I got to the Elizabeth Ave. location at about 6:45 this morning. The campaign had called me last night to encourage me to arrive before 6:30 a.m. so I could go stand with a group at a busy intersection and jump up and down and wave a sign, but between trying to get some food and medicine into my very sick pootie and being a slacker college professor who isn't used to having to get up real early, I didn't quite make it. The bouncy little volunteer who has been staying in my house since Friday, was not much earlier than I was, but she had an excuse -- she'd been out until at least nine the previous night.
I was paired up with a chatty lady from Georgia who had already worked Pennsylvania. Her aspiration is to actually work for the campaign as a pro in the general, so she's doing her time in all the primaries. But she had no idea where anything was in Charlotte.
Our first assignment was to walk a sadly run-down neighborhood in southeast Charlotte and hang blue doorhangers on all the pro-Obama doors. The area was fairly small and distances were close. We saw a few Obama signs and no Clinton signs on those streets. We put doorhangers on all the doors, but were surprised to find several houses gutted, whatever voters might have lived there, long gone.
The strategy (have doorhangers on by the time people left their houses for work) was foiled a bit by the fact that in that very working class neighborhood, many people were already on their way to the bus at 7:00. We talked to one or two people (a neighbor who apologetically told us she hadn't gotten around to registering to vote, an elderly lady who would need a ride, and a gentleman who hadn't been on our list but was dropping off his two girls at the school bus stop when we walked by -- an unexpected "get" for sure). We finished by 9:45, grabbed a snack for us and some bread rounds and olive spread for the workers back at the office, and returned for our next assignment.
Our next assignment turned out to be a very long list in a much more diffuse suburban neighborhood south of Myers Park. We saw a few Obama signs but probably an equal number of Clinton signs here or there. Very few people were home. We encountered one supporter who had forgotten that the election was today, and one man who was not the original voter but had pulled up in front of a house that was for sale. He took one of our fliers. We also encountered a couple of people who had already voted for Obama, and a couple of people who had already voted, but didn't volunteer for whom. I suspect at least one of them voted for Clinton.
The walk got kind of brutal as the sun got high in early afternoon. The last part of our walk was around a very large, hilly condo complex with many stops and building that were not directly adjacent to the street. If we'd actually walked it, we never would have gotten done, but by that time we'd already put 20,900 steps on my pedometer and we ended up rolling through slowly, pulling up at every curb.
By the time we were done, it was nearly 2 p.m. and we were ravenous and a little sunburned. We stopped to eat some Chinese food and returned to Elizabeth Avenue for another walk list, only to find that they'd gotten all of their lists out with volunteers by 11:00 a.m. and were now directing us to distant staging locations. They really had nothing else for us to do but make phone calls. Both of our feet were aching, and my canvassing buddy needed to start driving back to Georgia, so we packed it in.
When the roll is called up yonder, I hope it will be noted that I have donated to Barack Obama: $350, a sack of delicious bread and olive spread, five nights in my upstairs bedroom, and two canvassing shifts. I wish I could have done more, but I was tied up with a grant proposal until yesterday afternoon, and now my aching feet crave a nap. But there were still plenty of people coming in to Elizabeth Ave. when we decided to call it a day, and vans shuttling volunteers over to the West location.
Side question: why does the Clinton campaign think that dropping a sign on a vacant house, or nailing one to a sapling tree in the no man's land between sidewalk and curb, gives the impression of support?
Edited to add: on the way home, we noted that Zada Jane's Corner Cafe, The Elizabeth Creamery, and Pura Vida all seem to have endorsed Obama. So if you are in the neighborhood, show them some love.