Hello, Fancy Comma Newsletter readers! Sheeva here to update you on what we’ve been up to at Fancy Comma, LLC, which is, well, not a lot.
This election cycle, I’m helping elect Kamala Harris and also working as a tutor and substitute teacher to pay the bills. No shame in that in this post-pandemic, post-ChatGPT economy that has not been kind to writers and marketers. Why hire someone to write this for me if I can get ChatGPT to do it for free? must be the world’s refrain right now. I’ve talked to my fellow science writers about this, and basically all of us agree that ChatGPT and genAI can’t actually take our jobs, but I guess there will be a learning curve for those who believe that it can. The jobs are slowly coming back, but not quickly enough. I did spend some time reworking our company’s entire value proposition and moving it away from “writing” per se and more towards “communication with a purpose.” That still evades most robots.
Besides all of that, the reason I am dedicating so much of my effort and time to work for free to elect Kamala Harris is that this election is very symbolic to me. Anyone who has worked in a male-dominated industry knows that sexism is all too real. I have worked in two: science and politics. I actually thought the rudeness I faced in calls with some prospective clients was sexism until I heard horror stories from men, so I guess I am lucky as a freelance science communicator!
I wish things were different, but they are not. It is quite tough to be a woman in STEM and having a woman president would make that easier, so why don’t we just elect one and finally break the glass ceiling and change the global perception of what women are capable of achieving? Mexico already has — and they elected an actual scientist in Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. So, that is part of what motivates me. My vote belongs to me, after all, and represents my dreams and aspirations.
A lot of people say you should not talk about politics. Charlie Brown, one of my role models, once famously said, “There are three things that I've learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.”
As the founder of Scientists for Harris, I have learned that many federal science jobs do not allow you to make political statements. It is sad, in a way, since science is so political that it is literally funded by our elected representatives in Congress.
Politics is part of my job as a researcher and communicator, so it’s tough not to talk about it — though I have gotten scolded for mentioning it in professional spaces! It’s tough not to talk about an entire sector of your work. What am I supposed to talk about, instead — football or something?
Granted, I approach it in a more pragmatic way than most — which candidate can I support that will likely disagree with me on some things, but will agree with me on the important things? Sometimes my work doesn’t involve political candidates but policy issues, which feels a lot more substantive and meaningful and bipartisan, but at the end of the day, I am a voter, too, with my own policy priorities.
Given my love of the political process, and desire to shape the future, I tend to get way too sucked into politics by the time election season rolls round. I’ve already traveled to Arizona for the Harris-Walz campaign kickoff rally there, and am considering flying to Erie County, Pennsylvania, to share a house with strangers just to knock doors there, since PA, like AZ, is a swing state. I feel very inspired by the work of Obama organizers in 2008 and since then, I have wanted to be like them and physically travel on the campaign trail. (Please don’t tell me that’s a crazy idea — I’m obsessed with the idea right now. I want to meet this guy.)
It can feel like a long, lonely slog working in politics at a time where people regularly insult politicians and they and their campaigns face actual violence. I voted for Donald Trump in 2020, after which his supporters (not me!) destroyed my former workplace, the Capitol Hill complex. Then, Trump himself became a target of political violence, which was of course not okay. Why do we live in a world where people feel like it’s okay to kill the people we ourselves elect? The political discourse has become very toxic, and it’s time for a change.
Don’t get me wrong, working in politics is fun, despite the potential hazards, but it’s a lot of work that is unpaid and taken for granted.
Still, I persevere because of all of my friends — Democrats and Republicans alike — who want a better world but don’t have time to volunteer, and for my fellow Americans who need to know what a world led by a woman will look like. (That’s why I helped work on Nikki Haley’s campaign this past March, after all.)
Next month, maybe my hard work will have paid off and I will have elected the first woman president ever — who knows?
In the meantime, I thank you, dear reader, for your patience. Feel free to poke around the Fancy Comma Blog or our YouTube if you miss us. We will be back and better than ever soon!
What we’ve been up to:
Despite my political campaign work (as well as being a tutor and a substitute teacher), we have managed to get some content out this month! On our YouTube, we’ve talked about science marketing with Paul Naphtali and I did a vlog recap of my trip to DC last month to advocate for health policy reform. On the blog, we’ve talked about the lives of Nobel Prize winning physicists, the role of biotech copywriters in communicating breakthroughs, and explained what science policy is.
Thank you for reading! If you live in the US, don’t forget to vote on November 5! Your voice matters, no matter where you live.
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