Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Scared, angry and needing to act, I left California to volunteer for John Kerry in Pennsylvania. I changed some minds -- including my own.
Oct 7, 2004 | I do not consider myself a political animal. That is, I don't eat and breathe politics. I'm a professional pianist; my day job is as a postal worker. The gamesmanship and competitive fire of true politicos is not in my nature. But this is a time when politics has become so much a part of my daily life and consciousness that it is unavoidable. More than at any time in my life, I feel the weight of the historical moment and the truly terrifying possibility of a disastrous change in the nature of the American political experiment. We have reached the stage where a manipulated media, an arrogant and unscrupulous Republican Party, and a fearful and misinformed populace have created the specter of a strange new Teflon-coated fascism. Antiseptic in its glossiness and packaging. Politics wearing a lethal smile.
Scared, angry and feeling a desperate need to act, I decided to volunteer a week of my time in a swing state and called the Kerry campaign. Pennsylvania and Ohio were the two possibilities, but Pennsylvania seemed a little better organized. No offense to the Ohio organization -- this is based on nothing but a half dozen phone calls.
I am staying with a single mother, Lynn, and her two kids who have graciously let me have the extra bedroom. The 11-year-old son is a completely precocious political junkie. He grills me on California politics and pointedly tells me that he is taking the morning off from school today to go to an Edwards town hall meeting with his grandmother.
The office is busy, staffed with a blend of students and housewives and some paid staffers. People seem serious and intent. And even people coming into the office to pick up lawn signs and buttons seem to have a gravitas and intent that is striking. This is serious business. Door-to-door work mostly takes place on the weekends, so I have been put to work phoning seniors. Pittsburgh is a graying city and the senior vote is considered crucial. Undecided voters have been identified and my job is to call these folks and gently nudge them into the Democratic fold. I am given a script that gives some phone tips and some horrifying Bush facts (numbers of lost jobs in Pennsylvania, number of children who have lost health coverage, percentage increase in healthcare costs, etc.) and the Kerry response to these outrages.
I reach a few stalwart old working-class Dems -- "kick those bastards out of office" -- right at the start, but soon enough the typical responses to my questions become expressions of confusion and hopelessness. "I don't know who to believe -- I don't what to think -- something needs to change -- they always promise old people things but nothing ever happens -- my income hasn't changed in 12 years and everything keeps going up." One old woman says that her friend is being forced to sell the house she has lived in for 40 years because she can't pay her bills. She says it is happening all over and it just makes her sick.
What is touching about some of these undecided seniors is the responsibility they feel about collecting all the information before making a decision. "Well, Al and I are planning on watching the debate and reading some more and then we will probably make up our minds." Or "we just don't know enough." It is the older generation's inbred sense of the importance of a vote. It is a precious thing, to be cast with care and deliberation. Most of the seniors are leaning toward Kerry, but most are not excited by him. An interesting -- and depressing -- note is how many have been influenced by the scurrilous GOP attacks on Kerry's wartime service. One lady, a lifelong Democrat, said she couldn't vote for Kerry because Teresa wasn't ladylike enough. "Can you imagine telling that reporter to 'shove it'? My goodness." When I pointed out that the reporter had been dogging her for days and was personally abusive, she said simply, "I don't know about that but I just don't think she is a first lady." A slender reed on which to make a decision, but gratifying, I am sure, to Republican spinners.
Many are not really willing to engage at any length, but a few every hour will tell me personal details and allow little glimpses into their lives. These phone calls are no longer a pro forma political exercise; they are achingly poignant and compelling. Irma tells me her husband can't come to the phone as he has just gotten out of the hospital and is resting. She confides that she too had a stroke two years ago and they both are pretty much housebound. "I don't know what we are going to do. I thought that you were supposed to enjoy the older years -- you work your whole life for this?" It is a hard dance, to try to talk to Irma about the political dimensions of her life woes, convince her to vote for the man I want her to vote for, and still simply be a listener and a fellow human being. And that of course is the nub. Politics has been so dehumanized by image glorification and the pursuit of power that it has become impossible for many of these men and women to even imagine a world in which the personal and the political could ever intersect.
I spend the evening recruiting more volunteers for another phone bank. It's Chinese box time: Recruiting volunteers to recruit more volunteers. It's not so fun, but at least the digs are better. Instead of the close and humid headquarters we get a swanky lawyer's office in the Frick Building, courtesy of a liberal law firm. One of the partners is the volunteer coordinator. A trial lawyer still in his suit and tie, he is scared that Bush is out to gut his profession, removing one of the last legal constraints on a powerful corporacracy. He is still there calling when I leave at 9:30.
On Wednesday morning, along with a Kerry staffer named Pat and a volunteer named Sally, I go to a senior center where we give a brief talk. It is the morning bingo game, in the generic all-American church basement. Round tables, folding chairs, linoleum floor and 40 or so men and woman intently studying their cards. A man reads numbers into a microphone. We wait until the next "BINGO" and then are invited up. It is hard to talk over the machine that blows the balls around. The whooshing sound feeds into the microphone and rumbles around the room. Pat, the 22-year-old staffer, introduces himself. In long hair and jeans, he seems totally comfortable and the folks in the hall are attentive. I am introduced and simply say that I have come all the way from California because of the importance of Pennsylvania to the future of this country. I relate a few stories from the older people I had talked to the day before. Heads bob up and down, and one black lady in the back even gives me a "That's Rightttt."
Sally talks next. She's a middle-class woman from Mount Lebanon, an old Pittsburgh activist, more pugnacious than me. She's really hitting on Bush. I worry that she is assuming this is a Kerry crowd, but everyone keeps nodding. We hand out signs and buttons and absentee applications and ask for questions. These people are not just worried about their Social Security and drug costs. No, most are worried about their grandkids. So most of the questions are about the war. What will Kerry do? Are we stuck? Can we just leave? What are these kids dying for? We answer as best we can, but of course for many of these questions, there are no good answers. We thank them and walk out.
On the way back to headquarters, Pat says that he has spent more time registering students and 18- to 25-year-olds than any other group. He's been averaging 1,000 a week. And he points out that because most students only have cellphones they are below the radar of the pollsters. There could be a million, who knows, perhaps millions of students who may be the true deciding votes of this election -- and we won't know it until Election Day. I feel a little surge of optimism.
I make a few more calls before lunch. Elsa is 90 and undecided, although it says on the phone list that she is a registered Democrat. "Well, I don't really know. I don't like Bush, I know that." I ask her what she is concerned about. She hesitates and I tell her about my concerns about the war and that our young men and women are dying in a needless war. Elsa starts to cry. Her voice breaks up. "That's about it ... that's what gets to me. Oh my." She says she may need a ride to the polls and I make a note.
Wanda was born in the Ukraine. She came over when she was 13, in 1949. "I love this country so much. And what are they doing. When I see those pictures of the dogs and prisoners. All that ... I said, 'Is this America?' This is the greatest country -- everybody looked up to us. But now who wants to look up to America. Ach -- I love Ukraine but I will die here. Where is our respect?" I tell her that my grandparents came over from the Ukraine and she wants to know where. "Oh, Brody -- a lovely place." She wants to know my last name but for some reason I don't tell her my grandparents' name. They were Jewish and I fear an embarrassing silence on the end of the line.
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