Volunteering for Obama

I did a fair amount of volunteering this election season. In all, I registered 17 new voters (it took about 12 hours), spent about 7 hours canvassing, and drove one man to the county elections office. It's not much, really, but it was all I could manage given my schedule. I didn't want to sit on the sidelines for such an important election, and I'm glad I got involved.

My second day of canvassing was interesting. Turns out the woman I was canvassing with was a stripper as well as a science fiction writer. Since I had never met an actual stripper before (to my knowledge), I had a lot of questions. Turns out stripping is a job like many others. She considered it an art, and not a very well paying one. In all, she wanted to leave the business, but found it hard to find a decently paying job that she wanted to do.

The last day (Election Day) was the most interesting. In the morning I knocked on doors with another woman (who turned out to be the mom of one of Melina's co-preschoolers). We were canvassing in an upper middle class part of Portland where there were lots of Obama signs, and people seemed to be politically motivated. Together we knocked on something like 65 doors, but only about 8 had anybody home. I didn't feel like I had gotten a lot of votes out, but I did manage to catch a cold in the chilly weather.

After canvassing, I went back to the Obama office. It was a beehive of activity. One of the things I liked about volunteering for Obama was the diversity and the cheerfulness of the crowd. There are some pictures here. People were cheering and honking; the kitchen was full of donated food for the volunteers (ribs, fried chicken, chili, Indian food, pastries, donuts, and a cake I donated, among other things); and there were red, white and blue handpainted signs everywhere. It was a happy, hopeful place to work, and I was sorry that with the registration and the canvassing, I couldn't hang out in the office more often. But it was so crowded I always felt in the way there anyway.

After loitering a while in the office, I was told that a guy needed a ride to the election office to get a new ballot. His name was Gary; he was black. He needed to go home and put away some groceries, so I met him later on the corner near a new low-income housing development. When I got there, he asked if there was going to be a line. I said there probably would be, and then he wavered, telling me that he didn't really have to go now; he would just take the bus later. Well, I had a feeling that meant he wasn't going to vote, so I said something about him not wanting to miss this election, and said it was no problem for me to take him. Finally he came down and met me at the corner.

On the way to the election office, he told me his life story. He was in recovery and he had just relapsed; he was kicking himself over it, but he had faith that he could get back on the wagon. He had been homeless last year, but with some help he had managed to get one of the new apartments in this development. His big lesson was learning that he couldn't help everyone who wanted to stay at his apartment; people took advantage of him because he couldn't say no. He told me he was thinking about getting his G.E.D. He was very emotional about the election; he was inspired by Obama and said he cried when he visited to the Obama headquarters. He was a big, rough-looking man, but from my brief contact with him he seemed to have a heart of gold. He told me over and over how grateful he was that I had gone out of my way to take him to vote. I dropped him off at the end of the long line waiting to get into the election office. He looked like he was about to make a run for it, but in the end he did stay in line. I didn't find out if he voted, but I'm pretty sure he did.

I would never have had an experience like that if I hadn't volunteered for Obama. I don't know what I'm going to do now, but I would like to stay involved somehow. I hope the grassroots energy of this election doesn't dissipate. I will do what I can.