While all that notoriety may have attracted the Green Party to me, it did not attract me to the idea of running for office.

I said no.

As far as I could see, the entire political process was corrupt. I'd become fond of calling the presidential election "a big sports-like event paid for by the multinational corporations in order to distract us from the possibility of real change." At that time, I had the same mistaken instinct as so many despairing Americans -- to abandon the political system and look for hope elsewhere.

But when I told my friends, family and colleagues of having refused the Green Party's invitation, instead of getting the looks and noises of understanding I expected, I got disappointment. Win or lose, at least in the wide circle around me, people wanted to be able to be part of a campaign that moved beyond the tired, 50-year-long Democrat/Republican argument about taxation, the size of government and reproductive rights. Win or lose, they wanted to try.

So I agreed to run. It would be six-month campaign in a 90 percent Democratic district against Hakeem Jeffries, a New York State Assemblyman the Washington Post would call the "next Barack Obama," and a Republican named Alan Bellone, who manufactured T-shirts professionally and ran futile political campaigns as a hobby. There was never any question of Bellone's or my winning.

But the minute I agreed to run, the phone calls started coming. When would our first campaign meeting be, people wanted to know? How could out-of-staters and international people participate? I sent out an email and put out on Facebook and Twitter that we would be having a potluck brunch at my friend Ryan Harbage's apartment to discuss what the goals of a losing campaign could be.

***

It's true that we would ultimately raise only $6,000 against Jeffries' nearly $1 million. Still, we recruited 40 active volunteers, handed out 20,000 flyers, hung 500 posters, gave tens of speeches, participated in three debates, and shook hands and gave encouragement to thousands of people.

The goals and methods of the campaign came largely out of that first brunch. There were friends, family and strangers there, a motley mix of Green Party members, idealistic young students, environmental activists, Occupy followers and people who had never been civically engaged in any way but felt too frustrated with American social progress to remain uninvolved.

Together, we set the tenor for the campaign. Everyone in attendance had a voice. Minutes were kept. The views of the group would be boiled down and turned into policy by a committee comprised of myself, my friend and colleague Lilly Belanger (the campaign's volunteer coordinator) and the campaign manager, a Green Party activist, actor and street entertainer named Jonathan Fluck.

The non-electoral goals of the campaign would be: