In bid for Senate seat, Khazei calls on Tufts students

    U.S. Senate hopeful Alan Khazei and Max Kennedy, the nephew of late Sen. Edward Kennedy, appealed to Tufts students yesterday to help in the candidate's eleventh-hour effort to win the special election in January.
    "The last election was about: ‘We need change,'" Khazei told a packed room in Sophia Gordon Hall yesterday afternoon. "This election is about: ‘How do we make change happen?'"
    Khazei, who announced his candidacy on Sept. 24 to fill the vacant Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat, said that the changes promised by President Barack Obama remain stalled in Congress.
    "The process is stacked by special interests and lobbyists in D.C," Khazei said.
    He called on the Tufts crowd and young people in general to help revolutionize Washington.
    "It has always been the young people who brought change to this country," Khazei said, citing the civil rights movement, opposition to the war in Vietnam and the movement to make Earth Day a national holiday as examples.
    "It's you all who elected Barack Obama," he told the students.
    Khazei cofounded the service program City Year and served as its CEO until 2006. He also founded and currently runs Be the Change, Inc., an organization dedicated to mobilizing citizens across the country to serve their communities.
    Kennedy formally endorsed Khazei yesterday, beginning a four-day joint effort with the candidate to garner support across the state.
    Kennedy echoed Khazei's calls for continued efforts to overhaul the Democratic Party, citing a deadlock in Congress even after the 2008 elections stacked the advantage in the Democrats' favor.
    "We have sixty Democratic senators, and we still can't pass health care," Kennedy said. Kennedy managed his late uncle's 2000 re-election campaign.
    Khazei organized his visit to Tufts little more than two days ago. Freshman Eric Peckham, who runs the group Tufts for Khazei, said students rushed to publicize the event through their Facebook.com pages and by other means, with some members skipping class this morning to hand out fliers. This last-minute scheduling is consistent with Khazei's larger campaign, as the candidate announced his candidacy considerably later than his competitors did. He hopes to sweep the Jan. 19 special election with a unique grass-roots effort.
    As Khazei describes it, he has no money, no political name and no large organization backing him. He has sixty days to do what Barack Obama did in a year.
    "I started with zero," he said.
    Khazei has refused to accept campaign donations from political action committees or lobbyists.
    "I'm not taking a dime," he said. "I don't want to be beholden to anybody except you, the citizens and voters of Massachusetts."
    Khazei's first step is to secure himself a place on the ballot, an effort that will kick off with a petition drive at 10 a.m. Saturday. Khazei called on Tufts students to help in his last-ditch efforts.
     "I'm going to ask you to dig deep, look at your schedules, put off your other extra-curricular activities and — don't tell your professors  — maybe skip a class or two," he said.
    "An hour is like a day, a day is like two weeks," Khazei continued. "The pundits and the experts all say this can't be done in sixty days. We need to show them it can be done."
    Khezei stressed the need for a "transformational approach" to multiple crises, citing the economy as the most immediate one.
    In addition to stressing the need for green jobs and universal health care, Khazei supports charter schools and repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell military policy on homosexuality.
    Khazei also told the Daily in an interview after his speech that he opposes a troop increase in Afghanistan unless Obama sets specific objectives for U.S. efforts. He also said Obama must set an appropriate timetable for American involvement in the country.
    Khazei hopes to draw on his role in the Senate and his experience in service organizations to build coalitions of experts and launch mass movements.
    "I understand that you have to build movements for change," Khazei said.
    He applauded Tufts' effort to promote active citizenship, such as the university's LRAP loan forgiveness program for non-profit service and the efforts of the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service. Khazai stressed that citizens of all ages and from all sectors must mobilize to bring about grassroots change.
    He also emphasized his efforts working with the U.S. Congress over the past 22 years to pass legislation, most recently the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which expanded funding and volunteers for AmeriCorps and similar organizations.
    Regardless of whom they support, Khazei stressed that students should be involved in current politics. "The best way to honor Senator Kennedy is to have a gigantic turnout in this election," Khazei said.
    Khazei's wife Vanessa Kirsch (LA '87), who sits on the board of Tisch College, also spoke at the event. Earlier in the day, Khazei addressed students at Harvard University, his alma mater, where he enjoyed another big turnout.