Looking for votes, finding America (Inspiring Salon Piece)

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Looking for votes, finding America
Scared, angry and needing to act, I left California to volunteer for John Kerry in Pennsylvania. I changed some minds -- including my own.

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By Jonathan Alford



Oct. 7, 2004 | PITTSBURGH -- 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.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/10/07/volunteer/print.html