Canvassing in Gary, Indiana – Part I

The Indiana border is just 5 or 6 miles southeast of Hyde Park. Take Interstate 90 (the ‘Skyway’), pay the $3 toll, and you’re in Hoosier country. Drive for just half an hour more and a gaseous stench hits you. That’s the town of Gary, an industrial wasteland – a steel town that has been in severe decline since the 1960’s. (I call it "the Bhopal of the U.S.", which in turn my aunt Santha once called "the armpit of India", which I guess would make Gary "the armpit of the U.S." It kind of is). The smelly emissions indicate that there is still some industry there, but not much. Little wonder then that the unemployment rate is extremely high as is the crime rate. The population is predominantly African-American (Gary, I think has the highest percentage of African-Americans of any town or city in the U.S). If years ago, I thought it was no fun being a member of a visible minority in Indiana, imagine being an entire town of not just any minority, but of African Americans in Indiana, a state that has been historically known for its hospitality to the KKK.

The state of Indiana has a pretty solid history of voting Republican since the 1940’s (with the exception of 1964). Most of the state is white and rural. But the town of Gary (and Lake County in general), with its large African American population that makes it in some ways an extension of Chicago, votes Democrat. Lake County is also the second most populous county in the state (half a million compared to about seven thousand people in the next county over). And so historically, Indiana Republicans have sought to interfere with elections in Lake County. Their most recent success was the Supreme Court-upheld rule of Hoosiers needing a state-issued photo ID in order to vote. Most Hoosiers don’t have a problem getting one but of course this is meant to target those who might have to jump through hoops to get one. There are those who can’t afford the fee for a replacement birth certificate (if they need one), can’t afford the fee for a state ID even if they did have their birth certificate, are too busy working two or three jobs to have the time to get an ID, etc. (Here's a blog that addresses all this and more). The Republicans' latest plan for 2008 is to use foreclosure lists and deny the right to vote to those whose home may have been taken over by their mortgage lender (and there are thousands of those people with more in the pipeline). No home? You have no address then, regardless of what your state-issued ID says. No address? The law says that if you don’t have an address (i.e., if you’re homeless), you do not have the right to vote. Staying with family or friends? Doesn’t count either because there’s no proof you’re not just visiting from out of state (never mind the fact that you might have voted at the same polling place for the last 40 years).

So it’s with all of this in mind, in addition to the larger fact that Indiana is a swing state this year, that Gary has been targeted by the Obama campaign as a prime target for door-to-door canvassers.

I should add that I found out from my friend Scott who runs the IL headquarters that while employees of Obama for America may not blog about their experience of working on the campaign, volunteers have no such restriction on them. Tomorrow I plan to post details and also photographs from my day of canvassing in Gary. Keep your dial tuned right here.

Back to the Basics

On the day that Wall St. comes apart at the seams, McCain chooses to say, "The fundamentals of our economy are strong." Why? Here's one answer on the Huffington Post.

So today, McCain, in an attempt to rewind and replay, has proposed that a commission be created in order to study and assess how this whole economic mess got created. And that commission will look into it and report back to us... 4 years from now? And we will do what? We will ignore the report. Here's Obama's response to that proposal.

By the way, with regard to McCain's economic proposals (not this bit about the commission but the economic platform on which he is running), it's interesting to note that even Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and life-long Republican says that it essentially doesn't hold water.

Lows and Highs

If you thought phony outrage (over the "lipstick on a pig" statement) was low, the McCain camp is sinking even lower by distorting fact-checking by those whose job it is to debunk myths. This article in the L.A. Times says it all.

It's my opinion that the Obama campaign needs to refocus. It has so far taken the high road and I think it can and must continue to do so, but it just needs to refocus. This article in the Christian Science Monitor has some suggestions.

Volunteering for Obama for America: Some General Impressions

On Thursday afternoon I took the CTA to the Obama for America headquarters in downtown Chicago. Interestingly, my bus ride to the green line EL took me past the block on which Obama's house is located. It now has very visible police protection and in fact the entire block was cordoned off to traffic. I wonder if it's going to be like that for the remaining 2 months/4 years, or only when he's at home. No doubt there were a lot of tourists driving by out of curiosity (I admit I was one once when we had some interested visitors over). A co-worker of mine said he'd been walking by Obama's property a while ago and got a good glimpse of it, and found that the bit of land that Obama bought from controversial Tony Rezko was actually a thin strip of land beside the house that basically just widened his plot. He said that anyone looking at it would think that it made perfect sense to buy it, as it creates some distance between one wall of the house and the boundary line that separates his plot from Rezko's.

Back to my afternoon at the Obama for America office (which by the way, is just off the CLINTON stop on the green line... just left of Clinton, if you will): it's a basement office that is much, much less fancy than I expected. Your $5 donation isn't being wasted on rent, let me assure you. It was just BUZZING with activity, with a constant, steady stream of volunteers coming in. (They have a fantastic multi-tasker of a receptionist there). On their website, they have you sign up for the time slot during which you'd like to work (which I did) but really, you're allowed to come in whenever you want and stay for as long as you'd like without signing up at all. Without saying anything too specific, let me just tell you that the work I did was easy. It was structured but didn't require training.

I was expecting the majority of the volunteers there to be under 30, but that wasn't the case at all. Every demographic I can think of was well-represented in the time that I was there. Given that there was a constant flux of people coming and going according to their own schedules, every time I'd look up I'd see a whole bunch of new faces around me, completely different from the last time I looked around. A totally motley crew. After the first two hours there though, I started to feel that perhaps the one group that was kind of over-represented was the hard-of-hearing over-seventy white female population! Amusing and kind of endearing, actually. It was also a pleasant surprise to find that the whole show is being run by my old immigration colleague, Scott S., who gave up immigration work last October to be hired full-time by Obama.

There are actually things you can do to get involved with or without going to your local office, wherever you are in the US. If you want to find your local office though, call 1.866.675.2008. I'll probably make this a regular thing because I have the time now so if you'd like to join me here in Chicago, let me know... it would be fun to do this with friends! The office address is 566 W. Lake St. (Lake & Jefferson), and they're open M-Sat 9am-9-pm, Sun 12 noon-7pm.

Therapy for Obama Supporters

Has this week been one of mild anxiety for you, as it has been for me? Have you been wondering why the Obama campaign has been doing NOTHING to counter the Sarah Palin phantasmagoria, and thinking that each ticking minute is a minute towards certain loss on November 4? Well, relax. My friend Fuz, from Dubai, sent me this bit of good cheer from the New York Times' OpEd section. There's a couple of things that the writer, Gail Collins, says that I find comforting. One, that the Obama campaign is indeed doing things, but in the swing states, not in states like Illinois where we are considered to have voted already. And the second thing I find mysteriously comforting is her observation that both sides are convinced they are going to lose. Oh, good.

If that wasn't enough therapy for you, try some Deepak Chopra. I'm kidding! Actually, no, I'm not. As irritating and as cringe-worthy as the man is, he's also apparently capable of some surprises; here's his take on Obama and the Palin effect. Voila! The healing power of Deepak Chopra!

Volunteering for the Obama Campaign

Today should be interesting. I've been looking forward to it for days. It's the first day that I'll be going to the Obama HQ in downtown Chicago to volunteer. It will just be a few hours for starters. I'm actually not supposed to blog about it so I'll be sure to find out today exactly what I can share (general impressions?) and what I should not.

It's 8:31 am Chicago time; we're an hour behind NYC. Seven years ago almost to the moment, I went to drop off my dry-cleaning before catching the bus to work, and the dry-cleaner asked me if I'd heard the news that a plane flew into the WTC. I remember so vividly that bus ride up Lake Shore Drive. It was an impossibly clear day, with the sky bluer than I'd seen it in a long while, and the greens of the trees brighter than ever. Well... it's hard to believe that it was seven years ago that our lives were turned upside down. And it's harder to believe that all of what happened that day has gone unanswered.

Neck and Neck

The current Gallup Polls show Senator McCain with a 5-point lead over Senator Obama in the presidential race. I only discovered the Gallup polls website yesterday and have been quite enamored with how they present all sorts of breakdowns such as Candidate Support by Age, Candidate Support by Gender, Candidate Support by Education, and a whole bunch of other interesting variables.

So why the 5% lead? Post-convention "bounce?" In trying to understand this, I found a very good election analysis website, the Princeton Election Consortium. Apparently Gallup polls aren't the be-all and end-all of polls (the reason for this has to do with using median-based statistics which, according to PEC, anyone who attended 7th grade in Canada should be able to explain to you). The Princeton Election Consortium did an analysis today of five different polling sources and found that McCain and Obama are neck and neck as of today. If you like statistics, PEC's website will be a total love fest for you.

The bigger question is, why are they neck and neck?? One candidate may be leading over the other in the case of certain demographics, but overall, they've been neck and neck for a while now. If anyone has any insights, please click on 'comments' below and share them.