"Today, I have to be here to announce some bad news to everyone."
"Our urban renewal plan—the one supported by Representative Murphy, the one that would have brought millions of dollars in federal investment to our working-class communities in Pittsburgh and created hundreds of new jobs—has been rejected in Washington."
He paused for a moment, letting the bad news sink in.
Then, in a tone of utter absurdity, he gave the supposed reason.
"You might not believe the reason for the rejection. An official from the Washington Department of Housing and Urban Development told us that the application we all poured our hearts and souls into was returned because of a trivial file formatting issue. Apparently, it didn't comply with their latest internal guidelines."
He had simplified a complex political issue involving partisan conflict and local interest groups into an utterly absurd bureaucratic joke that any common person could understand.
That was all that was needed.
The second step was to mobilize the public.
At the end of the video, Leo made what appeared to be a "non-political" call to action.
"Friends, I know you must all feel angry and disappointed to hear this news."
"But we cannot give up. We've just run into a minor technical issue."
"I believe the gentlemen in Washington simply don't understand the real situation here in Pittsburgh. They don't understand how much we need this plan."
"So, I'd like to ask everyone for a small favor."
He had Sarah display the public contact number and official email address for the office of Robert Coleman, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, on the screen in the largest possible font.
"Let's communicate with the staff in Deputy Secretary Coleman's office in the most polite, peaceful, and rational way possible."
"Let's tell them that we are citizens of Pittsburgh, and we support this urban renewal plan."
"Ask them to give our application another chance."
Before releasing the video, Leo confirmed the plan's feasibility with Roosevelt.
"We don't attack him, we don't insult him, we just have thousands of Pittsburgh citizens 'greet' him. Will that really work?"
"My boy, you still don't understand bureaucrats," Roosevelt explained. "A call from one concerned citizen will be politely noted by his secretary, then tossed in the trash. Ten calls will start to annoy them. A hundred calls will grind their regular work to a halt."
"But when over a thousand, or even ten thousand, calls from the same city jam all their office lines at the same time, that is an unmitigated political disaster."
"Deputy Secretary Coleman will be drowned by this flood of calls from Pittsburgh."
That special episode of "Pittsburgh Heart" was released that evening.
The video's impact was beyond anyone's imagination.
The steelworkers, already simmering with anger from unemployment and hardship, were completely set off when they saw the absurd "file formatting issue."
Frank and his old buddies from the Union were the first to take action.
They scribbled the number for Washington on slips of paper and passed them out to everyone in the community.
"Brothers, don't waste time with small talk. Just call this number and tell them you're a steelworker from Pittsburgh and you need that money!"
Residents at the community center, the retirees, also began picking up their phones.
They had nothing but time.
They could call from nine in the morning straight through to five in the afternoon.
Some local small business owners also joined in after seeing the plan to bring investment and jobs to their community get stonewalled.
They had their employees dial the number during their work breaks.
A telephone blitz, directed remotely by Leo from his small office in Pittsburgh, had officially begun.
「Washington D.C., inside the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.」
At nine o'clock the next morning, Deputy Secretary Robert Coleman's office descended into chaos, right on schedule.
The four phones in the office began ringing at 9:01 a.m. and didn't stop.
Coleman's secretary, a young woman named Susan, felt like she was going to lose her mind.
She picked up a phone.
"Hello, Deputy Secretary Coleman's office."
"Hi, I'm a steelworker from Pittsburgh. My name's George. I want to know why our urban renewal plan was rejected."
Susan could only respond with the official line.
"Sir, your application materials did not comply with our internal guidelines..."
"Bullshit guidelines! When I was fighting in Vietnam, we didn't have all these damn rules! Put your supervisor on the phone!"
Susan had no choice but to hang up.
But the moment she did, another phone immediately rang.
She scrambled to answer it.
"Hello, this is—"
"Hi, I'm a single mom from Pittsburgh. I want to know why you're trying to take away my child's hope of going to college."
For the entire morning, the phone lines to Coleman's office were completely overwhelmed.
His email inbox was also being flooded with emails from Pittsburgh at a rate of a hundred per minute.