RememberWhatTheyDid Campaign has launched in Cleveland, OH, becoming the fifth city home to our billboard campaigns. Our presence in this battleground state was crucial for many reasons. With the first presidential debate taking place in Cleveland on September 29th, we knew we had to make a powerful statement coinciding with President Trump’s arrival.
We carefully coordinated the locations of our billboards with presumed road closures to ensure that they were visible not only to Trump, but to members of key demographics as well. These billboards also covered key debate topics in radical language that Biden would not use. This launch also had personal significance, as I am a Cleveland native and Jeff Rusnak was my first campaign manager, board member of Artist United for Change, and an all around good-trouble maker! So with his expert plotting of locations, and Scott’s work with local Cleveland organizations, this “Cleveland Project” was sure to make an impact.
Our Cleveland Billboard campaign launched just ahead of the first presidential debate taking place on September 29th and it generated significant national press.
Karlene Lukovitz’s of Media Post writes about the personal significance of the Cleveland campaign, “The Cleveland arm of the campaign was organized by Goodstein and Jeff Rusnak, both Cleveland natives, and Bell, known for doing video projections on the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C.” Lukovitz also comments, “The ads feature images from artists across the country, and quotes from Trump, to ‘take on Trump’s failures’ on various issues, in the group’s words.”
In Tonya Pendleton’s front page article for theGrio, I commented, “New polling shows Ohio is dead even and no Republican has won the White House without Ohio. It’s clear Trump and Pence are worried and with good reason. But to vote them out, we all need to stand up and be counted. Forty percent of voters aren’t reached by the usual voter-file matched political advertising and many of these voters are in communities that are underrepresented at the polls. So we are bringing our message to the streets because in an election year this important, we cannot allow any of our communities to be overlooked.” theGrio
For the Washington Examiner, Katherine Doyle writes, “We are reminding voters of the harm Donald Trump has caused the Buckeye State through his words and actions,” said Jeff Rusnak, a longtime Ohio Democratic strategist and co-founder of Artists United for Change. “Think about what Donald Trump said. Think about what he did and ask yourself, ‘Is this your America?’” Washington Examiner
The photos of the Cleveland campaign were graciously provided from volunteer Bob Glick.