Incredibly Kind Article that Marc Stier Wrote about My Work

Marc Stier is running the statewide healthcare reform in PA, is a faculty member of the Center for Progressive Leadership, knows most people in Philadelphia, and is one of my closest friends. He wrote this about my work.

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Hannah Miller On Tour
Submitted by Marc Stier on Mon, 02/16/2009 - 4:23am.
YoungPhillyPolitics.com

As many of you know, for her work with the Media and Democracy coalition, Hannah Miller is going to be working all over the country from a new base in to Washington, DC.

There was a going away party for Hannah on Friday that I missed because I was very late in getting back from Harrisburg. I was sorry to miss it because, though we said goodbye earlier in the week, I believe in the power and importance of public ceremony.

And when someone who is not only one of my best friends but an important part of the progressive movement in our city leaves for a time, that event should be marked publicly. So I had hoped to be there to say a few things about what Hannah has meant to all of us.

I’m a little reluctant to post this, undoubtedly much much longer more formal version, of what I would have said. It’s a little too eulogistic for someone only thirty two and totally healthy. And, I’m quite sure that the news of Hannah’s leaving our city is somewhat overstated: I’d be shocked if she doesn’t continue to be an important part of our political life not least by writing here.

Still, let’s err on the side of ceremony and take a moment to think about Hannah’s role in our city.

I met Hannah almost exactly three years ago, and had been receiving emails from her for about six months when I met her. For the last three and a half years I’ve known her, Hannah has been a critical part of progressive activism in this city.

Most of her achievements are well known:

She’s been a leader of Philly for Change.
She was a driving force in Anne Dicker’s campaign for state representative
She played a key role in making the State House Democratic by guiding Rick Taylor’s campaign, which gave Democrats a one seat advantage after the 2006 election.
She helped bring a disparate group of progressive council candidates together as a movement in 2007. While only one of us was elected to office, the impact of that race will be felt again in the future.
She helped Ellen Green-Ceisler become a Common Pleas judge and played an important role in Ruth Damskers’ campaign for County Commissioner in Montco.
She has been an important advisor to the leaders of the anti-casino and save the library campaigns. And as SEIU’s Health Care Campaign Manager she had an important, and continuing, influence on health care reform in Pennsylvania and beyond.
Two roles Hannah has played are not well known. One may only be important to me: Hannah was an enormous help to me as I tried to articulate my ideas about Philadelphia politics. “The Politics of Hope” was her phrase and the idea it expresses—the notion that we need a new kind of civic engagement in our city based on our belief in the power of collective action—still strikes me as the key to reforming our politics. (And I’m happy to see that in the last year or so an important national politician has been using the phrase as we did in 2007).

And, far more important was Hannah's unsung role in the Mayoral election of 2007. As a volunteer, Hannah contributed important themes to the campaign of Michael Nutter, helping him give a heroic narrative shape to his work in Council. And, more than anyone else, Hannah is the one who made Michael Nutter cool. Her posts at YPP and a Philadelphia Magazine article that not only quoted her extensively but was shaped by her perspective on the race, helped turn a candidate with a reputation for being a smart policy wonk with a progressive streak into a champion of a new kind of politics for the city.

That Michael Nutter has seemingly been trying to be uncool in the last few months, shouldn’t take make us forget that Hannah helped him realize his potential for giving hope to this city. (Nor should we give up on that potential just yet.)

Hannah has played different roles in these various campaigns and done them all well: as an inspiring recruiter of volunteers; as the creator of bold and effective campaign messages, as a canny strategist, as a fundraiser and as a psychologist to candidates trying not to get overwhelmed by their campaigns.

But much more important than what Hannah has done is how she has done it. Hannah’s work in our city has been filled with inquisitiveness, humor, passionate idealism and love.

As befits a former journalist, Hannah asks better questions (and more of them) than anyone else in politics in this town. That’s how she has learned so much so fast and how she has come to develop insightful, original political ideas. Hannah has, in my view, not always been right in her judgments. (Who is?) But she has been one of the handful of people whose ideas I can’t dismiss without thinking them through.

Sometimes her way of expressing those ideas (fluffy bunnies!) grates on people who think that politics has to be relentlessly serious. But there is no hope, and no getting up after you have been knocked down, without laughter. So Hannah’s incredible sense of humor, recognition of the absurdity of so much of politics and life, and willingness to risk seeming ridiculous to expose it, has helped keep us coming back for more.

Philadelphia is a city that is embarrassed of any idealism, let alone passionate idealism, that is not connected with the Founding Fathers. It is as if our reservoir of idealism was used up over two hundred years ago and we have been living without it every since—with the sole exception of the brief Dilworth-Clark moment when the springs flowed again. Hannah has refused to accept cynicism and passivity as our political lot and has challenged us to be passionate enough to drill down further in order to find a new well of idealism for Philadelphia

And she has done it with love for this city, its citizens and most of all her fellow activists. That’s not to say that Hannah hasn’t had her share of disagreements, and even angry ones. No political activist who doesn’t get angry at both injustice and the idiocy of her fellow activists is worth anything. So Hannah has had disagreements, and sometimes angry ones, with our opponents and with almost all of us as well, including me. But Hannah has the capacity of a fiction writer and sociologist to understand the lives of others as they do. That gives her the capacity to see the humanity in her opponents. And, that goes for her friends as well. Hannah doesn’t carry a grudge. Once the moment of anger has past, Hannah always looks for the best in everyone. I can think of ten or twelve times when, a few weeks after we have been railing about someone and I start in again, she declines to join me and, instead, starts talking about their good qualities and contributions to the progressive movement.

I’m one of many Philadelphia progressives who is grateful to have worked with Hannah as much as we have in the last three years. We are going to miss her. So while I wish her well I’m looking forward to her returning to our hometown.