Me-go: Around-the-World

Although I volunteered for Barack Obama’s campaign during the primaries I hadn’t done much since he defeated Hillary Clinton, despite receiving at least one email a day asking for donations and three emails a week asking me to volunteer. Finally it came down to the last week before the election and I realized it was now or never. In Illinois, Obama’s home state, he was polling up 30 points so there was little campaigning to do locally. On the other hand, Wisconsin and Indiana would be tight races and the campaign was asking everyone to head out to their closest state to campaign.

I decided to vote early downtown this year and was happy to be voting in suburban Cook County which had a wait of 45 minutes. The line for Chicago Cook County residents snaked back and forth around corners and disappeared down a hallway with an estimated wait time of three to four hours. These touch screen machines were a bit testy and I had to press the screen a number of times in a particular way to register a vote.

Over the past two months I had responded to every call to volunteer out of state but once the Chicago-based organizers heard I didn’t have a car they stopped calling back. I had been on the mailing list for the Northwest Suburbs for Obama group for over a year and decided to meet up with them and their well-organized rides. The group was meeting at a local Democratic office in the suburbs at 7:15am on Saturday morning?only the first train from the city didn’t arrive until 9am. I caught the Friday evening commuter train out of the city with my brother to stay the night at my mom’s house, providing me the opportunity to take Buster trick-or-treating (it was Halloween, afterall). I think it says something about my passion for electing Obama that I missed out on Halloween weekend to travel to Wisconsin for him.

Saturday morning I got a ride to the suburban office where about fifteen of us organized into cars for the ride up. I decided to stay the night in Milwaukee rather than come back to make the most out of my campaigning and was lucky to find one car of people doing the same. I had tried to arrange a floor to sleep on but could only manage to find a roommate for a hotel room. It was great to share the cost, only I was hoping for no cost at all. The drive to Milwaukee is less that two hours from the suburbs, and we arrived at the abandoned grocery store parking lot to register by the time I usually wake up. Because it was the last weekend before the election we were no longer trying to convince people to vote for Obama or targeting supporters, we were knocking on every door persuading people to go to the polls.

The areas we were given were poor and predominately African-American. Obama signs littered the yards of all of the non-boarded up houses so we knew it would be an easy sell. I was surprised how many people had questions about voting or had the wrong information about when and where to vote. We were well-versed in voting rights for felons (half of the people we stopped on the street told us they were “on papers” which means they can’t vote) and tried to help anyone who was confused. I was asked for a date by no less than three men who all seemed un-phased by the fact that I was from a different state. One man saw me walking by myself and asked where my man was, to which I replied “down the next block.” Travel smarts extend beyond foreign countries and I was confidant in dealing with these types of situations after my experiences in Egypt. He was hanging around the next street with a group of men and when I asked them if they planned to vote he declared that he was planning on “voting for my love.” That’s a write-in for sure.

One of his friends approached me while I knocked on doors across the street and asked if I wanted to go out (not bothering to put down the beer he as drinking). He insisted I take down his number and give him a call after the election when I was less busy. His friends yelled out “who are you voting for?” as if the hundreds of Obama flyers in my arms meant nothing. When I replied Obama they accused me of having Jungle Fever. The neighbors peeking out of their doorways when I knocked warned me to be careful but I’m used to talking to strangers and diffusing situations on the road and felt totally at ease. I wonder if my travel experiences had prepared me well or has given me an over-inflated sense of confidence?I’m still not sure.

Overall the two days I spent on GOTV (Get Out the Vote) went by quickly and left me feeling like I had made a difference. I talked to a woman about securing free babysitting, helped a man who’s voter registration had been rejected, gave a yard sign to a group of men smoking up in their car and was even invited into a church by a pastor to make sure they had flyers for everyone leaving. On Saturday the main Milwaukee volunteer meeting point ran out of packets because 300 more volunteers had showed up than expected. Reports were coming in that 10,000 volunteers from Illinois had invaded Indiana over the weekend. It seemed that everyone had the same idea as I did and I think it made a difference in both Wisconsin and Indiana.