(no subject)
Jim gave me a key to his house, and the location of the nearest bagel shop on my way out the next morning. Walking in the crisp morning air, I realized how long it had been since I had really walked anywhere at my leisure. It took me back to happier times, walking down Denniston to Forbes, and seeing all the unfamiliar shops mixed with the more familiar Starbucks and Baskin Robbins, and seeing the streets with the early morning sunlight just starting to warm them up. I stopped at the Bagel Factory, got a wildberry bagel and some locally bottled milk, and headed off for the campaign headquarters, finding which only took me half an hour longer than it should have, this time.
I set my computer up at my spot right in front of Spencer's "desk," which was a glorified white lawn furniture table with folders full of people to make phone calls to color-coded on top of it. After maybe five minutes, Julie came up to me and chirped "Hey! Want to go canvassing this morning?" To which I replied "DO I?!"
I unzipped my Eels hoodie to reveal the Got Hope? of my Obama shirt beneath, and headed out into the mess of houses behind the campaign office with clipboard, voter checklist, and campaign literature in hand. The quality of the houses varied greatly; some appeared to be inhabited by as many as 8 or 9 separate people, some by just one family, though they were all pretty much the same size. They almost universally had prominently displayed security system permits in their front windows. Some were in deep disrepair; others were obviously well-manicured and taken care of.
And.... no one was home. Or at least hardly anyone on the lists I was given was home. This probably had a lot to do with it being 10 o'clock on a Tuesday, and most people having to work during the week to make a living, and also at least a little to do with the age of the information I was using. Since whenever it had been gathered, at least ten or so of the 60 houses I was to go to had been occupied by different residents. At a majority of the houses I was supposed to go to, I just knocked, rang the bell twice, and left my literature.
By far my favorite part of canvassing that morning was talking to the people who weren't on my list of registered dems. The first was a young mother who was trying to put herself through school while pregnant, but was an ardent Obama supporter because of his opposition to the war. I wrote her name down, and put her voting preference down as a 2 (which was the office's code for Obama supporter, non-volunteer). Not long after, I met one of the two people on my list willing to actually sign my sheet and pledge their votes to Obama. As she did, her friend came up from behind her and said "hey, what're you signin'? I wanna sign!" I ended up getting four signatures and phone numbers from people who hadn't been on the list who were all willing to volunteer at the office, which was a five-minute walk away. It was easily the greatest triumph of my short canvassing career, and was particularly sweet coming after two relatively fruitless hours of knocking on doors of people who weren't home.
A little later on, I was walking along a street that was empty, except for a woman in a neon-nylon jumpsuit trying to push a three-wheeled stroller that contained an occasionally crying baby. Bolstered by my new-found confidence in talking to people, I said hello to her, and asked her if she knew who she planned on supporting in the election. She told me she was undecided, but you know, wanted to make up her own mind, and wasn't particularly going to be swayed by what other people told her, she just wanted to decide for herself, you know? It wasn't particularly rude, just matter-of-fact. Then, in a more desperate tone, she asked me "Hey, you wouldn't happen to know how to work a bike pump, would you?" I was a bit confused, but said "umm, yeah, I think so." To which she breathlessly replied "Oh, thank Gawd! Can you come and try and help me with this? I've been trying to get it to work for an hour. Literally an hour."
So I walked over to her porch, where she produced a bike pump made for the stroller's three little tires. After some careful consideration, I took a stab at attaching it to one of the tires, got it to stick, and pumped some air in. The woman looked at me as though I had just turned water into wine. "How did you DO that?!? I've seriously, seriously been trying to get it to work for an Hour, and look at that, I can see the air goin' in!" I let her do the next two tires, so that she would know how to do it for herself the next time. There was a little tab you had to have down when you first attached the pump to the tire, then you had to switch it up to pump the air in. After she finished pumping up the tires, she said with traces of both gratitude and humility in her voice, "I guess I will take one of those campaign pamphlets from you." I gave one to her graciously, thanked her for taking it, and started back on my way down the street. As I was walking away she called out - I'm really not making this up - "Bless your heart! Obama's got Angels in his Army! He must be an o-k guy if he's got angels like you in his army!" I couldn't help but smile at that. And the thought of Agnostic Angels - Masters of Bike Pumps! kept me giggling for a good portion of the day.
I passed the rest of the day rather uneventfully in the office making phone calls. I made about as many as I had made the day before, but these took at least twice as long, because I had to leave messages on the answering machines of people who weren't home inviting them to a "discussion on faith and values in politics and the public sector. Senior staff from the Chicago headquarters as well as local campaign staff will be discussing how Senator Obama's values shape his public service. The event, which Senator Obama will not personally be attending, will be held this Thursday, April 10th, at 6:00 p.m. in the Mellon Center of Chatham University on Woodland Lane. We hope you can attend!"
It was tiring, disheartening, tedious work. It occurred to me that I had basically turned myself into a machine for Obama, and that the more machine-like I was in terms of not taking breaks and such, the better a volunteer I was. I wondered how many people who I left the message for were even supporters, and if any at all would really want to come to such a discussion? Most of the people I was calling on Tuesday were retirees, people over 60, some as old as 94 or 95, including the sweetest old lady who told me she was for Obama, but couldn't come out to volunteer because her sight was going, and her doctor told her to stop cleaning her windows, but she would still get on her stepladder and wash her own windows, because the day she couldn't clean her own windows was the day she would die. It was the two or three people like that out of the 150 or so that I called that sustained me, that day.
I left at nine that day, after I could call no more. I watched Boston Legal and the Daily Show with Jim when I got home, both of which were excellent. He said he had met with some people high up in Ed Rendell (governor of Pennsylvania)'s administration that day about his proposal, and most had said no one thought Hillary was going to win Pennsylvania by more than five points. This was good news, and I told him it was heartening to hear. I left halfway through The Colbert Report, too tired to stay awake for the interview. I may have been close to exhausted, but I was still feeling fulfilled, too.