So I went to volunteer in Gary again...

So on Saturday I went to Gary again to campaign for Obama with my one (white) neighbor who goes to law school who I had gone down there with during the primary season too. It was great to go with her, she's so very appreciative of how this campaign has let us just go down and walk around Gary and given us an entree into the community, though twice during this last time when she went to a house a kid answering turned around and yelled, "Mom, there's a white lady at the door!"

(That said, my one neighbor said her favorite part was how this one lady frantically answered the door with a phone on her shoulder and was like, "My friend just called and my broccoli's burning, can you hold on, I'll be right back?", and after the lady disappeared back into the kitchen for ten minutes, she came back to talk, and had brought my friend some sweet tea since she made her wait.)

Anyhow, we took the electric train down to Gary -- I thought the (black) train conductor was going to give us a free ride since we were in Obama gear, but he didn't, he just didn't come sell us tickets at first -- and since the office is now downtown and not on the outskirts in a strip mall, we got to get off at the downtown stop and walk over a few blocks to the office. There's really no businesses right downtown, and just empty, well-kept storefronts interspersed with some very nice lots with (black) people hanging around in them. Because of the train schedule, we got in like an hour early -- it was like 8:30am and we didn't really have to be there till 9:30am -- so we checked in at the office and then went over to "Eat Your Heart Out Tacos and Ribs" to get some coffee and maybe breakfast, only it was closed even though according to its schedule it should have been open, so the (black) security guy in the mini-mall pointed out an open liquor/drug store and we headed over there...

The security guard there ("Moses") was this nice and really chatty younger (black) guy with an earring, so we shot the shit with him about his hangover and how the corporate bailout was to protect the guys on the top -- he said it was because congresspeople had investments at stake, and then he added how President Bush was going to address the nation pretty soon, and he was like, "And when was the last time you saw the president up on a Saturday morning?" -- and after saying how people needed jobs since they worked at whatever anyways, the people across the street in the park were selling drugs were out there at 8am everyday just like they were going to work, and after when I had gotten my coffee and my friend her granola bar, he added that next time they would throw on some hotdogs and Polish sausage in the roller for us if we wanted since they usually only have them on weekdays, but then he immediately broke off talking since his friend who was like 300lbs and wearing a drapy khaki pantsuits and sunglasses and a straw hat marched in, and he yelled out "Biggie!" and went over to see his friend, who started doing a 'raise the roof' gesture as soon as his friend had yelled out his name.

Back at headquarters, a bus had just arrived -- busses filled with volunteers go every weekend from the end of one of the Chicago subway lines out to Iowa, Indiana and Michigan -- so the one older black lady from Gary who was wearing a pink baseball hat with a symbol of a hand making a peace sign, a heart, and a stylized version of Obama's head (=PEACE LOVE OBAMA) was in full force being like, "Sign in here, sweetheart" and "Oh no, you go over there, honey." Along with everyone else - like 90some people! - we got herded into a side room where they gave out canvassing instructions, and we got to admire other people's Obama-wear... A big thing now is these buttons that people get made where someone has a button where the bottom half is "FOR OBAMA" and the top half is blank so you can add in people's names in block letters - one lady had an "ERMA FOR OBAMA" button on, and another one a "BARBARA JEAN FOR OBAMA" one.

After I ate like two donuts - people brought donuts in, which was wonderful; I had one glazed, and one chocolate with sprinkles - me and my friend and this one retired guy from the area went out to register people; the focus of the campaign right now is to register people for the Oct. 6th deadline and so grow the voter pool, and then to have people vote absentee ballot to avoid problems at the polls on election day, which happen a lot. For like a morning and afternoon shift, we registered like 17 people and got like 6 or 7 to vote absentee, which was good.

(The guy was telling us that since the Republicans control the county government, they make it difficult for the black people in Gary to vote, too. He said early voting in person is at the county courthouse but it's a long drive, and they fought like heck to have a location in downtown Gary during the primaries and finally got one for the last two weeks before election week, and it was so successful that the county government isn't going to let it happen again. I told my mom this and she was pissed off. "That really happens?" she was like, and then she was like, "I think voting should be as easy as possible for people.")

Like always I was impressed by the level of civic engagement in Gary. This one huge (black) dude who answered the door was a precinct captain, and he told me not to bother with the list, he knows who was registered in the area and who wasn't, and told me to check out the two houses down on the other end of the block since one was a rental and the people might just have moved in, and the other was some weird people who never bother to register, though he's been getting on them to. Impressive too was the couple people I met who had told me that they had taken their kids and nieces and nephews who had just turned or were just turning 18 to go register to vote so they'd be set by the time of the election. In a way, maybe it's the city layout causing closeness, maybe it's the solidarity of the black community surfacing in voting Democratic, but whatever it is, just the sheer number of people who know about polls and polling places and what'd coming up election-wise and have known this and have been voting forever is just incredibly impressive.

Honestly, like my one (white) neighbor was saying, this Sarah Palin bullshit about small towns has these huge racial overtones to it, because small towns do tend to be white, so you're saying that the moral heart of America is white, which is bullshit, people could learn a lot by going to Gary to see the civic culture there, which is impressive.

(My one [white] neighbor was also saying how Sarah Palin's language of "choice" to describe her Down's Syndrome baby is weird, since according to her it shouldn't be a choice... She also said that if one of Obama's daughters got pregnant, that would be used to stigmatize the social breakdown of the black family, whereas with a white family like Sarah Palin's it's just something to be dealt with in-house and doesn't reflect bad on white people's families.)

Other than that, with canvassing, this one middle-aged dredded black dude at a house was already registered, but kept saying "God bless you" to me, for going and trying to register people.

Anyhow, back at the ranch, someone had brought in a huge tray of spaghetti at lunchtime, and I had some of that between shifts along with a breadstick (didn't touch the salad though), and when we got back after our second round of canvassing, someone had left out a box of Church's fried chicken and some mashed potatoes and gravy and some honey biscuits, which I had a bunch of, too, so I didn't even need to go into the lunch I had packed up and brought with me. These northwest Indiana Obama offices really are like a big black family barbecue, which I can be a part of and still have it not be all that weird, since his campaign has opened up space for that.

That was about all that happened at canvassing. I think next week I'll go to the Hammond/East Chicago office... During the primaries there was two offices, but there were some organizational problems and they collapsed them to one for the general elections, and some people in Gary said there were still some problems there, so I might go see what's up with that.

The last tidbit is that Saul Alinsky's ACORN group was registering voters all across Gary but somehow something was getting fucked up and no one was getting registered, so volunteers around the campaign office were wondering what the heck was up with that. My one (white) neighbor I went down to go campaign with said there's been all sorts of internal problems with that organization, but who knows, really.