Amy Mello reflects on MassEquality experience

As she leaves for California, MassEquality's Amy Mello looks back and ahead at gay activism.

At her going away party on March 27, Amy Mello recalled leaving an interview for the position of MassEquality field director in 2004 certain that she'd be passed over for the job.

"I said there's no way I'll get this job. They're not going to pick a straight girl from Fall River. It's just not going to happen," the notoriously media shy Mello told a crowd that included Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and his wife Angela, current and former state lawmakers and marriage equality activists from around the state at 28 Degrees in Boston's South End.

She could not, however, have been more wrong about her job prospects. Marc Solomon, who, as MassEquality's political director at the time was primarily responsible for Mello's hiring, was instantly impressed with Mello's passion for the issue of marriage equality, her exceptional intellect and her vision of how to energize and mobilize grassroots support statewide. He immediately called Marty Rouse, MassEquality's campaign director, telling Rouse, "She's the one we need."

"I called her back within an hour and offered her the job," said Solomon, who took the helm of MassEquality in 2006, after Rouse's departure.

Not surprisingly, Solomon has taken Mello with him to Equality California (EQCA) where he will head up that organization's effort win back marriage equality in the Golden State after it was overturned by Proposition 8 last November. The two settled into their Los Angeles offices on April 1 and now face the daunting task of organizing a likely ballot initiative campaign in a racially and culturally diverse state about 20 times the size of Massachusetts in terms of land area and with more than five times the population.

But those who worked closely with Mello on the ground here in Massachusetts say that if her work at MassEquality is any indication, Solomon once again made the right hiring decision. Anne Stanback, the executive director of Love Makes A Family, the Connecticut organization that led that state's successful effort to secure marriage equality and to which Mello lent her organizing talents through much of 2008, said that Mello is the perfect person to capitalize on the renewed sense of activism among LGBT people in California in the wake of Prop. 8.

"I think that Amy will be able to tap into a whole new crop of activists who realize that they might not have stepped up enough before last year's election and they aren't going to miss the opportunity to do it this time," said Stanback. "And if anybody can find those people and motivate them it's Amy."

Through numerous interviews with lawmakers and marriage equality activists like Stanback, the portrait of Mello that emerged was of a dedicated, determined and strategic organizer who motivated and empowered average LGBT people and straight allies to fight for marriage equality through the power of her own example.

State Rep. Bill Bowles, an Attleboro Democrat who, with MassEquality's help, won election to a seat that was long held by an anti-equality Republican last year, said that Mello's push for his campaign volunteers to extend their phone banking hours and make a harder sell when calling voters was initially met with grumbling, but Mello won their confidence by the hours she put in doing grunt work - be it folding fliers, phone banking or canvassing in the rain. "People saw that she wasn't all talk, she was action," said Bowles. "She would come in and go door to door and come back when it was dark. We knew that she was one-hundred percent committed. When you're one-hundred percent committed, people tend to say, well maybe I'll listen to this person."

But Bowles also praised Mello for her strategic insights into what it takes to win an election. He recalled that about a week prior to Election Day, Mello called him and confessed that while his race against an anti-equality Republican candidate looked close, she was nervous that Bowles, who was almost out of campaign cash, was going to lose. She suggested that he drum up a few thousand more dollars to do some targeted phone banking. An alarmed Bowles followed Mello's advice, with some success. "We actually did turn some people that were undecided ... on a couple of issues," said Bowles.

When Election Day rolled around, Mello had the campaign execute what she called a "push and pull" strategy, in which campaign staffers call identified supporters and visit them at home, and strongly urge them to go and vote.

"She said, 'We don't want to take no for an answer; these people who haven't voted, grab 'em and take 'em to the polls.' I said, 'That's never been done around here and I don't think people are going to respond to it.' She went out and executed it and got a few folks to the polls," Bowles laughed. "She said, 'They're not going to refuse to get in my car and go to the polls.'"

Paul Meoni, the former chair of South Shore Civil Marriage for All, also praised Mello's strategic thinking and her ability to steer grassroots activists toward productive ends. "She kept us really focused on the individuals that we needed to focus on," said Meoni of his group's lobbying efforts. For instance, Mello correctly targeted state Rep. Garrett Bradley of Hingham as a legislator who could be moved on the issue, as opposed to lawmakers like state Rep. Bruce Ayers, a Randolph Democrat who showed no signs of changing his mind on equal marriage. "She just kept us going on [Bradley], as far as who to talk to in Hingham, who were the players, who was the head of the Democratic Town Committee, etc., calling them the 'grasstops' ... and making sure that our members of South Shore Civil Marriage for All were contacting these individuals to make sure that they put pressure on Garrett to do the right thing."

Mello joined MassEquality in late 2004, after an amendment to overturn marriage equality in favor of civil unions for same-sex couples received preliminary passage by the legislature, energizing and politicizing the LGBT community on an unprecedented level. With four years of work doing research and field work for EMILY's List and NARAL Pro-Choice Washington on her resume, Mello immediately set about harnessing that energy by reaching out statewide to LGBT people who had been active on the marriage issue in their own communities and giving them the tools they needed to change the hearts and minds of neighbors, family members and most importantly, their lawmakers.

Kate Tyndall, co-founder of Greater Lowell Equality Alliance, one of MassEquality's regional affiliates, recalled Mello inviting her to one of MassEquality's organizational meetings around that time. "I don't even know how she got my name," said Tyndall.

Tyndall, who teaches psychology at UMass Lowell, said Mello's enthusiasm for the cause was infectious. "It always amazed me that this straight woman was willing to do this," she said. "And if a straight woman's willing to do this, how can I not?"

That's not to say that it was easy for Tyndall to get involved in the battle. Up until the state Supreme Judicial Court issued its Goodridge ruling, she was mostly silent about her long-term relationship with Debra Grossman, who is now her wife.

"To this day I say that I became engaged in conversations that I never ever thought would happen. I never thought I was political, but I became very political," she added, noting that she has often told her students that "all politics is personal."

"And that became so clear when I started working with MassEquality," said Tyndall. [Mello] would emphasize all the time [that] it's so important to tell your story, to put a face with the issue."

Jerry Ringuette, a co-founder of Quincy for Marriage Equality, another of MassEquality's affiliate groups, said Mello was instrumental in helping him set up his initial meetings with lawmakers to lobby them to support marriage equality - the prospect of which he found terrifying. Mello helped him with some talking points, then told him, "speak from your heart."

Now a seasoned activist who has taken a leadership role on LGBT activism in the Quincy area, Ringuette credited Mello with giving him the tools for his transformation. "I can't stress enough how much she does," said Ringuette, noting that Mello helped Quincy for Marriage Equality with the networking required to get local elected officials and civic leaders to come out in support of equal marriage.

Ringuette expressed no doubt that Mello's skills would translate to California's more treacherous political and cultural landscape.

"Anything that Amy tackles, I feel she'll be a success," he said. Ringuette's biggest concern is that Equality California is strategic in where they put her to work. "I almost feel that they need to put her in the most difficult areas, I really do," he said. "And they need an army of Amys and I think they'll be successful."