Journey to Save North Carolina: Part II

As of now, I'm posting this without a lot of proofing. Please do not take this as a professional sample of my writing ability.

Day 4:

Why don’t I start out with the most eventful thing to happen to me:
“Get the f---- away from my door lawn or I’ll get my gun.” I heard this at the very end of the night on my last house on my route and, frankly, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner considering what I’ve heard about how Fayetteville has more guns per capita than anyone in the nation (unverified). Also, lest you think that everything can be easily explained by race, it was a young black guy.

I’ve had four stints with the United States Census since 2010 so I know that people get irritable with home visits and while you get more people home late at night, some people go to bed before 8 or 9 pm. Are they 9 years old? Anyway, last night I probably pushed it a bit far but Roni said I could go out until 8. I felt like for the amount that’s being invested in me, and that I didn’t hit my first house until four pm, I might as well push it. I ended up splitting the difference and going out until 7 pm (it felt like 8 because of DST) and hit up my final four houses. Two of the final four houses were people I had a positive impact on so it was better on the average.

Since Saturday, I’ve found more of a groove doing GOTV (Get Out the Vote) canvassing and that has been more comfortable for me. I like knocking on doors and talking to random people and I like collecting data.

We’re not knocking on everyone’s door but rather people who are already registered with the democratic party and haven’t yet voted. The first two questions I ask on the script gauge if they’re still supporting the party. If they are, we try to help them identify how to vote. If not, they’re on their own. There was one young woman who came down with mono and couldn’t get to the polls in time. She was somewhat heartbroken that she couldn’t get to the polls and I found out that she could do curbside voting and the election workers would have to accommodate her. Because Mono isn’t Covid, I’d imagine people will be thrilled to serve her. Another problem case was a guy moving to Germany who tried to vote online. This is a thing that North Carolina allows provided you ordered your ballot by a certain date.

I’ve seen both some of the really nice parts of this city and some of the poorest locales I’ve ever seen. There’s a city called Spring Lake a few miles up the road and it seems to be trailer parks and dilapidated houses (pictured below). Most of these houses look like what the big bad wolf came across before he reached the one with bricks.

This is where I encountered the angry voter but that’s par for the course. People don’t want to be bothered at nearly any hour of the night.

 

Day 5:

A glitch with my booking (mainly that I forgot to book more days, so I guess I was the glitch) led to me having to get a new air b n b. My host, Jocelyn, an easygoing single mother to a four-year-old had been a perfect host so this was a loss. She volunteered me to drive me to the airport where I picked up my rental car and this might have been our first real conversation. She said she was apolitical so there’s not a lot of insight to gleam there, and we talked about our career paths and how she wound up in the army.

She pretty much loves the army. She dropped out of college after three semesters and spent the first two years of her career in Germany where she didn’t visit home once. She’s also heavily tattooed which she says isn’t that uncommon for army folk.

After renting a car, I had a robust day knocking on doors for the GOTV campaign. 

Leaving Jocelyn’s home, I still hadn’t nailed down a permanent location for the night. Considering the password problems and phone verification system, I figured, I’d just use the computer app rather than downloading it on my phone. It was a little worrisome because I kept having to check throughout

In the last two days, I feel like I found my groove in the field although I always felt like I could have done more. Sometimes, the act of going downtown and finding my bearing pushed me far enough that it was fairly late in the day when I got my first house. On this day, it wasn’t until about 1 pm that I got out and my coordinator wanted me to go Fort Bragg where I waited in line at the welcome center to find out there was no chance in hell I had of getting on the base. While getting my bearings, I stopped at a lavish golf resort (owned by the Fort but open to the public) and bought a slice of cake while figuring out my bearings.

It was around 3 that I left Fort Bragg and realized I needed a better GPS, I think because I took two massive wrong turns and I imagined things were getting later and later. My voter disenfranchisement sign was planted on some random Biden supporter’s yard (I figured if he was for Biden, he wouldn’t mind and it was better than throwing it away) and Roni now had an answer over whether Fort Bragg accepted canvassers (answer: no).

Around 5 or 6, I finally sat down for dinner and worked the wifi there on my computer so I could get in touch with Air BnB hosts. I found out I wasn’t allowed to book two hosts at once which I thought was bad. Technology sucks most of the time, doesn’t it? Somehow, I asked one guy to call me via telephone and was able to connect with him. I got there around 9 pretty exhausting after canvassing about as late as I could.

Day 6:

I’ve gotten to know Roni who works in the central office distributing campaign materials.  Campaign workers are supposed to go downtown to check in with her every day so I get a small taste of talking to her. There are a number of people like Ruthie or Ian or Macie who are sending out a number of e-mails on a daily basis but I don’t really have much to do with them and I keep getting calls for CUREing when I’m not part of that operation. Other than that, very little social interaction. Seeing Roni's office (pictured above) is generally a good starting place.

I had time to make a visit to a park and do a little bit of tourism and even got to try some North Carolina bar-b-q while getting almost all my houses done before dark. I say almost because I didn’t quite make it, so the last 12-15 were in the 6-7:30 range as my phone was going dead. Because it was daylight savings time, that was pretty dark and I had to record some of my responses by hand. Realizing that I was going to be left with a ridiculous surplus of fliers, I dropped off as many fliers as I could to doors that weren’t even assigned to me. 

Today, I was not in the trailer park doldrums but an apartment complex on the west end of town. Judging by the people and surroundings, it seemed like it was unquestionably a lower class neighborhood. I saw a man from across the parking lot who was black and wore a military uniform. He was black, a military man, and living in the relative doldrums of North Carolina. I was extremely eager to hear his political views and I was in a unique position to intrude upon his home to find out. By the time, I made it across the street, however, he was gone.

I tried to remain festive and offered stickers to people or pins from the campaign. I was even told I could give one t-shirt away but how would I pick that one person? Because the app on my phone showed me to the doors of registered democrats, I didn’t really deal with the opposition much but I was prepared for it.

There was a gang of kids, all black, who was walking all over the complex and playing. At one point they were walking where I was walking and one of them playfully said something like “if you’re following me, I’m going to beat you up” to make his friends laugh. I reacted quizzically and he said in a way that felt like code-switching to talk to a white person “where are you going.”

These kids were a hyper-active group who felt like they were experiencing the joy of being unconstrained by adults during summer break. One kid asked me “are you racist?” which strikes me as the question of the year if you read most liberal media outlets today or hang around 22-year-olds. Was he trying to entrap me like a school yard game? For all the abstract woke literature that’s been out there floating about race and the white patriarchy that’s dominated magazine, it’s much different than being in the awkwardness of conversing in a predominantly black crowd. I know that historically they have been oppressed and micro-aggressions have more of an effect towards the black community. I’m just talking about awkwardness.

I have my own views on the futility of the word “racist” and subscribe to the song from the musical Avenue Q “Everybody’s a Little Racist” in that we all have our own unconscious biases when we see people. These kids thought I was gullible, full of white guilt, out of place, and lacking in street smarts because I was in a black neighborhood.  Likewise my parents likely educated me to be afraid of black people in subtle ways.

We’re a society dominated by a cancel culture that’s aggressive towards those with those initial intentions. What really matters,in my opinion, is what you do with those thoughts and how you course-correct to recognize that way of thinking.

So of course, I told him “I think everybody’s a little racist in that we all have our own…..” It might have been too much for a (what I imagine to be approximately) ten-year-old to rattle with, as he was like “awww…” before I could finish. I’m assuming the next part of his phrase was “I’m telling.”

The next time I saw my young friend, he seemed to have forgotten my racism and asked me for a sticker and kicked me a soccer ball. His friend asked me if I wanted to fight him. I don’t know why these specific words came out of my mouth but I said “sure, I can beat you in a fight. I’ll be done flyering at 8 if you want to wait until then or you can help me flyer.” I hopelessly thought I could channel their enthusiasm in a positive way.

This group of instigators appeared to have ADD as they never really finished that thought either but they gave me a lot of food for thought.

What was more disturbing about this day was the apathy that a lot of the people to whose doors I was knocking on.

There was virtually no way that these people were not lower middle class unless they voluntarily were choosing to live in squalor. A number of people would say something like, “the government doesn’t do much for me” or “I don’t follow that stuff”

To me, that might be the problem that got us into this mess in the first place.  These people see it as some distant corrupt mess and am wondering what the government does for them, so when any outsider comes along and echoes that sentiment they’re attracted to them.

If people were properly educated on what government can and can’t do for them and what the government is doing for them in ways they might not realize, they wouldn’t be willing to throw it all away for anyone who yells loudest.

Tomorrow is election day….It’s going to be such an emotional ride, I’m not ready for it.