Let's start at the beginning. What is the Oregon Bus Project, and is there an actual bus?

The brand statement reads: "The Bus Project is an innovative vehicle for hands on democracy. The Bus drives votes, drives leaders, and drives ideas...and yes, we have a bus." The bus is a combo leadership incubator and volunteer-driven field operations mechanism. We focus on our 6 E's -- education, environment, economy, equal rights, election reform, and 'ealth care (with no h).

We have three core programs. The first program we began with is the reason it's called the Bus Project. We bought a bus, filled it with volunteers, teamed up with local leaders and volunteers, and visited swing legislative districts in Oregon to do "listening canvasses" on behalf of progressive state legislative candidates in close races. Bus volunteers have knocked on over 200,000 doors in the past 3 elections.

Second, we launched a nonpartisan voter registration, education, and turnout effort focused on young people.

And third, we launched a summer training program -- not AmeriCorps or PeaceCorps, but "PolitiCorps" -- a ten-week summer immersion program for up-and-coming hotshots. The bus has served as an incubator of some other cool programs as well, but those are the core three.

The core idea is service-driven democracy -- trying help foment a new progressive movement focused not merely on power-building, but service-doing. Not might makes right, but might FOR right. And demonstrating that the power of the engaged citizen can have a meaningful impact on the direction of our democracy.

In some ways, it sounds like a drunken fantasy that many of us have had -- "we should totally get a bus and then drive it all over the place." How did you come to actually buy the bus? How much do buses go for?

Well, it started with a look at the political map. This was before "blue and red America" had come into common parlance. Ascribing blue to Dems and red to R's came to popularity from an Atlantic Monthly article in late 2001/early 2002 -- prior to that, the colors ascribed the parties by TV stations switched every election. Coincidentally the article ran just months after we started working, we had already noticed the challenge that geography played on legislative politics. None of the swing races were in Portland, but rather were in suburban areas and sprinkled around the state.

So we went and bought a bus. You actually can get a bus pretty cheap. (Well, cheaper than you might think.) A new bus runs over 100k, but there isn't a highly competitive secondary market, so used ones are much cheaper. We got ours -- a 1978 touring coach -- for about 11 grand.

You can get a beater school bus on eBay for a few grand. Although I recommend the sorta bus that offers a bit more comfort and hipness.

When you say "we," who was involved in the early days?

The bus was started by some young folks and me -- all who were concerned about the state of our state, and about the disengagement of our generation. I had started chatting with various folks and pitching this idea for engaging young people in the process and focusing on turning the State Legislature. After a few weeks, I was invited to a meeting of 20-or-so young progressive types gathered at the Rogue Brewery, and I pitched the idea to them. All but one person at the meeting signed up to help. The one person who didn't sign up got on the bus eventually, she is actually my girlfriend now...and she happens to be sitting next to me right now.

Most of the folks engaged in the early days had very little political experience. But we were smart enough to know when we were dumb.

Friends of mine who were at the University of Oregon for a while have talked about how they found the cities in Oregon so different from the rest of the state.

The voting habits across rural, suburban, and urban lines in Oregon are indeed pretty profound. Portland is one of the most progressive places in the country -- Eugene, Corvallis, and Ashland are smaller but likewise progressive. Much of the rest of the state votes differently than those places.

This is no different than many other states. We recognized that to move the state forward, we needed to come together a bit across geographic lines. Here's a fun fact: over the past 30 years, an American is 4% more likely to live near someone with a different ethnic background. But we are 48% LESS likely to live near some with different political leanings. If we're going to come together around key problems like health care, renewable energy, investment in education, and generally protecting the public treasure, we gonna need to get beyond that ideological clumping.

You mentioned your policy focus, the six E's: education, environment, economic strength, equal rights, election reform, and, naturally, 'ealth care. What is the Bus Project plan for creating change on those fronts?

The first step for us was changing the Oregon legislature. In 2002 and 2004, we focused on 10 State Senate races, and nine of them won -- helping to turn the Oregon Senate for the first time in over a decade. In 2006, we focused on 10 State House races, and (weirdly) nine of them won. Oregon now has its first double-barreled Democratic legislature in nearly 20 years.

This legislative session, there looks to be real progress on some good stuff. We (Oregon, not just the Bus) just passed a biofuels package. Education funding levels will be at their highest in about 15 years. We are working hard for a plan that will provide health care to all Oregon's children. There is a plan before the legislature to install a renewable energy standard -- 25% of our energy output from renewable sources by 2025. [Former Governor] John Kitzhaber is pushing on a plan for overhauling the health finance system on the way to universal coverage. We have a chance for passing anti-discrimination legislation for sexual orientation. We also passed some cleaner-lobbying rules.

We won't get everything done, but this is already shaping up to be a banner year for positive change in Oregon. Our hope is that Oregon can over time become a progressive example to the nation -- as it has at various times in our history.

Your website talks about how, in 2004, the Bus Project spent $161,680 and gained $1,026,000 worth of volunteer hours. By that logic, does every dollar contributed to the Bus Project translate into six times that in progressive action?

Our hope is that, through volunteer-driven action we can indeed provide high leverage for donations. As we scale up, it might be hard to keep the 6-to-1 ratio -- that was aided by the fact that I didn't take a salary for two-and-a-half years -- but we're going to try. It will largely dependent on the engagement of volunteers. The bus is driven by volunteers, and their commitment will determine how effective we (and they) are.

Part of our basic case is that the country needs more volunteer-driven democracy. The public interest can't win based just on pay-for-play politics. It is in no one's individual self interest to invest $1 million for imperceptibly cleaner air. But it is in the self-interest of numerous organizations (read: companies) to invest $1 million in relaxing environmental restrictions for the addition of $1 million+ in additional profit.

For the public conversation to yield the public interest, we need a healthy dose of benevolent irrationality. That's what we mean when we talk about service-driven democracy.

How do you go about convincing volunteers to "get on the bus," as it were, of a pretty new organization? Who are your volunteers?

Engaging volunteers is indeed the key. First of all, the focus shouldn't be the organization -- it should be a new progressive movement. There are many organizations we have worked with who are doing great work and helping advance the movement. That said, there are a few things I can say about engaging volunteers.

First, fun. We end each bus trip with some community-building, fun kinda thing. Sometimes we have done policy conversations. Other times, we've done karaoke, kickball, listened to live music.

Second, great people beget great people. We work hard to engage really talented, smart, fun people -- the kind of people who attract other people.

Third, we work on making the work ABOUT something. We aren't raging against something, we are raging FOR a new progressive movement. Our enemies aren't certain political party operatives. Our enemies are apathy, greed, and selfishness. The idea is that together we are better than we are apart -- and that together we can help bend the arc of history towards justice.

The Bus Project are the folks behind the 2004 "Vote, F*cker" t-shirts. I think it's fair to say that humor and sarcasm aren't always the strongest tool in the progressive activist toolbox. How did "Vote, F*ucker" come about?

I don't know what you're talking about. We would never curse. Certainly not in the context of something as sacred as democracy.

Ah crap.

Heh.

As for humor, my view is that it captures a piece of the zeitgeist of our generation. In the 60s and 70s, "Kumbaya" was the activist's soul. Today, it is something more akin to the Daily Show. We want to be at the cutting edge of including humor in effective politicking.

We have a saying: "Smart and funny is better than stupid and boring. But if you have to pick, stupid is better than boring."

Buses have a certain role in progressive history. Rosa Parks, of course, refusing to move to the back of the Montgomery city bus. The Freedom Riders who desegregated public transportation in the south. Was it a conscious decision to join that tradition?

The metaphor of the bus is probably more powerful than its utility as a delivery vehicle. Getting on the Bus indeed has some tradition. From Rosa Parks, to the Freedom Riders, to Paul Wellstone even to Ken Kesey. Yeah -- we were conscious of the tradition.

We were also conscious that we wanted to gather a bunch of people and bring them to particular locations. And we wanted to save fuel.

On the Bus Project website is a progressive reading list. Out of 14 books, one of them is Moneyball: the Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis, about the Oakland A's. Why highlight a book about baseball statistics?

Moneyball is near the essence of our argument. It's about some geeks playing fantasy baseball who figured out that professional baseball was doing it wrong -- they were consistently misappropriating resources based on flawed valuations and calcified strategic habits. They were overpaying guy who looked good in their uniforms and stole a lot of bases, and they were underpaying fat guys who got a lot of walks. The small market Oakland A's -- trying to compete with teams of much larger budgets -- started hiring some of the undervalued players. And the Oakland A's became baseball's most successful franchises per-dollar, and changed the way the baseball culture valued players.

Volunteerism is one of those undervalued resources. Whether it's through churches, blogging, online actions, canvassing, registering voters, starting organizations, hosting house parties, talking at parties -- leveraging volunteer driven democracy is a big piece of how we can foment a new movement. We're not gonna get there just by buying more mail pieces and TV ads.

My sense is that our movement is the Oakland A's. And we need to identify the fat guys who get a lot of walks. Indeed, I like to think of myself as one of those fat guys.

Where does the Bus Project go from here? Is there a 50-state/50-bus model?

I would love for other states to take up the bus. At the same time, we aren't driven by manifest destiny, but by the idea that people can have an impact on the politics of their State. For the bus to work anywhere, there needs to be a team of really committed people locally-based and locally-motivated. We are doing some work with Montana (Forward Montana), Washington ("The Organization" aka "The Washington Bus"), and Colorado (New Era) to help local leaders start locally-driven organizations.

Their success will be almost entirely dependent not on anything we do, but on their own level of commitment and their ability to connect with people in their states. We recognize that much of politics is local (I know Tip said "all" -- I think he was maybe exaggerating a bit), and want to support local efforts.

That said, of someone calls us and wants to start a Bus Project, we'd love to figure out how to make it work. And there are programs that we are working to get adopted more broadly. One of those programs is Trick-or-Vote -- a massive Halloween canvass in 2008. Knocking on doors is the most effective mechanism for boosting turnout. Halloween is the one cultural tradition that includes knocking on a buncha doors. And Halloween is just a few days before the election. We might be too old to trick-or-treat, but you're never to old to Trick-or-Vote.

Hey, did you know that you have the exact same name as Jimmy Stewart's character in "Mr. Smith goes to Washington?"

Yeah, although I wasn't aware of it until I was in law school. Until then, people would say "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and I would think they were being stupid -- after all, there are a lot of "Mr. Smiths." And then I saw the movie. Turns out I had been the one being stupid. Now it's one of my favorite movies (although it ends too suddenly for me). There's a great part of the movie, towards the beginning, when a bunch of children are telling their Governor-father that "Jefferson Smith would make the best Senator." "He oughtta be President." "I like Jeff Smith." "Jefferson Smith is the greatest guy there is."

Whenever I'm feeling down on myself, I just play that part and put it on loop.

You can learn more about the Bus Project and make a contribution to their work at busproject.org. If you're into this sort of thing, you can join their Facebook group. How about spending the summer in Oregon with the Bus Project? Applications to their 10-week PolitiCorps program are accepted on a rolling basis.

[Jump to comments from this interview's original posting on MyDD.]