Election Day in Wisconsin (10 of 11): Loss.

When I was getting ready to go catch a ride so I wouldn't miss my train, Walker's win had been announced, and everyone looked so upset and distressed, and people who didn't seem to know each other just kind of grimaced and hugged each other.

This one older (white) woman who I hadn't talked to looked upset, so I just reached over as I walked out and took her hand and squeezed it and was like, "It'll be okay, we just have to keep fighting," and I said something about how this was a war, it wasn't all about one battle.

She still looked distraught, but she nodded.

Election Day in Wisconsin (9 of 11): Jokes.

One of the people I had canvassed with was a Wisconsin native who now lives in California and runs a doggie daycare who was so upset he flew back to work the Walker recall, to feel like he was doing something.

Later that night, at the union hall, I see him again, and he's talking with this old (white) guy with a Wisconsin accent sitting at the bar, and they're talking about eyepatches, and how each of them is blind in one eye.

"I got into the business years ago after I lost my sight in the one eye," the guy was like.  "The eyepatches they sell are just horrible, so after I had to deal with those for years, I just decided to make them for myself, and then I started selling them to other people."

He then talked about how his friend helped him with the materials and molding, and charged 50 cents an eyepatch.

"Then one day because he's nice, he tell me, 'You can make that eyepatch for ten cents if you want, and I'll tell you how.'  Then, he tells me I got to have them made in China, so you know what I tell him?  No thanks, I would rather keep my money right here."

Then, he says again, "China."

Then, the guy from California starts talking about his vision problem, where his one eyelid is too short.

"But that's better than my cousin," he was like, "He was born with no eyelids at all!".

At that, the older guy shook his head.

"But you know where they can get skin at that age," he was like - and the older guy interrupted him, and was like, "The butt" - but then the guy was like, "No, not there," and holds his one finger out and makes a scissor snip motion with his other hand at the tip.

"Poor fellow ended up cockeyed!".

After we all laughed, he said it wasn't true, but he loves how he has a vision problem and can lead into that joke.

Then, the older guy said how he lost his eye...

When he was a kid in church, this nice-looking woman with a dress on fell over the balcony holding on, and the minister screamed out, "Someone help her, but no one look up, or you'll go blind!".

"I figured, 'Well, it's worth trying with one eye'," and with that he put one hand over his good eye and made this look upward like he wanted to see what was up that woman's dress.

Then, we all laughed, and he said how much he loved to tell that joke.

Election Day in Wisconsin (8 of ?): End of the day.

My canvas partner was a field worker and had to go off to some place where there were long lines to keep people in line with bottles of water, candy, etc., so I worked until poll close myself.

I called him, then, and he was busy, but he said he'd get me a ride, and I told him the intersection I'd be at, since I went to a convenience store to go get something to eat.

When I went in, there was no-one outside, but there were two (young) (discombobulated by the antics) (Indian-ish-looking) guys running the store, and a drunk (black) guy walking around, and this (young) (black) guy walking around like he's on something, putting his arm in and out of his shirt and lifting his shirt from underneath with his arms, and then walking up to me and shaking the newspaper that I'm reading, before going up the register.

They went outside, so I decided to wait inside more, and the (young) (black) guy comes back inside and says something incoherent to the befuddled but otherwise stonefaced (Indian?) guys, puts a honeybun up his shirt, and tries to walk out with it, before one of them calls "hey!" to him, and he turns around immediately and throws it back on the rack, and pretends like he's joking.

I text my former canvassing partner at that point to tell him to get me out of there, and he says he's working on it, and his boss might come pick me up...

Which he did.  The dude is the Democratic challenger to Paul Ryan, and his wife was in the car too.

She's a German clinical psychologist who raced motorcycles in college.

Election Day in Wisconsin (7 of ?): Wine.

When I had checked into Racine, there was this intense but nice-looking (black) lady handing out clipboards, and then later I saw her just sitting next to the wine table and there was an empty chair near her, so I asked her if I could join her.

"Yeah," she was like, "Please!  But I have to watch this table.  I don't want the kids getting in it and the opposition making anything of it."

Then, someone young came up, and she asked for IDs, and when they reached in their purse, she was like, "Okay, you're okay," and waved them to the wine, and told them they were cool since they were willing to show ID, which showed you that they had it.

As we talked for a second, I noticed that she had a silver thumb ring on her right hand, and between that and her short hair and intensity, I suddenly realized that she was a local lesbian activist who had appointed herself to watch over the Franzia and take care of the kids and the local Dems' reputation.

I talked with her more, and she had grown up in the Chicago, but said she had never really fit in.

"Back home, people were all about rioting, looting, being loud and proud and all that," she was like, "And I'm that too, but that's not all of me, I've got a hippy side, where I skip in the sunshine and blow bubbles and sing 'la la la' all day, so it fits me better up here."

She then told me about being in MLK's March on Washington with her mom, several gay and lesbian marches in D.C., and taking a vanload of people out to the Million Man March at the last minute, since people she knew wanted to go but didn't have rides.

Then, several (white) girls who might have been in their mid-20s, but also might have been in their late teens, came up to get some wine and asked her if it was free.

"You got IDs?", she was like, and then she turned back to talk to me.  After a few sentences, she was like, "Look, they're gone, all you gotta do is ask, and they remove themselves."

Election Day in Wisconsin (6 of ?): Food!

Food at the campaign office was -

Danish kringle in the morning (a specialty of Racine, Wisconsin, just up the road; there were 2 varieties, raspberry and a cinnamon/nut thing).

Sloppy joes at lunch in a crockpot with a packet of buns thrown next to it, and another crock pot of taco salad meat (ground beef, beans, seasoning), next to Fritos and tortilla chips and cheese and salsa, so people could make their own taco salads.

At the state senator's victory party, it was a big tray of chicken wings (no sauce), 2 big trays of gigantic meatballs (slightly smaller than tennis balls, and in a tomato sauce), a couple veggie trays, a tray of taco dip next to tortilla chips, some sandwiches laid out, and plastic tupperware bins covered in aluminum foil that were full of cookies.

And, to the right, there was a table full of what was at least 12 boxes of Franzia wine.

Because of the lighting, the sour cream on the taco dip looked weird, so I asked some people in the foodline on the other side of the table when we got to it if that was taco dip.

"I think so," some young (white) girl is like.

"Oh," I was like, "I was just wondering, since it looks kind of funny in the light."

"It's Democratic taco dip!", some older (white) woman chimed in.

Election Day in Wisconsin (5 of ?): Walker voters.

I met 2 Walker voters -

1) This (perky) (white) mom with a little girl who answered the door at a nice house in an otherwise rundown neighborhood.  She was confused about who we were canvassing for, and it seems like she was doing a million different things, but then she said she was voting for the governor... 

At that point me and the other volunteer (who was with me since we only had 3 houses left for that shift and were doing them together) left shaking our heads - why would any mom vote for a politician like that?

There was a huge contrast with the much lower class (white) mom who lived a few blocks over and was just irate at Scott Walker's name.

2) This one dad who came back to the house at like 7:45pm when I was checking to see if the 18y.o. (white) daughter would vote, she was the only person who I had discovered hadn't voted in my 2.5 hours in the (almost entirely) (black) neighborhood in Racine that I was in. 

The daughter had answered the door, and she said everyone in her house had voted except her and maybe her brother who was there with his girlfriend, and so I talked with her about the candidates, and she got him too, and it turned out that he had already voted.   She seemed anti-Walker, and said she would go to the polls (which were 2 blocks from her house), and this was around 7:30pm.

So, I come back at 7:45pm, and her dad is unloading groceries and taking them in through the front door, and he just gets *pissed* when he sees me coming.

"Do you know how many of those things have been left at my house?", he was like, gesturing to my canvassing literature.

(Republicans always make a property rights argument, about why people who disagree with them shouldn't knock on their door.)

He also started going off about how Democrats were going to take away his pension (? - because Walker, you know, is totally not going to eff over the middle class in order to give tax breaks to billionaires).

When he went in with the groceries, I asked the 18y.o. what she thought, as she smoked on the porch with her friend (which was odd - they were both clean-looking kids, and you wouldn't expect them to smoke!), and she said she was still deciding but would go vote, and so I just left, since I knew she would put stuff off and wouldn't go to the polls.

Election Day in Wisconsin (4 of ?): Pissed-off voters.

A friend from Milwaukee says that people are pissed off in direct proportion to how much Walker has f*ck*d them over.  Here were 3 voters I met:

1) An old (black) grandma in Racine who's pension check has gone down $100 a month because of cuts caused by the budget crisis.

2) A working-class (white) mom with a baby at home who is pissed since the middle school across the street - which she pointed to! - was where her grandma went to, her mom went to, and she went to, but because of education cuts, it was closing down, and her kids couldn't go to it.

3) Two lower-class (white) moms in this really run-down house who were sick that their kids' class sizes were increasing out of control...   One of the kids was running around and was like, "It's over thirty people!", which just made his mom inhale in absolute rage at the governor.

Her husband, however, wouldn't go vote, and when I said that Walker just might win, she was like, "What?!?!", and I told her it was become there was a portion of people who disliked him but wouldn't go to the polls, and since her husband's back was turned I pointed to him and mouthed the words "Like him!" to her...

I saw rage flare in her eyes, and as I said bye and closed the door, I could hear her and her friend start to grill her husband about why he wouldn't go walk 5 minutes down the street with them to vote when they went.