More Views from Hyde Park

While we're talking about reactions in the neighborhood, another notable Hyde Parker, the controversial Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, has come out in praise of President-Elect Obama. He never endorsed Obama during the campaign and his endorsement was never sought out either.

As for Professor William Ayers, he cast his ballot on November 4th at the same polling place that Obama himself did. He said, "I think my relationship with Obama was probably like thousands of others in Chicago. And, like millions and millions of others, I wish I knew him better."

The View from Hyde Park

The University of Chicago's student newspaper, The Maroon, interviewed faculty and ex-students of President-Elect Barack Obama's to get their perspectives on what he would bring to the presidency. Interestingly, while journalists such as Fareed Zakaria expect his presidency to look like that of Franklin D. Roosevelt, more than one of the UChicago interviewees draws comparisons to Woodrow Wilson.

I think that Saul Levmore, Dean of the Law School, captures most Hyde Parkers' sentiments when he says, "It feels nice. This is how it must be in a small country, where everybody knows everybody. It has a homey democratic feeling to it…. It doesn’t feel remote, the usual way politics feels with someone off on another planet".

We still have a little bit of that post-election euphoria here. People are still walking around with smiles on their faces and nodding to each other. A guy on the train last night gave me and D. a broad grin and a nod, and I thought that was a little unusual (yes, Chicagoans are friendly, but not on the El). Then I realized that I still had an Obama '08 button on my jacket.

Phase II

This really is a new generation of politicking. Barack Obama's "Office of the President-Elect" has a separate website designed to keep you in touch with the latest developments of the transition to the White House. His old campaign website is still active -- after all Nebraska's election results just came in and Missouri is still up in the air -- but this new one signifies that he's moved on to Phase II. Don't ask what the subtle change in font and appearance signifies...

Who Voted for Whom / More Photographs

If you haven't already seen the national exit poll, here it is. A nice juicy breakdown of who voted for which candidate, broken down by age, race, gender, income, and much, much more.

And here are more pictures from the Obama victory rally in Chicago's Grant Park. You can click on each one to enlarge them. As you can see, I didn't catch even a glimpse of Obama or even the stage, but it didn't matter. It was about the people anyway. And oh yes! For the record, Indiana voted Democrat for the first time in forty-four years! I asked for the moon and I actually got it!

Yes We Did!

Standing among the hundreds of thousands of people in Chicago's Grant Park at what we hoped would be Obama's victory rally, we watched on the jumbotrons the CNN vote count state by state. Each time they would announce the results of a state, there would be a thundering roar that stretched like a wave across the park.

The moment the election was called is one I'll never forget -- the gasps, the screaming, the incredulous looks from people who thought that they hadn't heard right, and then the tears of joy. People were hugging each other, shouting, crying. I will especially remember the reactions of the older African Americans around me. Long after the screams and chants had died down, they stood there silently with tears in their eyes. This was a long, long time coming.











Oh, what a night.

Election Day Morning

Today has been a gorgeous, sunny, unusually warm day in Chicago for early November -- 75°F (23°C or so). On my way to work at 8:00 a.m., I thought I'd take some pictures of the long voting lines at the polling place closest to us. But I was told that the long line snaking around the corner had dissipated by about 7:30 a.m. All I saw was a woman handing out voter guides to stray voters while making sure to steer clear of the "no electioneering" boundaries near the entrance of the building.

On the bus to work and at work itself, there has been a palpable sense of excitement and anticipation. The conversations were all about the elections: how long one had to stand in line, about who got tickets to the Obama rally tonight in downtown Chicago and who was going to take their chances by going there without tickets, about what could be going through the minds of undecided voters, and even a conversation about how no one seemed to know any McCain supporters among all their friends and relatives. That's a little unusual, even in Hyde Park!

I initially turned down the campaign's offer of tickets to the Obama rally (standing for literally hours on end in a crowed doesn't appeal to me) but later when my friend Justin offered me a ticket, I decided that I really should go for the sake of history. So that's my plan tonight: to join 1,000,000 people in Grant Park!

What I'm hoping for is not just a victory for Obama, but a landslide. His aim has been to rid the country of the red state/blue state divide and I think that a close election such as that in 2000 and in 2004 will do nothing towards that effort. What I'm hoping for is a mandate. And that Indiana will turn blue... but that might be asking for the moon. Let's see!

The Past and the Future

Here's something I just came across: a visual history of presidential election results since the very first one. It shows you the map of the U.S. with the states colored according to each election result. I'm no historian but something like this where you see dramatic shifts where the country is all red states or all blue states makes you wonder what must have happened (Civil War, WWII, assassination of Kennedy, Vietnam War, and so on). I hope they update this on November 5 to put this year's elections in perspective.

And for anyone not sick of the polls yet (it's an addiction from which we'll all have to withdraw cold-turkey on November 5), here's a poll of polls where they average out a number of different polls:

Why Ignorance Has Ruled Washington

If you've been wondering how these gibbering numbskulls came to dominate Washington in the first place, there's a plausible explanation by George Monbiot in The Guardian entitled, well, exactly that. Monbiot asks in his article, "How did so many U.S. citizens become so stupid and so suspicious of intelligence?" He cites Susan Jacoby's book 'The Age of American Unreason' as providing "the fullest explanation" he has come across.

Jacoby points to the fact that that education in the U.S. is controlled locally, not by the federal government. In the southern states when you bring in several factors such as the anti-desegregation planter mentality, the earlier rejection of Darwinism (but the acceptance of social Darwinism), the suspicious view towards intellectuals (even that they're subversive), and the Southern Baptist Convention whose beliefs have permeated the public school system, you then start to understand why Obama (and others) have had to play down their education in order to appear qualified for the presidency. You start to understand the red state/blue state distinction and also why lower income people vote against their best interest. And you start to understand why the likes of Bush and Palin are so appealing.

[My thanks to my liberal elite uncle in Boston for sending this article to me.]

Thea's Perspective

[Note: This is a guest posting by Thea, a very good friend of mine who used to live in Chicago. She's in her late 20's and though we had spent hours and hours talking politics over the last eight or nine years that we've known each other, and had even attended protests and demonstrations together, I thought that something she said in an email to me yesterday about growing up in the Clinton era really explained why it is that Americans of her generation are so engaged in this year's presidential election. And why there is so much at stake for them, after the last eight years, in an Obama presidency. Thea currently lives in Germany where she just completed a masters degree in public art last month and is job-hunting in Köln.]


As an American studying in Germany, finding myself in the middle of a discussion about U.S. politics is quite commonplace. So is hearing intense criticism of Bush administration policies, which, more often than not, I entirely agree with or have brought up in the conversation myself. That the legacy of the Bush presidency is lasting damage to justice, world economies, hope for peace, the environment, and the United States' reputation in the world hardly bears repeating. It is now all too clear.

I can't help but think that it didn't have to be this way. I grew up during the Clinton administration and I recall a sense of optimism and hope in the ability of government to do Good. As a teenager in the 1990's it felt like my family's and my community's values were aligned with the country that we lived in or, actually, it was the other way around. We trusted that our leaders were working towards the goals of equality and peace, the same ideals we believed in. It was lucky that my young bleeding liberal heart had been sequestered away during the Reagan/Bush years in a progressive Catholic elementary school whose non-graded curriculum was based largely on conflict-resolution and U.S. civil rights activism. Some of my earliest memories include singing along to "We are the World" and seeing Hands Across America snake down my street.

When Bill Clinton came onto the national political scene in 1992, I remember seeing him play saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show. I was 14 years old and I must admit I had a little crush on him at the time. I begged my parents to let me take saxophone lessons. Clinton was cool. He was young and idealistic. And Hillary was no wilting flower; she was a model 90's woman with a career and a maiden name. The Clinton years seemed a natural extension of the environment I was used to. At the time, thought, one couldn't see the forest for the trees: that liberal presidents were in power for just three short terms since 1968-- a couple of rest stops on a careening trip to an extreme and divisive neoconservatism.

Then, eight years ago, my optimism and trust were crushed *literally* overnight when Florida's electoral votes flipped from the Democratic to the Republican column. I cried and cried. All the scandals Republican radicals had flung at Clinton stuck, clearing the way for a right-wing government that a childhood spent in Montessori school and hippie sing-alongs did not prepare me for. Surely this was a mistake.

It was not a mistake when Bush won the election in 2004, thanks to his manipulation of Americans' fears of radical Islamic terrorism and perhaps an an even greater fear of elitism. This was a stone-cold confirmation that not only is the U.S. full of evangelicals, xenophobes, and misguided people, but they are running the show.

I wonder now at my own idealism; was it just typical childhood naiveté? Or was I living in a progressive bubble stuck in 1968, which is just not sustainable in centrist, isolationist America? I sold my dusty saxophone two years ago as I prepared to move to Germany for grad school. Gone is the little reminder taking up space under my bed. I am gone now too.

I have fears, like many on the left, that this election will be stolen out from under us. Even with the numbers in our favor, we worry. We have been burned before. As I sit glued to the internet here in Germany I am shocked and shamed at the polarizing and bigoted language coming from the extreme right. But I am also filled with pride for Barack Obama and the efforts of huge numbers people all over the U.S. rallying behind him. I turn 30 on Monday, November 3rd, the day before Election Day and I wait, excited and nervous for the best present of all, a President Obama, to be delivered one day later.

The 30-Minute Informercial

If you missed Barack Obama's 30-minute informercial that was aired on a few TV channels last night and are curious about it, here it is, in four parts. Warning: it resembles a Hallmark movie... the breezy small-town landscapes, the sentimental music, the bright colors, and even a faux Oval Office setting. Watch if you can stand all that! Of course it is targeted at undecided voters, but also, I think, at McCain supporters who a) might believe some of the myths out there about Obama's tax cuts, his health care plan, etc. and also about his personal background, and b) who might well end up having a president whom they right now simply cannot envision in the White House for whatever reason.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Was this broadcast that cost millions of dollars even necessary? This amusing short video illustrates the Obama campaign's argument for why it was, but you be the judge.

Have You Seen These?

These Obama music videos have been out there for a while and you might have already seen them but if you haven't, take a look. The first is a "We Are the World" type thing, but the second one is... well... either just plain hilarious or serious stalker material!

Yes We Can by will.i.am

I've Got a Crush on Obama by Obama Girl

I'm sure there are sociologists out there who are already incorporating these (and the many other songs out there) into their study of political music... In the meantime, good luck getting that second tune out of your head!

Grassroots Organizing Goes a Step Further

Wow! I'm so impressed with the online neighbor-to-neighbor feature that the Obama/Biden campaign has! This past weekend I didn't feel like schlepping out to the campaign office, not even to the one here in Hyde Park that I recently discovered, so I decided to try this online feature where they provide you with telephone numbers to call from home.

You can choose to either get addresses in your neighborhood to visit (for door-to-door canvassing) or telephone numbers in certain regions of the country to call. They give you 60 telephone numbers at a time, and when you click on each one, up pops a page providing you with the person's name, address, gender and age, a script to follow (right now the objective is to encourage Obama supporters to vote early), the address of that voter's closest early voting polling place and its timings, and so on. The same pop-up page functions as a way to provide feedback to the campaign. For example, it asks you to click on whether this person plans to vote early, or on Nov. 4, or is a McCain supporter. It also allows you to indicate if the person wasn't home, if you left a message, if it was a wrong or disconnected number, etc. There's much more, but you get the drift. It's incredibly simple to use too.

I chose to call voters in Indiana and thought I'd make a few calls last evening. I got a lot of answering machines which is a little surprising for a Sunday evening (but then again, people might have been screening their calls). The first person to whom I finally got through to said to me very shrilly, "I'm not innerested in a Muslim for president." [slam]. Yes, that myth still persists, and yes, even this close to election day. But her intense prejudice completely shook me up and made me decide to call it a night. I'll resume my calls today, but only after I can do whatever mental calisthenics it takes to 'reset' myself to have higher expectations of that neighbors. And after I can figure out an appropriate response to statements like that. I'm thinking of quoting Colin Powell's response on this matter but if "Muslim" is a code word for "Black" then that may not hold much water. If you know of a good response, please let me know! I've asked people in the past to look at factcheck.org but I need something more immediate.

On a more positive note, the poll numbers are still looking good. Eight more days.

I Voted!

D. and I went and voted this morning! Whoo-hoo! That was my first time voting in a presidential election and I have to say that there's something oddly exhilarating about it. You can help with campaign efforts, you can go on protest marches, you can donate to causes, but there's a sense of empowerment at the opportunity to cast a ballot alongside... er... Joe the Plumber (ok, I'm going to change that to Carlos the CTA Bus Driver... and D. the Professor). I hope I'm not kidding myself. After what happened in 2000, there's very real concern about ballots not being counted, and that concern turned into worry that MY ballot wouldn't be counted. So I figured that as long as the machines are still reported to be working, I'd get my vote in early. Apparently up to 30% of voters will be voting early this year, including this voter whose vote, I'm happy to report, I have canceled out today.

Chicago has 51 early voting locations, and you're allowed to go to any of them regardless of where in the city you live. We chose one in our neighborhood, the Chicago Park District's Jackson Park building. It's a community center that has table-tennis tables, pianos, etc. (I heard the most beautiful jazz piano being hammered out on my way in). There was not a single person in line when we got there. All of the voting machines were occupied though, so there was a brief wait. We had brought along our U.S. passports as ID, and I was highly amused that the lady who took it from me opened it up to a random page in the center, looked at what turned out to be my visa to India issued two years ago, and handed it back to me. I told her that she had just looked at a visa in my passport and not the front ID page. She said, "That's okay, it's a government-issued ID with a photograph on it." So apparently, that government could be Republic of India? (I shouldn't be too harsh... these are all volunteers from the neighborhood and I may one day volunteer to do the same thing, but that just shows one more hole in a process riddled with holes).

The last time I voted, it was on a huge paper ballot that you had to mark and then have an official scan into a machine. This time it was a touch-screen machine that resembled an ATM machine. ("What would you like to do? Withdraw Cash? Check Balance? Vote for Obama?"). I'm not sure if photography was allowed but if anyone followed my travel blog from last year, you know my policy on taking photographs: desist only if asked to. So here's a (blurry) picture of one of my screens.

A Look At the Polls

With twelve days left to go until election day, I still have some remaining doubts about a Democratic victory. While there are days when I am confident that it is entirely possible and will indeed happen, I see the outrageously negative campaigning that the Republican party has been engaging in and the utterly vile, slanderous pamphlet that they produced today. One can only wonder what will really go through the minds of each voter as they get into the privacy of the voting booth.

All we have to rely on are the polls. Here's the New York Times/CBS News Poll depicting changes in opinion over the past one month. Opinion towards the Democratic candidates have become more positive while opinion towards the Republican candidates have become more negative. Notice the data for Sarah Palin especially. There's not even a single subgroup that has stayed the same or felt more positively towards her. Even the Republicans polled there are more negative towards her and towards McCain too. So that's the overall standing. The Rasmussen Reports poll shows Obama with a 7-point lead overall as of today, and Gallup shows him having a 5-point lead.

What about Independent voters? (Not to be confused with undecided voters who are... undecided). According to today's Diageo/Hotline Poll, Obama has an 7-point lead over McCain (43% - 36%) when it comes to the Independent-likely voters. He did, however, have an 11-point lead 3 days ago with the Independents. Not sure what's happening there. Perhaps they've received a pamphlet or two. It's worth paying attention to what the Independents do because as you may remember in the too-close-to-call 2000 elections where George W. Bush was judged to be the winner by a Supreme Court decision, it was claimed that Ralph Nader took away votes from Al Gore by having inserted himself in the presidential race. Had Nader not been in the running, those voters would have more likely voted for Gore than for Bush, and that would have made all the difference.

Some good news from Gallup polls: the majority of first-time voters say that they plan to vote for Obama (65% for him, 30% for McCain). Most of these first-time voters are between the ages of 18-25 (62%, in fact). Unfortunately, it's not clear just how many of them will actually get over to the polls that day to cast a ballot. Figuring out where your polling place is, finding a way to get over there, standing in line for possibly an hour or more, and then deciphering that complicated ballot takes a little bit more than it does joining five different pro-Obama Facebook groups (and, for effect, 3 different anti-Palin groups) or even attending a rally. Hey, if you don't vote, you forfeit the right to complain for the next four years!

High School Classmates for Obama

A couple of old friends of mine from high school spent last weekend with me, one of them on a visit to the U.S. from India. We spent Friday afternoon at the Obama campaign's headquarters here in Chicago, and then the whole day on Saturday canvassing in Gary, Indiana. The phone calls we made on Friday were to Obama supporters to ask if they would be interested in traveling to a nearby swing state (Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, or Iowa) the weekend before Election Day to help drive voters to the polls. Volunteering for a political campaign was a new experience for both of my friends, something that they had really been looking forward to. One of them, N. lives in a suburb called Naperville, about forty miles from Chicago. She tells me that it, and most of the other suburbs, are Republican strongholds, and that many of her neighbors feature McCain/Palin lawn signs on their front yards. My other friend, A. lives in Mumbai, India, and told me that her mother who had fled the Nazis in Germany at the age of ten and emigrated to the U.S., had, when she was later a college student in Madison, Wisconsin, volunteered for Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign in the 1950's. Half a century later, the daughter now found herself wanting to be involved in this historic political race. Interestingly enough, at the Obama campaign office, we found that A. was not the only volunteer who had traveled here from another country. We met J. from Belgium, who told us that he had decided that since U.S. politics affects the entire world, he had looked very carefully at the presidential candidates, picked one whom he thought was the best, and decided to spend his entire annual vacation of five weeks as a campaign volunteer here in the U.S. He simply bought a ticket to Chicago and landed up here at the end of September, taking the campaign office quite by surprise. He's been staying at the homes of various local volunteers, and has been spending every weekday making phone calls for the office (thick Belgian accent and all) and every weekend traveling to swing states to canvass door-to-door, all at his own expense. I impulsively invited him to have dinner with us at home that evening - Indian food and, very coincidentally, Belgian Stella Artois beer that we happened to have in the fridge, and for dessert, Belgian lemon and apple tarts that we happened to have bought earlier that day from a Belgian nun in Hyde Park! Vive la Belgium! J. told us that he worked for a university in Brussels in support services, specifically, in maintenance. (Perhaps he's Belgium's Joe the Plumber? At least there's one Joe the Plumber for Obama).

Saturday's day of canvassing in Gary, Indiana started off with a mini-orientation at the field office that included words of welcome from a few friends and relatives of the Obama family: a cousin, a godfather to one of the Obama children, a family friend, an aunt, etc. The volunteers were mainly all from Chicago (a good number of them from Hyde Park), a much more diverse lot than a month ago. I guess with less than three weeks to go, people are getting themselves mobilized. N., A., and I were assigned to a different part of Gary than the one I had been to in September and this area was slightly better off economically, but not much more. The houses were larger, the cars were in better condition (some homes had two or three cars -- we even spotted a Mercedes), and instead of every third house being boarded up and abandoned, there were perhaps two or three such houses on every block. Our task was to encourage early voting among Obama supporters (not surprisingly, we didn't come across a single McCain supporter). We found that many people weren't aware that voting had already begun in Indiana (and around the country actually) or that one even had the option of voting early. Previously, people from Gary would have to find their way to Crown Point, Indiana (the next town over) in order to vote early, but this year there was a central location in Gary itself. I was surprised that there was just one location in Gary while we in Chicago have fifty early voting locations. By the way, I've decided to practice what I've been preaching and will be casting my vote this coming Friday. (Tuesday is a work day for me and while employers are required by law to give everyone time to vote, it's a busy time of year at work now and I don't want to end up waiting in some endlessly long line). I figured that if it took me some time to make the decision to vote early, it's going to take other people some time too and that repeated messages/reminders can't hurt. Our "sell" in Gary was that there is going to be a record number of new voters this year and that it was best to vote early to avoid any contingencies on November 4th. I remember hearing from people I knew in past years that they "didn't get around to voting" because they had too much to do and couldn't find the time for it on Election Day... it was raining... too tired... too hungry... one more Democratic vote doesn't make a difference in Chicago anyway, etc. etc. (Why the forefathers and suffragettes bothered, I don't know).

Some of the people we talked to in Gary were firm that they would vote only on November 4 (one man said that his grandson was voting for the first time this year and that he wanted to make it a point of taking him to the polls with him so they could vote together), and others seemed to think that early voting might be a better option for them. One man, for example, was registered to vote at a different address than where he had recently moved to, and since the early voting site is common to everyone in Gary regardless of which district within the town they live in, he decided he would vote early rather than drive on November 4 to the area he used to live.

We registered a couple of people to cast absentee ballots (we were just waiting for the opportunity to do that because people usually invite canvassers in to fill out forms and we wanted to see the inside of their homes out of sheer curiosity)! In order to vote in absentia in Indiana, you have to meet certain specific criteria, the most common criterion being age (over 65). If I remember correctly both the people we registered were over 65, one recovering from recent knee surgery. In both homes, they invited us to sit at their dining tables -- I filled out the form while N. admired the furnishings and A. charmed the heck out of all present in the room. All three of us, of course, were full of questions, some that had to do with the elections and most that did not (and the people we met were curious about us too). One woman whose home we went into told us that she was a pastor at a non-denominational church, that she was a spiritual consultant to people as far away as California, and that she had lived in this house for forty-three years. Her mother, who lived with her, was a gleeful 90+ year-old who reminded me of my late grandmother: ready for a good laugh and ready to make you laugh. It was hard leaving!

I'm happy to report that A., N., and I covered all of the houses we were supposed to go to. The work got done. But it did take a good two hours longer than it would have taken 3 regular, focused, not-prone-to-goofing-off people for whom this wasn't also a substitute for a 25th high school reunion!

Some Comic Relief

If you missed it last week, here's a clip of John McCain's roast of himself at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner. (It is a glimpse into the personality that he should have been projecting for the last two years). And below it is a clip of Barack Obama's roast that followed.





I thought McCain was funnier!

Colin Powell's Endorsement

This morning on Meet the Press, General Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama as his candidate of choice in the upcoming presidential electons. Take a look at this video. If you remember, General Colin Powell, along with General Norman Schwarzkopf, led the Gulf War in 1990-91. Powell then became Secretary of State under George W. Bush in 2000 but quit at the end of that first presidential term because, it is said, he had very serious disagreements with others in the Bush administration over going into Iraq without first checking into the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

What I especially like about his statement in this video is that he not only makes a very reasoned argument for exactly why he is choosing Obama over McCain, but because he also speaks about the Republican Party's negative campaigning:

"I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the Party say... such things as 'Well, you know that Mr Obama is a Muslim'. Well the correct answer is, 'He's not a Muslim, he's a Christian, he's always been a Christian'. But the really right answer is, 'What if he is?' Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is 'No', that's not America."

In the last couple of months, I've wished that Obama would come out and say this and have been disappointed that he hadn't. I do understand that the American electorate is such that using the campaigning period to 'teach' about Muslims or even about African-Americans (or, as I've discovered, about our lowered standing in the international eye) is not going to win votes. I hope that if and when he is elected president, he will make up for it.

I Am That One

A friend of mine with whom I grew up and is now a professor in St. Louis, Missouri, sent me this video that her students made in response to last week's presidential debate, where Senator John McCain referred to Senator Barack Obama as "that one." Have a look.

Three Weeks Left...

...and so where do you put your money? If you have any left and wish to contribute it to any political races, the Princeton Election Consortium suggests that you'll get more bang for your buck not by contributing to Obama's or McCain's campaign, but to the smaller, local races that would support either a Democratic or Republican majority (your choice) in the House.

On a different note, I've been passing around a brilliantly-written article to friends over the weekend and for some reason neglected to post it here. This article, written by the editors of the New Yorker, spells out exactly why Obama would make a better choice than McCain. They explore what's at stake from a national as well as an international perspective and they do so in a more insightful way than any other writers I've recently read. Actually, the entire October 13, 2008 issue of the New Yorker is a fantastic read. There's another article that discusses why white working-class people won't necessarily vote Democrat (the article focuses on Ohio).

McCain's Background

For a really eye-opening look at Senator John McCain's life, take a look at the cover story of the latest Rolling Stone magazine. McCain has been in the public sphere for so long that much of what is cited in the article is from him directly. It not only puts all the disparate things you may already know about him into perspective, but it provides a well-researched big picture of his life that is just chilling.

BBC News also had a Viewpoint article (similar to an OpEd) about McCain's volatility today.

Gallup Poll Results of Presidential Debate #2

I just checked the Gallup polls for the two candidates' current standing and found that they also did a poll to gauge people's views as to who won the second presidential debate. The results are interesting -- take a look. Gallup says they have been doing these post-debate polls since 1960 and that this is one of the most decisive polls they've ever measured, similar in margin to the ones done in 1992 and 1996, both in Bill Clinton's favor.

Gallup has now started doing daily election polls (instead of their previous weekly polls) and today, Barack Obama has a 52% to 41% lead over John McCain. This refers to their general standing among voters, not to peoples' reactions to the debate.

Presidential Debate #2

The second presidential debate was held on Tuesday night and proved to be slightly more intense than the first one. Perhaps it was due to the town hall format where the candidates were surrounded by actual people, sitting in a circle around them, and had to address questions asked directly by them. (These people were all undecided voters, by the way). The answers seemed directed at real people this time, not at a generic TV audience. The vile insinuations about Barack Obama remain as the subtext of McCain's campaign, but that's of little comfort. People pay attention to the subtext when the main text sounds like just a string of the usual words. McCain has reached a stage where he can speak almost as meaninglessly as Sarah Palin without alienating his supporters. Case in point: his telling us during the debate that he knows how to do everything and *can* do everything and will do everything -- this includes knowing where Bin Laden is and knowing how to get him.

For a humorous critique, watch Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. The first four minutes of this eleven-minute video are a little dry, be forewarned!

As for me, I wonder what Obama's first broken campaign promise will be. Let's face it: the economic crisis is going to mean that neither Obama nor McCain can successfully carry out what they're promising to carry out, once elected into office. Not that any politician ever does even in good times, but in these times especially it is unlikely that they will be able to fulfill a whole lot. As for McCain breaking his campaign promises if he gets elected, one can only hope he breaks at least some of them.

So Where Do the Republicans Stand Right Now?

Election day is thirty days away. There have been a few conservative commentators who have been expressing their very serious doubts about the Republican party's current standing. One is David Frum and another is Kathleen Parker. Both write for the National Review. While Parker despairs about Sarah Palin (note: the article was written before the VP debate so one can only imagine how much deeper in despair she must be now), Frum despairs about McCain's (and other Republicans') inability to assimilate the warning signs about the economy and to instead, hunt for villains.

According to yesterday's Meet the Press, the Republican strategy already in play, as we speak, is to now make it all about who the unknowable Barack Obama is and to question whether he is a trustworthy character, and to suggest that we have no idea what kind of presidency we will get with him. Remember all the stuff that was dredged up by Hillary Clinton, like Obama's past association with William Ayers? I remember wondering during the primaries what the Republicans' October Surprise might be for Obama, given that Hillary was already airing everything that could possibly be aired. Well, October Surprise is apparently the same as that thing your mom called Turkey Surprise: poorly disguised leftovers. Here's a blog about Sarah Palin's recent accusations. It includes some very interesting and revealing background information too.

I'm hoping that Obama will stay focused on the economy. Sure, he could fight back and bring up John McCain's dubious dealings with Charles Keating, but what constructive purpose would that serve? I think Obama should in fact start naming his economic advisers and leave no room for doubt as to what his presidency is going to look like. 

[P.S. I spoke too soon... moments after I initially posted this, I got this link via email from the Obama campaign. Looks like they're doing the Keating thing after all. But a 13-minute documentary? Was this something they had in their arsenal all along, to be pulled out on a rainy day?]

As to where the Republicans (hypothetically) stand in terms of electoral votes and swing states, watch this quick analysis from Meet the Press:

The Race Factor

In my previous post, I mentioned that over the course of speaking to about a hundred people in Lafayette, Indiana, I had come across 3 or 4 people for whom I suspected that race, i.e., Barack Obama's race, was the biggest issue by far in deciding which way to cast their ballot. But I felt that so many of my other conversations could not be properly understood without acknowledging the nuances of racism that exist in a relatively homogenous town like Lafayette. Nicholas Kristof's Op-Ed piece in the New York Times tells it like it is. Overt racism is one thing, but covert racism such as assigning lower credibility to an African American individual because of very deeply-imbedded biases can manifest itself in a variety of different ways. In a town where you see hardly any African Americans on the street or in the malls (this is a town that once prided itself on having such a "healthy" KKK that no African American passing through would ever spend the night there, and indeed held at least one KKK rally during the time I lived there), how does someone living there even imagine what an educated, professional African American looks like? That image is as foreign in Lafayette as that of a Chinese banker in Hong Kong (as opposed to a Chinese cook) or an Arab doctor in Dubai (as opposed to a turbaned terrorist).

This is of course not to say that there are no genuine causes for objection to a Barack Obama presidency, or even for an explanation as to why he isn't further up in the polls than he should be. There are those who feel, for example, that he is far too hesitant in a world that requires more immediacy. Or that he's far too professorial to be a president (and he's not even one of those lectern-banging professors). But I think that anyone who does not acknowledge that racism is a very real player in these elections is totally and completely out of touch with American people. It's been said before but it's worth repeating: Joe Six-Pack would never, ever even consider voting for an aging presidential candidate who, in terrible though characteristic judgement, chooses as his vice-presidential running mate a black man or black woman who openly owns guns, has an unmarried pregnant teenage daughter, took six years at four different colleges to earn a college degree, is politically inexperienced (despite some miraculous turn of circumstances that got him/her the governorship of a state eighteen months ago), confesses to not having kept up with the Iraq war or any other international (or national) news, and needs urgent last-minute tutoring to bring him/her "up to speed".

Turning a Red State Blu... A Lighter Shade of Red

My husband D. and I used to live in West Lafayette, Indiana but moved away twelve years ago because we found the conservatism and the overt and covert racism untenable. D. continues to work there, and this past week, I took time off work to go spend a few days with him there. As planned, I visited the Indiana for Change office in downtown Lafayette to see if I could volunteer. It turned out that they are desperate for volunteers. Democrats there are a little nervous about wearing their politics on their sleeve, a little like what Republicans must feel in Hyde Park (if Hyde Parkers carried guns and Bibles). While West Lafayette, a university town, has a thriving liberal population (though no one would ever confuse it for Berkeley, California, Ann Arbor, Michigan or even Bloomington, Indiana), Lafayette, which is across the Wabash River from West Lafayette, and Tippecanoe County as a whole are more representative of the rest of Indiana in their conservatism. Tippecanoe is pretty much all farmland with a few factories such as Caterpillar, John Deere, and Isuzu clustered close to Lafayette, the county seat. It looks like what you’d imagine the heartland of America to look like – fields and fields of corn and Wal-Marts -- and when you talk to people, you begin to understand how someone like George W. Bush got elected and reelected.

On all three days, I was asked to make phone calls to the “undecideds”, the ones who weren’t sure who they were going to vote for in November. Almost everyone on my list was over 55 years old, some in their 80’s and even their 90’s. (That’s a change from Chicago – you just don’t see as many older people in the city). Day One was a little depressing. I got a few who said they were voting for McCain, a few who were going to vote for Obama, and a great many who were actually undecided. But I made the mistake early on of engaging a McCain supporter in conversation and that what really shook me up. The directive from the campaign is that you ask the person you’ve called if they’ve decided who they’re going to vote for, and if they say McCain (or any candidate other than Obama), you thank them for their time/wish them a nice day, and end the conversation. The idea isn’t to waste time attempting to convert a McCain supporter to an Obama supporter but to engage a genuinely undecided person in conversation and discuss the issues that matter to them. This guy I called told me that he thought he was maybe going to vote for McCain. I heard the ‘maybe’ and asked him if he had any questions about Obama’s stand on any issues. Oh my god. He took off on me! I was able to answer his mostly rhetorical questions (about drilling for oil and about his misconception that Obama was a product of Chicago machine politics) but of course he wasn’t actually looking for answers, just someone to direct his dripping snarkiness at. Finally when he compared Obama’s rise to the rise of the Third Reich, I’d heard enough and said goodbye. Welcome to the real world.

The rest of the over one hundred people I spoke to weren’t so nasty and full of invective. I had some very eye-opening conversations that were sometimes very encouraging, sometimes funny, sometimes very touching even, and sometimes just very, very telling. As I said earlier almost all of these conversations were with people over 55. Here are some of the people I spoke to:

• A Hillary supporter who liked Palin. She felt that women should stick together, that Palin was likeable, that she wasn’t really that inexperienced, and, “I don’t know, I just like her.”

• A man in his 90’s who was looking after his wife who was recovering from surgery. He himself had just gone through chemotherapy. He told me that someone needed to come get his ballot because he couldn’t get away, and that they’d also need to help him fill it out because he couldn’t read or write.

• A woman who wasn’t going to think about it until election day because she always made up her mind on her way to the polls every election year. A kind of time-honored ritual?

• “Ask me on Friday, honey, and I’ll know better!” (Friday being the day after the Vice-Presidential debate).

• “I can’t stand that idiot, Biden!”

• A few people who weren’t going to vote because they didn’t like either one of them. I was reminded that in 2000, a lot of people didn’t vote because they didn’t like either Bush or Gore, and look what happened.

• A woman who liked both McCain and Obama and kept switching her support every other day. I jokingly told her that on a day that she feels like voting for Obama, she should go over to the Tippecanoe Courthouse and cast an early ballot… but only on a day that she feels like voting for Obama, not any other day.

• A woman who wasn’t sure who she was going to vote for but she was really worried about social security because she was getting ready to retire.

• Many, many people who were worried about the economy but didn’t understand a thing about what caused this crisis.

• “I vote straight Democrat”. I got a few of these. One person wanted an Obama-Biden lawn sign for his front yard because he lived on a prominent thoroughfare.

• “Oh, I’m a Democrat dear. I’m 94 years old and I’ve always been a Democrat.” And she very sweetly thanked me for my efforts. That was a first (and a last)!

• “I’m voting for McCain.” Not as many as I expected actually! My favorite McCain-supporter line after my usual greeting, “This is Mona and I’m a volunteer with the Barack Obama campaign”: “Well, I’m sure sorry to hear that, honey. I don’t want to hear one more thing about that man.” (Hoosiers have a very southern accent, by the way, so read that again).

• “I don’t know who I’m going to vote for. I don’t like McCain, but my religion prevents me from voting for anyone who won’t put his hand on the Bible.” That was a reference to the myth that Obama would not use a Bible for his Senate swearing-in ceremony.

• “I have cancer and I can’t talk to you about this.” I unfortunately heard this more than once. One of them actually did want someone to talk to. It’s one thing to know what a politician wants to do about health care, but it’s another thing entirely to hear a 75-year-old cancer patient worry out loud about her bills.

• A woman who was very worried about the economy but yet when we talked about the war, said, “Think of where we’d be if we hadn’t gone into Iraq.” She still equated the Iraq war with fighting terrorism but didn’t equate spending $10 billion a month on the war with the $4 trillion budget deficit.

• Countless people who agreed with me that there were too many Americans dying in Iraq and who told me of people they knew whose sons/daughters died. Countless people who agreed that we had gone into the wrong country but weren’t entirely sure what to make of that. There were a lot of people, I noticed, who were eager to talk about the war and, surprisingly, who also listened very carefully too.

And then there were these “mystery” people of which I counted 3 or 4:

• “No, there are no particular political issues but just something I’m not going to share with you.”

Oh… you mean like race?

The Biden-Palin VP Debate Last Night

I've just returned from spending 4 days in Lafayette, Indiana where I had no internet access and no TV access so I'm a little pre-occupied catching up on email and such. We did, however, manage to watch the Biden-Palin VP debate last night at the Purdue University Memorial Union, on a very fuzzy but large-screen TV. Our initial plan had been to watch it at the Indiana for Change office downtown where I had spent three days volunteering (in the company of my new-found friends) but their electricity was out. (Indiana for Change is what the Obama campaign in Indiana is called... I'm not entirely clear about why it's called different things in different states but I think -- and I could be mistaken here -- that this one might be run by the Democratic National Committee and not by Obama for America which of course precedes Obama's nomination. Technical).

If you weren't one of the 70 million viewers last night (which, by the way, is more than the number that watched the presidential debate last week), here's a link to the VP debate.

Both have been tutored and trained well: Biden doesn't make any off-the-cuff remarks that could be construed either as patronizing or as just a plain old gaffe, and Palin exceeds our exceedingly low expectations of her. As a result, Biden is on top of his game (though I would have liked even more direct challenges from him) and Palin still reminds us that this B-grade reality show is actually reality. Enjoy the cringe.

On a different note, as I mentioned earlier, I spent a few hours every day in Lafayette at the Obama campaign office where they had me making phone calls to the "undecideds". Let me tell you, that was a whole different ball game from any phone calls I had made in Chicago or any homes I had visited in Gary. I almost didn't go in on Day 3 because it was so... disturbing. More on that later.

What the Rest of the World is Saying

Here's a sampling of what news organizations in other countries are saying about the U.S. presidential elections. (If you know of better a news source in a particular country, let me know. And if you know of good sources in countries not included, let me know too)!


Canada: CBC; Globe & Mail

China: sina.com

India: Times of India; Sify News

Japan: Japan Today

The Middle East: Al Jazeera; Iraqi News; The Jerusalem Post

Russia: Gazeta (I couldn't find an English translation, so the link is actually to a blog that includes news from Gazeta).

United Kingdom: The Guardian; BBC; The Independent

What the U.S. is telling the rest of the world: Voice of America (the U.S. government's official voice abroad); International Herald Tribune;

Presidential Debate #1

I just finished watching the first presidential debate, as did probably many of you in the US, and I'd love to know what you thought. The pundits and spin doctors on TV are predictably trying to slant it one way or another, some saying that Obama came out on top and the others saying that McCain did. PBS says they came out even, more or less. PBS, by the way, is my safe haven because they have tolerable commentary by people who aren't in love with the sound of their own voices. (If even they get too much for me, I switch to C-SPAN, that dry silent-observer channel).

Given that historically, the first debate (the first half an hour of it really, is what I heard) holds a lot of sway in the presidential elections, I really would love to know your impressions.

Katie Couric's interview of Sarah Palin

In case you missed Katie Couric's interview of Sarah Palin yesterday, here it is. Katie Couric asks some probing questions and cross-questions her at times too (unlike Charlie Gibson whose questions were just designed for the recitation of Palin's talking points).



She's clearly so out of her depth here and the fact that she even got herself into this situation (by not saying no to McCain's offer in the first place) tells me that she's got about as much capacity for self-reflection as President George W. Bush has. He was promoted to incompetence by the Republican machine by being their nominee, and that's exactly what's happening to her. In between my cringes, I was trying to envision how this interview might come across to her supporters: There are words... right-sounding words... words that haven't quite been memorized (she has to look constantly at her notes during this interview) but that's ok... she'll manage because she's a governor and that's political experience... she's got the know-how... she knows more words than Pres. Bush knows and he's president so that's really good... and besides, that Katie Couric shouldn't be asking some of those questions... that's just not the way to treat someone who's new to all this.
(I'm sorry, I just can't assign a higher level of intelligence to anyone who is enamoured with Palin. But that's just it -- the Republicans have the full support of the elite and the wealthy but they also need the support of the uneducated to win. Thus Bush. Thus Karl Rove's anti-gay/ evangelical strategy. Thus Palin).

Electoral College Map / Debate Delay Tactics

I want to share a really good map of the electoral college that I just discovered, one where the size of each state is distorted to represent the number of electoral votes. (A weird map of the U.S. that reminds me of the motor/sensory homunculus based on the distribution of sensory neurons in the human body). Since the number of electoral votes is based on the population of each state, it can be seen as a distortion in terms of the population. This map shows the current standing of "McCain safe" states and "Obama safe" states. Take a look. Yes, the red rural states are comfortingly shrunken but there's still too many of them! What's with New Hampshire, by the way? What the...? And it's interesting that Hawaii appears slightly larger than Alaska.

Today's news has McCain trying to delay the much-anticipated first debate that is scheduled for Friday evening. He wants to put aside campaigning to help Washington take care of the economic crisis. Hmm... there are enough senators and congressmen focusing on it, and anyway, what could McCain possibly contribute by putting aside 2-3 days of campaigning? He's been campaigning for a year and a half already. I have no doubt that he's just freaking out at the prospect of facing Obama the Orator. That's got to be scary, especially from the point of view of someone who inserts foot in mouth every other day and retracts his statements every alternate day... for no real reason.

Canvassing in Gary, Indiana - Part III

At the end of the street, we turned around and worked our way back on the opposite side. Most of the houses were unoccupied. We went to one home where the mother of the house was not registered to vote, but the daughter who opened the door said that her mom had just returned from work and had just gone to sleep and that there was nothing on this earth that was going to get her to wake up her mother. We left the forms for her with some doubt that they would get completed and mailed in. The last house on the end of the block was the house across the street from Roy’s, and as it turned out was his mother-in-law’s house. She, being over 65 years of age, was eligible for an absentee ballot (that's something that is being encouraged in swing states, to ensure that some contingency or other doesn’t prevent that vote from either being cast or counted on election day). Roy was still in his yard working, and his wife was back, waiting for us. I got her voter registration form completed and she stepped over to her mother’s to make sure she understood what her mother was signing. They were really happy to see us, which surprised me because the last thing you want on a Saturday is for some stranger to come knocking on your door peddling whatever it is they're peddling. But then again at the Chicago campaign office where they have volunteers make phone calls, the calls are greeted with surprising enthusiasm too. (When they called me, come to think of it, I actually welcomed that call... and that's definitely not how I respond to other organizations who call me even if I've supported them in the past). It occurs to me now that going door-to-door in Gary, we didn't discuss any issues such as the economy, jobs, etc.; the main issue here was the big issue, the one of African-American empowerment.

On our way down the street back to my car, we passed by a 18- or 19-year-old guy whom we'd seen before, washing and polishing his car out on his lawn. (He was still at it). He had already told us he was registered to vote but Linda of course had to pause and comment on how beautiful his car was looking (it was about 12 years old, a large maroon gas-guzzling American car of some sort). He told us that it was clean inside and out, and sure enough, he had detailed it so carefully that it looked like a pristine royal velvety living room inside! Linda suggested that he could perhaps give his neighbors a ride to go vote on November 4, and he told us he didn’t like to let anybody ride in his car! Back on the sidewalk, Mable commented to Linda that this kid was probably suffering from sickle-cell anemia. It turned out that Mable was a pediatrician and Linda an at-home midwife. Who knew?

At Gregory’s house, we found that he was still busy on the phone and wasn’t going to talk to us, despite Linda’s cajoling from the living room (“You’re not going to let us down, are you, Gregory?” and, on our way out, “You know we love you, Gregory!”) His 12-year-old sister stepped outside with us, curious about us. She had already told us earlier that she knew who Obama was because they talk about him in the house so I said to her that she could try to get involved in the campaign if she wanted, that there was probably stuff for kids to do. Linda added that she could then tell her grandchildren that she worked on President Obama's campaign because it would be a historic one. Later on, we passed a 7-year-old boy walking by himself, and had a little friendly exchange with him, and Linda asked him, “You gonna be president when you grow up?” He giggled the way any kid would being asked about his grand plans by an adult. Mable said to me after he had gone that there was a time when you couldn’t even think that. I remembered a conversation I’d had earlier with my husband, and said something to the effect that there was a time when African-Americans couldn’t even get a library card. She said, jokingly, “Oh, that was just yesterday!”

The polling place for all of the people we had just was a church just down the street, and since there was a small crowd of people there and music blaring, we headed over. They had a barbecue going, with free hamburgers, hotdogs, and soft drinks, and were giving away used clothing as well (donations of course accepted). Here’s my video of it. That’s Linda, getting in the spirit of things. (The houses you see around the church are a bit larger and in better condition than the ones we went to).



There was a very enthusiastic woman we met there who told us that she was doing everything she could to promote Obama’s campaign: her backyard faced the church and she was going to hold a voter-registration event there and that when the church heard that, they were going to do one too. She was a student at Purdue University's regional campus and showed us the Obama buttons that someone she knew created and that she wore to class every day. (See pictures above).

On the drive back to Chicago, I couldn't help but wonder what was going to happen to these people if Obama did get elected. On the one hand I know that he has done enough community organizing among disenfranchised African-Americans to never forget them, but on the other hand, when people become presidents, they change. They gain power but the presidency often ends up being bigger than themselves. I just hope I'm not putting my support behind yet another politician who shows up only when when he/she needs votes and forgets them after election day. I'm hoping to go back to Gary with a couple of old high school friends in mid-October.

Canvassing in Gary, Indiana - Part II

When I got to the Obama for America field office in downtown Gary, I found it packed full of in-state and out-of-state volunteers. Each of us got a clipboard full of voter registration forms as well as forms needed for requesting absentee ballots, and very explicit instructions. We were also given a map of the particular district within Gary to which we were supposed to go, as well as the names and addresses of those in that area who were over 18 but not registered to vote. They had really done their homework in that office. Some of the volunteers with me didn’t have cars as they had been bussed in from Chicago, so a couple of women standing near me asked me if they could get a ride with me. We decided that the best thing to do was for the three of us to go to one area and divide up the list of houses to knock on among the three of us.

Linda, Mable (unusual spelling, I know), and I drove around quite a bit trying to find our particular district within Gary (the one crucial thing they forgot to give the volunteers from out of state was a larger map of the town) but even getting lost in Gary was informative. There was no neighborhood that was exempt from total and complete decay. Not only were there buildings downtown that were empty and boarded up (and hardly any businesses to speak of -- I didn't even see a fast food place there), there were homes all over town that were abandoned. Also, most other towns in the U.S. have somewhat reasonably well-kept “in-between” spaces but here there was just overgrown shrubbery and land that looked like they were returning to the prairie land that they were 150 years ago. The entire place just looked like an old forgotten town. We asked a few people for directions with little luck; they had probably lived in Gary all their lives but perhaps only knew their own immediate neighborhoods. To add to the confusion, each numbered street also had avenues and ‘places’ with the same number (eg., 13th St., 13th Ave., 13th Pl.). It occurred to me that most other towns name their streets after someone or something, and perhaps that takes someone with some combination of civic duty and pomp, but clearly, Gary’s citizens had other things on their mind. We finally came across someone working at a gas station (Kenny) who seemed very confident about where we should be headed. (He was drunk so maybe that’s why he was confident but in the end his directions, and some further help from the local Obama office got us to where we needed to go).

Our neighborhood was a residential neighborhood with very small individual houses, with every third house or so being abandoned and in some cases, boarded up. People were out and about, washing their cars, hanging out on their lawns, etc. it being a Saturday morning. (Very different from say, a Chicago suburb where people hang out in their back yards and not a soul is seen out front). Fortunately, my fellow-canvasser Linda, on an extraversion scale of 1 – 10 was a 15, and before I had even parked the car she was calling out to people and asking them if they were registered to vote (adding that we were from the Obama campaign as a sort of afterthought). There were a couple of guys hanging out on the street (they were in their early 20’s, one of them with a do-rag on his head) and they told us that they were registered and they then pointed to their friend Albert, who by then had come out of his house and was approaching us, and told us to ask him. Albert, a slight 18-year-old with cornrows, sort of shyly told us that he too was registered. Linda quizzed them about whether they knew where to go to vote, and jokingly asked them if they were actually going to do so on November 4th. I should say here that Linda and Mable were both African-American women in their 50’s and it was interesting to watch the exchange because it set the tone for the next few hours of our canvassing. They exuded warmth and friendliness without any reservations, and they weren't in the least patronizing (despite what I later found out was a huge class difference). The tone was, "We're in this together and this is our chance to make it happen." I don't think we would have had the sort of reception and the open conversations that we ended up having otherwise.

We decided to start off knocking on doors together, just so we could all get the hang of it. (OK, we were all slightly nervous, even Linda). The first house on our list where someone was actually home had its front door was wide open with a baby in a stroller at the door and a young girl (12 or 13 years old) peering out at us. She let us in (the TV was on and a 15-year-old boy wearing just a towel stared at us from the couch) and we asked for ‘Gregory’ as his name was on our list. No adult to be seen in the house, still. Gregory, we were told, was her older brother and he was busy. After we insisted that we needed to talk to him because we were from the Obama campaign and that he needed to get registered to vote, Gregory answered from his bedroom that he was on the phone and that we should come back. So we said ok and left. The next few homes had people who were already registered to vote. Everyone we had spoken to so far were Obama supporters so there was an air of welcome in the neighborhood. (I had canvassed in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1992 elections and there were some neighborhoods in the valley beyond the Berkeley hills that did not want Democrats stepping on their lawns, so I still had a little residual cautiousness)! Our first ‘get’ was not really a get at first… the man (who was outside putting vinyl siding on his house to the sound of Bob Marley) was, he told us, registered to vote but his wife who was out at the moment taking the dog to the vet, had had some problems voting the last time around (the primaries, we figured). He (Roy) called her on his cell phone --how's that for a receptive audience? --and we spoke to her. It wasn’t clear what the issue had been but we recommended that she re-register to vote. She'd be home later so that was another home to go back to later. Roy was really friendly and told us that he owned an incense stand inside one of Chicago’s malls, selling incense, perfumed oils, etc. I figured they were doing alright financially: they could afford to have a dog (and take it to the vet) and they were doing house repairs at a time when most people didn’t have the cash or credit for that kind of thing. Roy, as I said was really friendly... he told us to be sure we didn't come back his way with a trail of men behind us because he'd call our husbands and tell them, otherwise! I didn’t take a picture of Roy's house but the picture above shows what was directly next door to him (you can see a bit of his house on the left with his car). The other picture above is of Mable (with white hat on) and Linda in front of two abandoned houses. (You can click on pictures to enlarge them if you'd like).

A few more knocks on empty houses, a few more people telling us that they were already registered to vote, and then we finally got to register someone! Two people together, actually. It turned out to be a little complicated so we were glad that the three of us were there together. The couple of the house (whom I later found out were not a couple at all but a 37-year-old mother who looked no more than 30, and her 18-year-old son who looked more like 28!!) had recently moved, and on top of that, he had changed his last name. They invited us in (I noticed that they had a computer) and we walked them through the voter registration forms as well as the absentee ballot requests as they would both be at work all day on November 4. There were a couple of very friendly toddlers running around (that added to my impression that the adults were a couple… you know, a family of four) but they weren’t even related to the two adults. The mother of the kids showed up while we were there. She was not registered to vote, and was actually on our list of people to talk to, but she didn’t have the time to deal with us. She had to go somewhere and wasn’t interested in filling out a form, even if we left it for her. It turned out that everyone there was living in this tiny this house together. The 18-year-old was in high school and his 37-year-old mother worked as a dealer in a casino. They had had problems with their previous landlord who wanted to charge them $600 per month for a badly-maintained house, so she and her son moved in with the (other) single mom, sharing in the rent. They were hoping it would be a temporary situation. The house they moved out of, they told us, was subsequently robbed because it was empty, the landlord not having been able to find any tenants for $600. The picture above shows Linda (with the child on her lap), Mable with the white cap, and the mother and son in their house.

(To be continued).