Obama’s People: An Ohio community working for Change.

I don’t ever recall getting up for any man at 4.30am but that’s what happened on election day, 4th November when I reported for my last day of volunteer duty in Ohio at the Cuyahoga Falls, Akron, Obama campaign office. Six cups of coffee later, I was hitting the ‘turf’ maps and lists, prioritising the most numerous ‘knocks’ and assigning them to our best and most thorough volunteer canvassers. Each local area had been “cut into turf”- a number of streets and apartment blocks to be canvassed. The number and location of houses or knocks were indicated on each turf map or ‘packet’ identifying the targets for each canvasser- to get out and knock on those doors, find out who had voted early, gauge who was voting Obama, who McCain and who was as yet undecided. Each piece of turf was hit 3 times during the week running up to the election. The last run on the eve of the election we placed “doorhangers” on every door to remind people to vote and telling them where their polling station was situated. On election day we began at 5.30am, all the turfs had to be revisited to get the vote out. The commitment of volunteers was incredible, many of them went out 4 and 5 times that day taking new ‘packs’ with them of areas and addresses to be knocked. The weather was glorious having gone from the previous week’s low, snowing 30s to a balmy 70F degrees. I spent the day assigning packs to volunteers, explaining what had to be done and how best to get it done, taking back the finished packs and eliminating householders who had already voted and then re-sending them out again a few hours later to hit those householders who had yet to vote. We continued until 7pm in the evening as the polls did not close until 7.30pm in Ohio and once a voter was in line by 7.30pm they could still vote.

Meanwhile we had a runner from the Red Team who had the responsibility of visiting all the local polling stations on an hourly cycle to call in any problems that might be occurring to the neighbourhood office and keeping the central command office in Akron appraised of the turnout. At 5pm when she reported that there were no lines at the polling stations and the turnout was slow, we went into hyper mode, those turfs too big to revisit in the remaining time, we set about phoning to remind them to vote, telling them there were no queues and they should avail of the opportunity to cast their vote while it was so. It was nail-biting. We began to feel that perhaps we had not done enough, if no lines were in place at 7pm. But there were other more positive factors at work which had brought about the absence of long lines; a successful push to get people to early vote had seen daily queues at the early voting centre in Akron, added to the fact that the official in charge of the state of Ohio’s voting centres had scrupulously ensured that machines worked and that the actual act of voting was as hassle free as possible. Nevertheless, doubt lingered and the tension grew among all of us volunteers in the neighbourhood office. By 6.30pm, we were barely able to stand with exhaustion but adrenalin kicked in and we kept pushing the turf out to be canvassed and it was. With nothing to do but wait, we cleaned up our storefront office, put out the trash, took down the Obama posters, cleaned up the reams and reams of paper, threw out the extra campaign literature, cleared away the stale takeaway food we had been eating most of the day as we worked, but all the time the nerves were jangling, the fears were rising and the doubts kept nagging.

I spent a week campaigning in Akron, Ohio. I tramped several miles a day canvassing, hours on phones rounding up volunteers or ringing voters, setting up the co-ordination of turfs and canvassers and talking with the incredible range of people who showed up every day to volunteer in snow and sunshine to get the vote out for Obama.

There were Willie and John, two tireless Vietnam Vets in their late 60s and early 70s, white middle class Democrat women, Monica and Chris, (the former had allowed her home to be used as a staging location for canvassers earlier in the week until the storefront venue became available), high school kids whose Principles of Democracy class teacher suggested they give a number of hours to a campaign as a means of obtaining class credits. Most of the class volunteered to work for Obama, hence I met Caleb and his dad, Goth junior and senior as I came to think of them, in their black clothes and long hair, tramping streets and knocking on doors together and doing much more hours of volunteering than required to get Goth junior his class credits.

Debanuj, born in India, returned to his family home of Akron after 8years in New York where he had been an activist in radical queer politics. Everyday of the campaign he minced down the streets of Chayogua Falls encouraging white voters to elect Obama while eyeing up the talent amongst the new volunteers. Pat, a middle-aged, funny, bouncy, dyke who set the bar for all other canvassers, with 100 knocks a day, everyday and in all weather conditions. Mary, a healthcare worker and trade unionist, Mike who took 2 weeks vacation time from his job as a trucker to canvass for Obama, Ken the indefatigable CPA who went out every day after work and 5 times on election day, Nyesha, beautiful and glamorous who left her Jag parked illegally out front and ran in urging me to sign her up as a volunteer. I signed her up immediately- the girl had style. Surat, the quiet, thoughtful academic from Sri Lanka who canvassed every evening and expounded his deeply considered views of education in the USA over a curry one night after we had closed up shop.

Then there was Jen. Jen appeared in the office on election eve about 5pm. Small, wiry and red-haired she leaned on heavy crutches and begged, “ put me to work, I cant stand sitting at home watching on my TV, I HAVE to do something or I will go crazy.” I set her to ringing and confirming with volunteers their shifts for election day. Jen arrived again early on November 4th and made 187 calls to volunteers and voters. As her voice began to croak I took a smoke break with her. Just 14 months ago she had been returning from work on Route 8 and been hit head on by a drunk 17 year old driver. It took 12 hrs before Jen was cut out of her car. She spent the next 3 weeks in a coma, 6 months in a nursing home and is still receiving physiotherapy. Her legs remain twisted and one will never regain full power, but for Jen an independent activist, it was the inability to do as much as she wanted for the campaign that was proving her greatest test of endurance. It was with Jen that I shared the tension of the last few hours of doubt about polling figures and later sat speechless and tearful as we watched Ohio come in as a blue state for the first time in 8 years. As I left her to her ride home, she confessed that if Obama had not won she had made plans to move to Canada permanently, she doesn’t have to do that now.

White volunteers were clear that those they canvassed who identified as Democrat but resisted voting for Obama did so because of their racism, a racism which they challenged on doorsteps by addressing every other possible concern and then leaving the obvious reason, the resistance to the candidate’s colour, without a place to hide. On encountering Mc Cain supporters they said a simple thank you and wished them a good day with the kind of sincerity that only Americans seem capable of in greeting one another. The canvassers of colour took their own courage for granted, knocking on a constituency so white that it is known in Akron as Caucasian Falls, taking insults and enquiries with unflappable composure. Of course we had our battle stories each day; the Mc Cain supporter who ranted for a canvasser to “get that n****r’s shit of my porch”, the numerous tales of women who whispered that they intended to vote Obama but their husbands were voting Mc Cain and so unfortunately they could not take in the campaign’s literature, but we could be assured of their vote, the 80 year old white lady who yelled at one seasoned and startled activist, “ I haven’t lived all these years NOT to vote for a Black President – so who the hell do you think I’m going to vote for if not Obama?!” Each evening, I crawled into my pyjamas, exhausted but not wearied. These encounters, the fellowship and solidarity buoyed me anew every day of that final hard week of pounding pavements and porches.

Obama may have been these people’s inspiration, but they were also mine. Their dedication, their belief in a better America, their conviction that only through forging an alliance with one another and mobilising from neighbourhood level could the seemingly insurmountable be tackled. The way to create real change was apparent every day that I worked with them. I have never seen a bunch of such diverse and differently abled people prepared to put their shoulders to a wheel with such good natured and unsinkable spirit. They supported and encouraged one another, affirmed and respected whatever input each could make. They refused to give into the unthinkable even as the Republicans ratcheted up more bile and negativity against their candidate and their beliefs. They are the America that spoke out on election day and whose spokesman reflected all of their trials and their triumph so eloquently on the night of November 4th.

Something has been built in America, more far-reaching than any skyscraper, a movement of the forgotten, the invisible, the betrayed, an alliance of those who hoped against interminable odds, a force of people who kept faith with values and principles too long deserted by their politicians. Activists and housewives, senior citizens and high school kids, working mums and middle class professionals, academics and war veterans, care workers and CPAs, college students and ghetto kids united in a belief that in order to change what needed to be changed, they had to start where they stood. It was their demonstrable ability to care, to co-operate and to listen and reach out to one another that brought a man who told them, “ Yes We Can” to a moment of history where the most important thing that he must do for them now, as their President, is to keep listening and keep faith with them.