This is my first diary, but I've been lurking here for a while. I finally caved and signed up for an account about a week ago, which is about the same time I found out that a couple of co-workers were planning on going to North Carolina the Saturday before the election. I've been really inspired by "Leave it all on the road", and while I hope Georgia, where I've been locally phonebanking, will be in play, I know North Carolina will be. So I asked if they had a seat for me and then we were off to the battleground of Gastonia, NC, just south of Charlotte.
I was paired with a local volunteer named Mattie Adams, who is without a doubt one of the most impressive people I have ever met. She registered over 500 new voters this year and has never met a stranger. She showed me the ropes and pretty soon I was off and running.
There were some nice surprises -- namely, the number of people on our list who had already voted. We also encountered some people who were planning to vote on Monday and let them know that Saturday was the last day for early voting. I was enormously flattered when Mattie told me that when one household said they'd left the polls because the line was too long, she informed them that "there's a young lady here who came all the way from Atlanta to work here and you're going to tell me you can't stand in a line?"
Of course, not all the experiences could be happy ones. Gastonia is a town that's hurting, as we could see from boarded-up businesses and abandoned houses. And there was nothing I could do for the wife of a disabled vet who plaintively asked "I keep hearing about what Obama's going to do for the middle class. What I want to know is what he's going to do for the poor?" All I could do was listen to her and promise to bring her concerns back to the campaign.
Another woman, a Jehovah's Witness, said it was against her religion to vote, then added "but I know we need Obama in there." I could tell she was really feeling conflicted, and I advised her to listen to her conscience.
But there were so many moments of sheer joy...
The little girl in public housing who ran up to me asking "are you here for Obama?" and threw her arms around me when I said yes.
The buff black guys who grinned when this pasty-white girl fist-bumped them and declared "she got game!"
Telling a voter that you can get them a ride to the polls, right now!
Dropping off two young men at the polls and seeing the line stretch way out into the parking lot.
Crowds of people on a porch seeing us coming and calling out "we already voted!"
Then after dusk, we headed over to campaign headquarters to do data entry and got the treat of listening in on a conference call from Sen. Obama, who told us "for the next 72 hours, if you're sleeping, you're voting for John McCain."
I hope you're not sleeping.