[ [link removed] ]Adam Schiff for Congress




John —

I was moving some boxes of old junk into the attic recently and found a
couple of scrapbooks. One of them included a photo that I just had to
share with you from high school.

This photo is of me after winning a competition for a speech on America’s
free enterprise system, believe it or not. (Leave it to a high school
student to opine on the economy whose only relevant experience was working
in a restaurant and his father’s lumber yard.) The envelope contained a
check for first prize — it was a hundred dollars. That was a lot of money
back then. It still is. Just take a look:

[ [link removed] ]Old photo of Adam Schiff during his high school debate years

[ [link removed] ]Before I go on, and I realize this is a different type of email than
you’re getting from most campaigns right now, can you pitch in $10 to help
fuel my fight to protect our democracy and our House and Senate
Majorities?

When I was 11 years old, my dad moved our family from Scottsdale, Arizona
to the San Francisco Bay Area. I started in a new middle school before
attending Monte Vista High School in Danville.

I played on the soccer team and had several wonderful teachers who really
made a mark on me. There was Mr. Morrison, who taught contemporary world
problems; Ms. Shackleford, my calculus teacher; and Mr. Morrison, who
taught physiology and had us dissecting fetal pigs — I can still smell the
formaldehyde. Ugh.

But the two teachers who left the biggest mark on me were Ms. Abbott, my
Shakespeare teacher, and Al Gentile, my speech coach.

Ms. Abbott took our class up to Oregon each summer for the Shakespeare
festival, but it was Mr. Gentile who taught us the art of public speaking.
That was the after-school activity that really got me going and I was soon
competing in speech tournaments. At first, I wasn’t very good, scoring 5s
at tournaments which was, well, the lowest score you could get. I did
dramatic interpretation — Twelve Angry Men and Inherit the Wind were a
couple of favorites — I loved those plays but … they didn’t love me.

Then I switched to Original Oratory and things started to change. In “OO”
you could write your own material, craft a speech on a topic of your own
choice, and that made all the difference. Hence the picture before you
now.

Although speaking before others did not come naturally to me, I worked
hard at it, reading great speeches from Lincoln and Frederick Douglass,
and listening to recordings of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, and more.

I couldn’t get enough. From the tinny phonograph in my bedroom came these
wonderful if scratchy recordings of the greatest speakers of the modern
era. It was mesmerizing. And from my brother’s room next door, the sounds
of Richard Burton, Laurence Olivier and other greats performing
Shakespeare.

To this day, I draw on them for inspiration when I’m writing a speech. For
my core thesis, I gather the elements that I want to weave together from
history, the law or Constitution, or, in the case of an investigation, the
key pieces of evidence.

Perhaps most important, I try to outline the speech I want to give in my
head, without the tyranny of a blank page in front of me. Only when I have
a good idea of how I want to structure the piece do I sit down to write.
Ideally in a comfy chair by the fire.

During the first impeachment trial of President Trump, I would take notes
on the key elements that I thought should be incorporated into a closing
argument for the day. If I didn’t have time to write the closing, I would
put numbers next to each of those bullets to put them in some logical
order that told a story. And then I would improvise.

But occasionally, I had a whole evening to write a closing argument, and
there, I waited until my thoughts coalesced around the theme and its most
logical order before putting pen to paper, or more accurately — fingers to
iPad!

Some things never change. But the lessons from those early years — and
from those wonderful teachers — have stayed with me:

The need to speak plainly, but not dumb down your words. The need to
communicate in a way that draws on the inherent beauty of our language,
and our higher aspirations and ideals. And the need to appeal to the best
in human nature, not the worst.

I hope these lessons have helped me be a more effective advocate for our
democracy. My parents and teachers taught me that certain very basic
values really mattered. That truth matters, that decency matters, and that
our democracy matters. And it’s up to each one of us to use the skills we
have to fight for them.

And it’s why I’m asking you today:

[ [link removed] ]Will you chip in $10 to our campaign to protect our democracy today?
Our campaign is just 7 days away from the election, and we need your
support:

If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your
donation will go through immediately:

[ [link removed] ]EXPRESS DONATE $10

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[ [link removed] ]ANOTHER AMOUNT

It’s up to each of us to fight for what we believe in and for our
democracy, however best we can. And I want to thank you for being a part
of that fight.

Thanks,

Adam




150 E. Olive Ave., Suite 208 Burbank CA, 91502

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