xtcian

my irish candidate, Byrock O'Bama

3/3/08

Today's blog is brought to you by my loverly wife Tessa! Read on...

handmade sign from San Antonio, 2/29/08

At the dinner table tonight, out of the blue, Lucy said, “I like to say 'Barack Obama'.” She paused while Ian and I giggled at her exaggerated delivery of BA-RACK O'BAMA, then she said, with great seriousness, “All the time.”

I have been doing just that. I flew down to San Antonio on Friday with Lucy, who had a chance to hang out with her Nana while Jason (my best friend) and I knocked on doors in support of Senator Obama’s primary bid in Texas.

I have never canvassed before. I made some phone calls for Kerry, Ian and I worked for Election Protection (a non-partisan group that fights for fair elections in districts troubled with fraud or intimidation or just hotly contested) and I worked the hotline for NALEO in Los Angeles for the mid-term. But I have never gone door-to-door. And I have never wanted to.

It seemed so invasive. And scary. And presumptuous. I expected one door slam after another. I expected to be challenged. I expected to be asked complex policy questions for which I had no answer. I expected the worst.

But I’m pretty damned excited by this guy, so I wanted to give it a shot. (A shout out to my nephew-in-law Sean Patrick, who made his own difference in Iowa and encouraged me out the door).

Jason and I were assigned to the South district headquarters. A bail bondsman/Obama supporter gave over this office for the duration (apparently, he has two others). Propped up next to the campaign material was a plastic board with Bondman Ray’s info, should you ever need it. It was a little kooky. But not as kooky as the mid-western political-junkie-lady wearing a lei (I kid you not) and a million campaign buttons, who was repeating self-evident instructions to the canvassers. I’m telling you, the Obama campaign is a grassroots organization, for better or for worse.

We were in this district because I speak Spanish and the south part of town is overwhelmingly Latino. (I will use Latino and Hispanic interchangeably, but there is much controversy on this issue. Check out “Hispanic vs. Latino” in Google. The Texans seemed cool with both, so I am taking that as my cue. Forgive me if you have trouble with either.) As it turned out, I only spoke Spanish with a couple of people, but my "special skill" got us assigned us to a profoundly under-served neighborhood. Parts of our district were firmly middle class, but other parts felt much more fragile – gang tagging, abandoned houses, boarded windows.

It was an amazing experience – I loved talking to people, many of whom had felt abandoned by the political process. One woman had been registered to vote for a decade but never made it to the polls. For a couple of young men, this will be their first election. We had great chats with Clinton supporters – all of whom we encouraged to vote. And one of our most playful moments was spent with a GOP faithful. And, as it turned out, only a one person slammed the door in our face.

One of the more fascinating trends we noticed were voting splits in families. In one case, we met a 50-ish guy, his forty-ish wife and his 20-ish son. The father was for Hillary and the wife and son for Barack. Apparently, they discuss issues over dinner. And that is good for all of us.

For what it's worth, the votes in our district were split down the middle.

Jason and I walked away feeling like we had made a real, if tiny, difference. I love voting. I always have. I’ll vote on anything. Just to raise my hand, to add my voice, to stand up for something – even if that something is Thin Mints versus Samoas. I relished getting people who had never voted excited about voting. And Obama does reach those people. He means something to them. As he means something to me. Here’s the thing: you like who you like. I like Obama for both substantive and emotional reasons, most of which I won’t share here; unlike Ian, I don’t particularly like firing up the fray.

The last thing I'll say - during the out-of-state volunteer meeting, Jason leaned over to me and said “look around this room.” At first, I didn’t know what he meant. But then I got it. It was the most diverse place I had ever been – and that includes that Veldt party with the visiting Pakistanis on Rosemary Street in 1989. There were young men and old women; every nuance of race in America from Latino to Filipino to African-American to Asian, Indian and Caucasian; a couple of chicks in sassy suits, a few Tejano cowboys in serious cowboy hats, a passel of kids from the Kennedy School for Social Justice, a bunch of Hispanic teenagers who had traveled from New Mexico and were staying with extended family, and a gaggle of women from Marin County in aggressively plain shoes.

And that room, that weird assemblage of messy differences - that felt like America to me. And I was proud.