My First Time

Working for a political campaign.

So I went out last week-end canvassing for Obama in sunny Maineville. My first time to ever actually work for a campaign. We were given specific homes and persons to poll, though I'm not sure how the list was generated.

I was rather surprised at how mean some of the folks were. Just rude. A couple of our fine residents openly omitted they were prejudiced and would never vote for a black man. Seemed rather proud of their bigotry. I smiled and thanked them for their time.

Then we (they sent us out in twos) we pulled into what we thought was a public lot and some guy in a hummer pulls in, parks so that he is halfway blocking us in, then tromps through a flower bed to kindly let us know that this is not a public lot and to politely inform us that Obama is a socialist...a stammer, steam, boil, a black socialist. I probably shouldn't have actually laughed out loud at him because...

A few doors later one of Maineville's finest came by to see us. "Whatchoo girls doing out here today?" As he was informing us that it was illegal for us to canvas (it's not), I moved closer to get a look at his badge (he moved even quicker to cover it up). I asked him if he was afraid to identify himself. He told us to move on. I told him we would walk across the street which is no longer sunny Maineville, but rather Hamilton Township...which really pissed him off. He probably assumed we were from someplace else and not locals. Anyways, I figured the odds were good that he'd just call up a buddy at the township police, so I decided it wasn't worth jail and did move on...but next weekend is, well, another weekend.

To be sure, we met a lot of Obama supporters. We met a high school girl who had just gotten her voter registration card the day before. And now she was being canvassed. We made her day...she really felt like she was somebody. We asked her to spread the word about Obama around school and she enthusiastically replied that alll her friends were voting for him. Hopefully that will play out on elelction day. We also met a physically handicapped young man who lived with his parents. He couldn't believe we were asking to speak to him and not his folks before proudly declaring that the whole family would be voting Obama.

All in all, it was quite a rollercoaster ride for the maybe 45 min. our canvassing lasted. I knew we'd be meeting a lot of closed minded bigots that day, I just didn't think they'd be so darn proud of it. But the police harrassment, well that was icing on the cake. I guess it's no wonder they've elected mean Jean twice.

TAGS: Obama 2008, Republican Bigots