🦋 On the Bus
A first time for everything: here is a guest post from my darling Ellen. It could have been a line of people waiting to catch the jitney to Amagansett or, the Express bus to work. Except it was early Saturday morning at Eighth Ave. and 34th Street when Jeremy, Sylvia, our almost-four-year-old, and I got on line for the three buses heading towards Pennsylvania. We were filled with a sense of purpose quite different than that of our daily routine. The neatly-attired crowd stood, amidst a strong scent of sun screen, with New York Times, cell phone, paperback and coffee in hand. We were joining hundreds of others in a coalition called America Votes, boarding buses to "hit the ground" with potential voters in swing states. We were going to meet them face to face, to survey and discover what issues mattered to them most in the upcoming election and to register voters. Pa., with the fifth highest number of electoral votes, went to Al Gore by a mere 5,000 votes in the last election, so getting people to turn-out this November is crucial. Although our group was billed as non-partisan, and indeed, were specifically told not to engage in political debates with the people we canvassed -- it was clear that the bus was solidly Democratic. A high level of sophisticated and sardonic political repartee was on-going -- everything from the recent Republican ads trashing John Edwards to Donald Rumsfeld and his calculated terrorist threat announcements. Sitting to my right was a psychologist couple who had been heavily involved in counseling 9/11 survivors. Coincidentally, behind me was another psychologist who had done similar work. Behind the psychologists were two actors, meeting for the first time on the bus -- perfect partners for the canvassing to come. In the back of the bus was a retired couple from Stony Brook. Later on my seat buddy was a Stuyvesant H.S. graduate named Kayla, just completing her first year as a theatre major at SUNY Binghampton. I picked her brain about her early theatre experiences (Shakespeare in the Park was important) and her activism -- her first demonstration was as a baby in arms with her parents in Washington, DC for the plight of Soviet Jewry. My most recent experience on a political bus ride was the 25th Anniversary of Freedom Summer, fifteen years ago, when I rode for 30 hours to Nashua, Mississippi, making stops at pivotal landmarks of the Civil Rights movement. Kayla told me, as did many others that day, "it's never too early" to introduce a child topolitical activism. Indeed, Sylvia was the youngest person on the bus, though it was nice to see some older children with parents, too. There were a number of couples in their late 60's and early 70's, though a majority of the crowd appeared to fall somewhere between the 30's and 50's. At the various rest stops during the inevitable wait for everyone to get back on the bus, I enjoyed asking people, "Why are you here?" almost as much as people seemed to enjoy being asked. It boiled down to this: people wanting to "do something," and feeling they could not sit this one out. At the snack table set up at a union hall where we picked up our clip boards, survey sheets, and voter registration forms, Sylvia was introduced to ginger ale and "cheese noodles" as she called them. She also got to experience walking up to the doors of total strangers, knocking, and listening, as her parents, in upbeat voices said, "Hi. We're here to find out what issues are important to you in the coming election..." And she got to watch the sometimes baffled faces of respondents. The area where we were dropped off, Hatboro, Pa. is registered 75% Republican. Our particular segment was a retirement community in what had been military housing in the 60's: attached, single level tract housing, clusters of impatiens planted along narrow connecting paths, American flags waving in front of most small screened in porches. We wove along the paths from one closely-connected courtyard to another, working between 12:30 and 4 PM on a day when the sun beat down at 90 plus degrees. Jeremy in his black shiny work shoes, tie, and cordoroy pants, Sylvia, who refused to wear her straw hat because it wasn't the "flowery one", and me, with my heavy socks and sneakers made up a sweaty crew. We kept track of the number of doors we knocked on (about 50), and the responses we got -- both positive and negative. We were not met with as much friendliness as some of our busmates who later reported that they were invited in to people's homes, offered water, and thanked. However, we did get a number of our survey forms filled out -- homeland security and health issues figured largely on this groups' minds -- although one woman said very deliberately, not homeland security, and crossed it off the list. We didn't succeed in getting anyone to register... this was not a crowd that was going to decide to vote if they didn't already. We stopped to catch some shade once while Sylvia pumped her legs on a creaky swing hanging from a rusted playset behind the compound, and then again, at a grassy median in front of a factory. As we headed back to our pick-up area, I followed an overgrown path into what seemed to be a grove of tiki's. A heavily tattoed man in his mid-forties, glistening with sweat, was carving the outline of a face into a black walnut tree trunk with a chain saw."I just think 'em up and do 'em," he said. He stopped to fill out a survey form, and unlike everyone else, gave his phone number to receive information about the issues he had checked off. Our caravan of buses succeeded in getting 2,000 people to consider the issues, and 100 people to register. A festive mood prevailed as we headed back to New York. Jesse, a spirited organizer who had trained us on the way out, (and turned 23 this very day) said we had done an awesome job. I asked what people planned to do next. Everyone knew about the Move-on.org cell phone banking in Central Park the following day. I said, "I'm going to do phone banking -- but not tomorrow!" There was laughter, and a general feeling of exhausted comraderie. Then one of the actors said he and a group of twelve friends were making calls the next day! On the ride home, Sylvia pretended to do door to door canvassing with a tiny plastic tiger, a miniature purple velvet poodle, and a plastic cow that I had stuffed into my pocketbook. She made up a couple of knock-knock jokes -- with some voter registration lingo thrown in. After seven hours on the bus with one meltdown going and another coming back, Sylvia elicited (and gratefully accepted) the following food offerings from three grandmas: butterscotch candies, a stack of gingerbread cookies wrapped in aluminum foil, and a bag of cherries. America Votes and People for the American Way are doing weekend bustrips to swing states all the way 'til the election. Please think about signing on. For information, if you are in New York try the PFAW office, (212) 420-0440, or you can go to the America Votes homepage for a full list of participating organizations.
posted evening of Monday, July 12th, 2004
|
