I just went to a western suburb of Cleveland and did something I have HATED to do since selling YMCA peppermint patties door to door when I was seven years old. I went door to door canvasing for Obama. To make it worse, I was in the kind of neighborhood in which I would never live-- the kind where people move to have a "safe" neighborhood for their children (interpret "all white"). (Don't get me started on the likely race of pedophiles, school shooters, and drug abusers.) It was a neighborhood of locked-tight McMansions with huge lawns, no trees, no one outdoors or on the sidewalks on a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon. The kind where the sidewalk up to the front door comes from the driveway, not the street. The kind where they don't even use their front doors, so there's no doorbell on them.
So I walk into the culs de sacs with my stereotypes of the people who live there, and fears that they would be hostile to me. I didn't have a canvasing buddy, so I was slightly worried about physical hostility. And here's what really happened:
I met an "undecided" woman whose husband is Republican, father worked for GM, and whose brother is liberal and writes books about George Bush. She is retired, and is so fearful about the economy that she literally feels unable to make a choice for president.
I met a man who invited me into his house (the only one who opened a door to me) and told me that he has voted for both Republicans and Democrats, but he couldn't understand how anyone could possibly vote for McCain/Palin after the corporate bailouts of last week.
I met two young people who had already voted for Obama by mail. I met an "undecided" man who told me he really respected what I was doing, but he had just gotten home from the night shift and needed to sleep.
And yes, I met McCain supporters who didn't want to talk to me, women who didn't believe in talking politics with strangers, and men who were kind to me, but were McCain supporters or libertarians.
The Obama volunteer organizing the canvasing is fasting for Ramadam. He goes out every weekend and canvases in the sun all day, even though he can't eat or drink until the evening. Can you imagine what it must be like to be Muslim, look middle-eastern, and spend your days in white conservative neighborhoods trying to talk with people about Barak Obama? That's courage in action.
The people I met today were so very human. Only a couple were hostile. Most were leery of me at their doorstep. Some were in their houses (I could hear them) and wouldn't come to the door. Most didn't open their doors. This in a neighborhood safe enough that the kids leave their bikes lying outside unlocked, and people leave their garage doors open even when the house is vacant. I tried my best to be friendly and non-confrontational. When did we get so afraid?
A lot of things contribute to our fear: media images, media stories that highlight urban crime and don't mention white-collar crime. The spector of 9/11 and the fear-mongering of the Bush-Cheney administration. The (somewhat irrational, considering how many people are affected per-capita) fears of muggers, school-shooters, and car-jackers have us shaking in our boots in the suburbs, keeping our kids inside on beautiful Saturday afternoons, and racing from our garages to our kitchens so often that a short middle-aged white woman coming to the front door is someone of whom to be suspicious.
But you know what? There are a lot more important and frankly more life-threatening things to be afraid of. Like global warming. Like going to war for fossil fuels. Like having a world-wide economic disaster. Like having an administration that lies to the country about going to war and is accepting no accountibility for their actions. Like having a govenment that feels perfectly fine with torturing our enemies, using rendition on our citizens, and wire-tapping our phones without permission. Like asking the tax payers to bail out enormous un-regulated institutions who made billions of dollars while they were making hay in the sunshine.
Please please please, if you are one of his supporters, do what you can to get Barak Obama in office, even if it's only contributing money. Please please please, if you can vote early, do. It will mitigate polling places with long lines. If you're a college student with an address different than your driver's license, take a piece of "official" mail with your campus name and address on it to the polls, or they will make you use a provisional ballot, which in Ohio, takes 10 days to count, and the election will be called before your vote is counted. Help people register to vote. Take election day off and get people to the polls.
When Gore was running against Bush, I had a student who was proud of not voting, because he had bought the line that "Gore and Bush are exactly the same." I told him at the time that he would be sorry for that attitude. Later, I didn't have to say "I told you so;" after a couple of years he contacted me and told me he was now a political organizer for the left.
I can't think of a time in my life's history since the Vietnam war that the issues in a presidential election are so vitally important. Do your part-- it's only 48 days out of your life, and volunteering could be only one hour out of every 24.
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