total time: 21.49 minutes
total words: 1552
[Danielle Balocca]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelley. Shelley is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist.
[Chelli Keshavan]: And Danielle is a community mobilizer and changemaker. And this is the Medford Bites podcast. Every two weeks, we chew on the issues facing Medford and deliver bites of information about the city by lifting the expertise of our guests.
[Danielle Balocca]: Join us in discussion about what you hope for the future of Medford. And as always, tell us where you like to eat. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you don't mind just starting with an introduction, so if you could share your name, pronouns, and just a bit about who you are.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Sure. Thank you for having me. My name is Patrick Clerken, and you'll see on a lot of my signage, my first name is actually Charles. So if you see Charles, that is Patrick. My pronouns are he, him. And my backstory is I've lived in Medford for seven years now. I live in the Tufts practice fields area. And what got me to, I'm sorry if I'm skipping ahead and you're gonna ask this question anyway, but what got me into this race was a neighbor said, oh, I really wish someone would join. So that was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back, but it's really been this cumulative process of me getting more and more involved in the neighborhood that I live in because community neighborliness is something that I really value. So I feel like it's been a long time coming.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you, yeah, and we definitely will follow up with some other questions about the campaign. But before we do that, we're just gonna ask you kind of like common question for everyone, which is what is your choice to eat in Medford and what do you like to eat?
[Patrick Clerkin]: So I really, people will argue with me over what qualifies as a restaurant. Like I say, a cafe, I would say I really like Brownder, which is right near me. I really like Rosso's on Mystic Ave. Particularly, they have a pork chop with fingerling potatoes and vinegar peppers, which I find really delicious. So I'll give you the specific dish as well.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Well, I think so maybe we can just jump in. You started to touch on reasons for running and what your initial commitments to council may look like. Maybe you could dive in a little deeper and maybe even share some sort of pieces of why your particular background and, you know, capacities, capabilities might lend to a strong, you know, experience on the council.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Sure. Yeah. I think that what you'll see in a lot of my campaign imagery and various sites and social media is this image of the bridge. And it's because, uh, throughout my life, I've been involved in a lot of different, uh, organizations or jobs where I find myself basically being this, this mediator role between different groups. So I'm a mechanical engineer. And I worked in a corporate job for a little bit as an employee. I'm now a contractor for that same company. But I was often between the engineers and the marketers who really speak a different language. And they're both valuable, but in isolation, they can go way to the extreme. And that's what I find in a lot of political situations is I think that people get really bogged down in the culture wars, and I'm not saying that there's no value in the culture wars, but I think that conservatives and progressives can actually have a lot of areas of agreement and overlap that they don't necessarily realize. And I think that I can be sort of a fundamental link between them. To give you some other examples of me being sort of this this bridge or this intermediary role is when I was in college, I went to Northeastern. I joined a fraternity, Alpha Kappa Sigma, and I am now out of college. I'm on the fraternity trust. And so that means basically working between the different generations, the alumni and the actives. Growing up, went to a church and I grew up in North Reading. and the Union Congregational Church. And I was on their board, the House Committee, which dealt with sort of handyman type stuff around the church, the church grounds and facilities. And so that was dealing with a lot of different groups of people. I don't know. I just often find myself in this position. So it seems a little bit destined. I think I can really do it for Medford. I have a lot of patience and a lot of curiosity. And I think it's a role that is needed right now because I've seen a lot of animosity.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Agents might be key if you're used to a corporate pace stepping into public office.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah, I've been watching a lot of Parks and Rec too to get myself prepared for some of the things I might see.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, we saw you're checking out your campaign page on Instagram and we're seeing a couple of your posts. The most recent one was like a meme of calling yourself a cautious optimist.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah, yeah. I've used that term before and I differentiate that from obviously a pessimist. and a naive optimist, which is kind of like the, we all know the pessimist, or maybe it's optimist. Well, I was gonna say the meme with the dog with everything on fire. You know, I guess that's more of an optimist, but, and he's saying, oh yeah, everything's fine. But a naive optimist to me is the like, oh, like good vibes only, nothing wrong here. And so I'm not naive to the problems of the world. But I believe it or not, I am actually optimistic. I think that people, like I said before, I think people have more in common than they realize. It's just untapped right now.
[Danielle Balocca]: I wonder, though, what you've seen those areas of contention to be in Medford. Because I think sometimes when we hear some of those topics, like you mentioned the term culture wars, some of those ideas are sometimes do center around like certain groups like human rights, right? So like I do wonder like what you see as those topics being in Medford and sort of what the ones you would choose to be most relevant or where there could be some sort of sharing of common ground versus maybe a right or wrong answer.
[Patrick Clerkin]: So two things that come to mind right away. The first is relations between tenants, landlords, homeowners, and developers. I see that has a big core as to what Medford has been and what Medford wants to be. And people have different opinions on both of those and very strong opinions because those are opinions that are not purely objective. They're wrapped around people's identities, right? And anything that's wrapped around your identity is going to be fraught and difficult. And so trying to bring those different interests to the table in a way that allows them to see that you do need balance among these things. There are different roles in an ecosystem, you have to look at Medford as an ecosystem and to say we need to basically prioritize homeowners above renters or renters above homeowners. Unless it's a very specific context, it's kind of like saying, oh, we should just get rid of pine trees in the ecosystem and not thinking that's going to have rippling consequences, right? I do think there's a balance that's kind of underappreciated right now when people have these narrow special interest views. So that's one thing. And the other thing is transparency. People talk about it a lot. It's become a buzzword, but I think not just transparency, but the ability to communicate between the mayor and the council and the school board, between all of the departments of City Hall, and then between the constituents of Medford across all 16 precincts and City Hall. So it's like there's a lot of siloing. And I think that when, When we look at the issues out on the streets, like the potholes in the roads, I, like most people in Medford, want to see those fixed. But I also want to get across to people that it's often the tip of the iceberg. It's not just what you see in front of you. It's also a behind the scenes. And like I said before, I have the patience to kind of disentangle that mess. If you ever worked with a box of holiday lights that are all tangled up in a knot, I have the patience of working with different people with that. So that's what I really am going to try to bring to this.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, I think too over the last, I'm going a little bit off of our script here, so I apologize. I think over the last couple of years, especially during COVID, as people became like a little more engaged in city politics and issues in the city, and we saw the murder of George Floyd and all the sort of cultural outcomes for that for Medford, there have been some big issues that I think have divided folks. So like an example would be like the renaming of what's now the Missiduck School and sort of how that what that's meant for different people in Medford and I think that that was like a really like contentious argument.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Or maybe even the vote to declare racism a public health crisis and just, you know, absorb that as a truth. Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: And you mentioned sort of intergenerational communication, right? And I think Medford has a history of being like a pretty culturally Italian city and how that sort of came up in that, in the renaming of the Mizzou Tuck School. So yeah, I guess I see those as like some of those issues I was referencing before that like really have impacts on some people's like, you know, sense of safety in the city and how you feel like that. I don't know how you feel like that would work into your sort of bridge making approach.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Yeah, I think it's like what you mentioned with the renaming of the Columbus School to the Mississippi Tuck School is a good example of these various groups that any given issue isn't just in isolation. It's chained to a whole bunch of other issues, right? And so that isn't just seen as a simple, for the various sides involved, it's not seen as a simple one-off change. It's different groups of people feeling sort of this anxiety of are we being slowly eroded or erased here, you know? And I think that what I'm trying to bring to the table is more like explaining to people the fuller context of things and sort of reassuring them that like this isn't a symbolic of, you know, if someone's saying, I don't want the school to be renamed because it's, you know, like there's a proud history here for us, like I understand that they're not saying that they're proud of all the terrible things that Columbus might have done, aside from the good things that he might have done, right? I also would try to explain that this isn't part of a large conspiracy to erase your cultural history from Medford, it's more to sort of balance things. And there's always a give and take, you know? I really do think that a lot, like there's a missed opportunity where a lot of people feel that they're approached on these topics in a very adversarial way. And it's just like the conversation from there only starts with people digging their heels in, and it only gets worse from there. So it's funny because, I have some policy ideas, but I also think a big part of this is just cultural, where you've got to get people to, like I said before, put down the guns and the standoff where everyone's got a gun pointed at each other. And that's not just a me thing. I'm going to do my best to do that and treat all the different parties with respect. That doesn't mean that I think that any given party is fully right on anything. that's not just a me thing. Like a lot of people need to pull together to that. So I'm going to try to at least display that as much as possible.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Do you have thoughts on what that looks like? And you know, in your potential role as Councilor, what does it look like to practice, you know, listening, hearing, education, you know, the pieces you're kind of mentioning around shifting perspective, even if it's just a little bit for some.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Well, I've already started it to an extent, I've tried to incorporate it as much as I can in my campaign where I have tried to meet with all the other candidates that are running to various degrees of success I know people are busy but I'm at least trying to do that. have sent letters to all the city hall departments basically being like, look, I'm not trying to get you to rat on anyone or anything. I'm not trying to get you to put yourself in a hot seat. I can understand if you don't want to, but what are the things that you think work well in your department that you think don't work well, that kind of stuff. And it was to every department. I didn't just focus on one area or another. So it's kind of bringing the voices to the table in a broader way. And with the expectation that, okay, this is going to be a constructive conversation rather than like a quick devolution into the depths of the culture wars, you know? Because there's a lot of baggage that comes with that.
[Chelli Keshavan]: I guess when I asked that question, my assumption was that you might speak about sort of grassroots, the folks of Medford, I think in some ways, other candidates who are already running and folks who are employed by City Hall occupy spaces of power in a different way than kind of the common citizen. So I guess I wonder, like, do you have, you were talking about potential policy thoughts, do you have thoughts on how you might, you know, own some of the work on the ground? and how can constituents feel connected to your work?
[Patrick Clerkin]: How to own some of the work on the ground, is that what you asked? Yeah. Yeah. So almost borrowing from the idea of the fireside chat from like 70 years ago or whatever, this idea of having an update for people. And I hope that can somehow merge into the idea of a common source that people can reference. It used to be print journalism. I don't know to the degree that it will be print journalism, but I do know that everyone has their own facts now or their own thing that they check. So trying to bring some of that into ideally something that could be distributed to the different precincts in Medford so that people have an idea of what's going on. And then another idea that I had was how people could contribute and understand and put forward better ideas is inspired by basically Google Maps, where on Google Maps, you have these different layers. You can see the transit layer, the business layer, the recreation layer. And I was thinking, what if Medford had basically that, but for each department, where each department submitted a map that represented its ongoing projects or where its key uh, resources are located. I don't, you know, if it's, if it's all the schools, if it's all the spiritual stuff in Medford, if it's all of the, um, the, uh, street repairs under construction, everything. And then you, you basically brought that together in some form of, uh, document and, and made it accessible for everyone so that when they put forward ideas for projects, It kind of forces them to see Medford in a more multi-dimensional way rather than just, oh yeah, take all the money out of the budget and put it towards my project. Those are two ways.
[Chelli Keshavan]: I have a mentor who used to say, build it and white people will come, right? Like whether it's print journalism, whether it's office hours, Facebook live, right? If you create a mechanism for access, especially oftentimes the loud minority will show up because they're used to being heard. They're very comfortable with engaging. And I say, I think one of my thoughts is what does access to you and your, you know, the power that you might glean by way of this role, what does that look like for women, right? How will you lift female voices in Medford? How will you lift BIPOC voices in Medford? I think especially since Floyd, we've had a lot of conversation about how and why that hasn't happened. And so like, I'm very, I am in Medford known for being very, very blunt, but like just saying like, you know, why another white guy? Or like, what is special about your role in making space for us?
[Patrick Clerkin]: So I would imagine that all these various groups aren't just some people lumped together and cluster together, but there's probably also quite a spread of all these different groups across Medford, right? And so I would hope that in just making sure that each of the precincts has access to, like what I was saying before, the journalism or if there's a new repository that's put on the website, making sure that the marketing is put towards each precinct rather than just where most of the money is. I would say that's really at a granular level, probably as far as I can go, and I have to trust that the rest of it needs to happen with other on-the-ground people and micro-community leaders in I'm trying to focus on the arteries and the veins, and I need other people to focus on the capillaries, because I can't do it all myself, and nor would I try to do it all myself. I want this to be a group effort, and I want to, like I said before, bring the voices to the table, and not just the loud, angry voices in every group, you know, really some of the voices that get talked over a lot. And I'm not, I'm not saying anyone, any group in particular here, because I feel like once I say, oh, I'll do this for a particular group, it's just this very polarized time that we live in. People just assume that you mean, oh, well, yeah, to the exclusion of this other group, you're gonna focus exclusively on them, you know? So I'm not trying to be like, evasive, per se, when I am answering this way. It's more like, it's trying to preserve some degree of neutrality in the campaign so that people truly see this as representative of all of Medford. And not just in this lumpy way of, oh, we are all one, and kind of just marginalizing some of these voices that you're talking about, but in a way that is almost like a mosaic, where it brings together all the differentiation in a bigger whole.
[Chelli Keshavan]: That's what I'm trying to.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Probably equality of, I'm trying to say it without the word equality. It's access rather than results oriented, I think, or yeah, equality is based on, Sort of like let the chips fall where they may getting people to a position where, where, you know, everyone's given the same opportunity but but then let the chips fall where they may and then equity is is trying to more level the playing field I think to go a bit further.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, and I would say that, like, by not highlighting certain groups, it's sort of ignoring the fact that those groups have been ignored by the city for a long time. And we talked to David Harris, I think a couple, maybe like a year and a half ago. And he's like, actually, what is he? He's pretty, he's pretty famous around here.
[Chelli Keshavan]: He was like a professor at Harvard, but he is one of the most genuine, like, I want to be David. He is a genuinely, you know, brilliant person. And because he commits to You know, the next iteration of knowing.
[Danielle Balocca]: And he said something that really stuck out to me about like, we always use this idea of like how to bring people to the table. And, and I think that that's we're assuming we're making that's making a lot of assumptions about people's associations with this table and I think that like, even if it's not been explicit. there's been a lot of exclusion of people of color like young people renters women like in the in city hall right like yes, we can say like anybody can come to these meetings and tell us what they think but really like it's not that's not how it feels for lots of these folks so I do think sometimes like. in the vein of equity, if we're not saying, like, we are working on, like, building relationships with the Brazilian population in our city, with the Haitian population in our city, with the queer population in our city, because those are the people that we want to be hearing more from, rather than just expecting them to show up because we've invited them. And so I think maybe what Shelley's also leading towards is, like, we've interviewed several other candidates that are part of those communities, so they are maybe more, in your metaphor, like, able to access those capillaries and so I do wonder like for you if you I mean we've sort of asked this a couple of times but like what if you have any thoughts about that idea of how to maybe help what the city can do for like increasing equity and and reaching some of those folks that have I think been excluded from you know policy change and you know city government in general.
[Patrick Clerkin]: I think using existing resources and institutions to try to make sure that people know what is already available is pretty critical. And like I said, I think that you can get, even in an already local situation, you can get very micro-targeted with how deeply you want to go with any of this stuff. So I'm trying to do with what's in reason here. you know, partnerships and pairings with various groups around Medford, I think, would help. But yeah, like I said before, I don't want to just become associated with the, like, you're the X group candidate, right? Or you're the X group representative. I do believe that there's a awareness problem And, and obviously a, um, like there's been a discrimination problem and then there's also a motivation problem too, where it's like, um, you try to focus on the first two and then the, and then the third. Could continue to be a problem too. Right. Cause there's that old expression. If you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. So you, you basically want to get people, uh, as aware of things as possible. You want to get people encouraged, but you also have to realize that Yeah, so you can go crazy trying to force people sometimes to join into programs. And then there's also a question of who truly represents any given group, right? Because do I represent white people just because I'm white? Or do I represent men as a group just because I'm men? There's all kinds of diversity within groups as well that I think often gets overlooked. I don't know if any of these groups in Medford have specifically designated leaders in any capacity, or if they're informal leaders, or if they're just sort of these more polyglot groups of people that are leaderless and decentralized, right? Like, there's always gonna, like, if I said, oh, I'm gonna engage with this group, and I'm gonna engage with their leader, half of that group might then say, well, who the hell's anointed that person later, right? So there's, it gets very fractal, like it's very difficult if you get too granular. So I'm trying to, I'm trying to balance the pieces in the whole without getting lost in either, if that makes sense. And I know that sounds kind of abstract, but it's, it's a, it's a tough balance to get right. You know, and I, and there's a lot of, suspicion surrounding, uh, understandably politicians now because they lie a lot and they, uh, they make promises that they don't deliver. So yeah. Trying to bring earnestness, earnestness, sincerity, working with people. If things are brought to my attention to, to try to work with those groups, but I don't know everything about Medford, you know, I it's every day is a learning experience.
[Danielle Balocca]: So thank you. So we do have like some more fun questions for the end. Um, so we always ask folks to share kind of like a fun fact. So something that they, uh, want to share with us that they think we might not know or might surprise us. So I wonder if you have anything that you'd want to share like that.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Uh, so I, I briefly had a podcast, I left, it was called Nan vs. Mob. And it was basically this kind of similar to the themes that I've been describing throughout this interview of trying to kind of bring people together and rise above some of the kind of the more obnoxious aspects of people screaming in each other's faces. And so that was, that was kind of what started this trajectory probably before my neighbor ever brought up running for office of any kind. And it started the trajectory if I did 20,000 plus miles of driving around the country at the start of the pandemic. I wanted to see the country sort of not just the coasts, but, uh, between the coasts everywhere and off the interstates everywhere. And so, um, yeah, this, this podcast that I did kind of launched me on this, uh, this trajectory of, of stepping away from that traditional corporate job and, uh, seeing a lot of things in a short amount of time, I'd say. and just having conversations with people in a spread out, geographically spread out way.
[Danielle Balocca]: Interesting. Thank you.
[Patrick Clerkin]: And I think that rental car companies, it's safe to say rental car companies probably have me on a list as don't rent to this guy because I put 18,000, yeah. Yeah, I put 18,000 miles on a rental car in like four weeks or something.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, thank you. So the last thing we just want to check in is if there's anything else that you want to plug, any events that you have that are upcoming.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Yes. So I have a fundraiser coming up on Thursday, September 21st at the Chevalier Theater. I'm sorry, not at the Chevalier Theater. That's in my head. At Ford Tavern, which is across from Wegmans in Medford. And that starts at 6 p.m. like I said, on Thursday, the 21st. And my website is now fully operational. I've been doing a lot of this, this stuff solo, you know, kind of like this. Like I said, I'm not associated with any special interests or anything. So sometimes things take a lot longer. And so my website, Clerken for Medford, that's C-L-E-R-K-I-N with the number four. ClerkenforMedford.com is now up and on Instagram it's at Clerken for once again number four Medford. So that's primarily what I engage with and you'll probably see me out canvassing. I'm doing a lot of canvassing now.
[Danielle Balocca]: All right.
[Patrick Clerkin]: Traveling through the precincts.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well thank you Patrick. Anything else that you want to add before we wrap up for today?
[Patrick Clerkin]: is pretty much it. I covered a lot and you guys asked great questions. So I appreciate it. And thank you once again. I really appreciate you having me on.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, thank you. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. The Medford Bites podcast is produced and moderated by Danielle Balacca and Shelly Keshaman. Music is made by Hendrik Idanese. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. You can reach out to us by email at medfordpod at gmail.com, or you can rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Never Bites.
[Chelli Keshavan]: Never Bites.
[Danielle Balocca]: Good job.
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total time: 21.49 minutes total words: 1552 |
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