down in the history books for many reasons, thanks to efforts like theirs and thousands of others. 

As exhausted as we are after a week of endless joy, there is so much work to do back in the Palmetto State. It’s time to bottle up all the energy that filled the United Center and bring it home to go all in over the next ten weeks. Like our next Vice President says, we can sleep when we’re dead.