Red and blue state Obama supporters are putting their weight on the see-saw state of Indiana, crossing state lines to help. Political tourists from other countries are there watching.
Meanwhile, the people of Indiana are deciding.
Kenneth Paton, his missing teeth perhaps showing one thing that a lack of affordable health care can do, explained his choice:"It's a never ending story but it's no love story. Every time the Republicans get in, our taxes, the debt and the gas prices go up. Believe me, I'm watching. They had Bin Laden in their sights. They let him go. All our industrial capacity's gone elsewhere. It's all poverty and wealth, no in between. I supported Hillary in the primary. People said that Bill Clinton would meddle but I said Great, two for one. He gave us prosperity and a surplus. Of course I'm for Obama. The way society is now, people can't get ahead. Let the working people have a few things, do you have to horde it all? Men with no jobs, too much idle time, you're going to get trouble."
Determined to get Obama supporters to the polls and convince the undecideds, on Sunday, October 27, volunteers from all over the country appeared in the headquarters on picture-postcard Spring Street near the courthouse square of Jeffersonville, Indiana, two doors down from Schimpff's, a handmade candy store which has been in the same family--and serving arguably the world's best chocolate sodas -- since 1891. The key organizers of this office are from Texas. One of the volunteers, Mikhail Heaven, emigrated from Jamaica to New York, then got a scholarship to the University of Louisville, just across the Ohio River from Indiana. While casting his absentee ballot in New York, he is working the phones and canvassing in Jeffersonville. "Indiana is the battleground, and all backgrounds, ages and races are coming together here to work for change. If you phone, you''re reaching out, giving a personal touch. If you canvass, you can change minds. "
In the crowd was Senator Mito Kakijama of Japan, watching with fascination. "Across the world, everyone is following southern Indiana closely. Senator Obama is a very impressive person. It is phenomenal, your young people formerly not interested and now so energized. On the other hand, before in Japan, under our one party system, in elections we concentrated on the quality of the candidates, selecting the best people. Twelve years ago, we installed a two party system. Now the parties fight as to which dominates, using fear and negativity."
Well aware of that problem, Obama volunteers are going door to door. I am a supporter, a MoveOn.org member and a Huff Post reporter, so I was wearing several hats as we fanned out to find out whether people were voting, and to explain that early voting had started in Indiana and polling places would be open each day from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Winnie Godfrey of Chicago, Illinois warned,"You may find huge numbers of people who have moved or are dead. In one nursing home, of the 15 who my list indicated were supposed to be there, only one was left. She did not know who was running for president but she said, 'I'm going to vote early and I'm going to vote for Dolly Madison."
Veteran canvasser, Jill Harmen, a Louisvillian who works with Latino kids in a Louisville high school and has a send up song on YouTube supporting HR676 (universal health care), hitched a ride with my carpenter husband Paul Martin and me, filling us in as we drove over the steep, rolling Indiana hills past miles of shopping centers to our assigned neighborhood. These were the endangered houses of the working class American dream, neatly kept with small, clipped lawns, tall shade trees and often beautiful flowers lining the foundations. Ornaments---frogs, birds, cats, children, possums -- stones amid pebbles decorated the yards, while wall plaques gave advice like, "Dance as though no one was watching you." Halloween decorations in the front were lightheartedly morbid, while mostly well-behaved dogs barked from behind polished glass storm doors or from wooden fences in the bark. Some places were lovely, inviting, some tattered or simply hit hard by the recent hurricane, but very few places were up for sale. White, black and Latino teens played ball together in the streets; grandfathers pulled kids in wagons.
Obama-Biden signs outnumbered McCain-Palin signs two-to-one.
Christine Giles, sitting in a folding chair under a tree, writing in neat round letters, smiled and said, "We work together, believe in community out here. I watch everybody's kids. I'm voting Obama, voting close to home" (Illinois, Obama's homestate, borders Indiana.) When I walked away, a neighbor went to her to find out what had been said. When we went to Latino homes, we often found that we had contacted an aunt on another street and that word had already spread through the extended family.
The first time voters were not all college students. David Waters, his burly body showing the signs of a rough life, said, "It'll be the first time I've voted. Economy's going sour; I'm laid off, and I figure if I don't get out there and vote this time, we're screwed."
People still though do not know their own power. Numerous folks said that if the election lines were hours long they would have to leave because they had kids and could not afford baby sitters. Telling people about early voting relieved them. Several men had served time for felonies and thought that they had permanently lost their right to vote. In Indiana after time is served, all anyone need do is register, but the registration deadline had passed two days before. We could not help. Granted too, when we knocked on some doors, we were ignored. Once a door in a house with a McCain-Palin sign was slammed in Jill's face when she said, "I''m with the Obama campaign," and on a previous canvass, she said, a dog in a McCain-Palin home in another area had been allowed to bite her.
Some African America Obama supporters were serenely gracious. Wardell Goodman welcomed us at his door, saying,"You are in Obama world here." Brent, a teenager in another house, seemed to know everyone in the area, white, black or Latino, who was supporting Obama. "See the house with the red truck? Now look four more doors down--the one with the white truck..." He introduced me to people, made cellphone calls, reveling in the realization that even people too young to vote could make a difference. I'm a white older woman though, and most black teens were guarded. As one youngster was politely blowing us off, saying that he did not know if his mom was going to vote or not, refusing to take the flyer giving information about early voting, his little brother kept trying to dart past him and say something, but each time was pushed firmly back. Finally the younger brother ran upstairs and silently came back, grinning at us in triumph, waving his mother's Obama-Biden sign. Reflexively I raised my fist and whooped. At that his older brother relaxed and let us give him the information. Little by little.
We are though running out of time. As Obama Indiana staffer Paula Neff from Galveston, Texas, says, "We need a far larger army of volunteers to get people to vote early. In 2004, Ohio had seven hour waits in line and a lot of people left. A study showed that if just two more Democrats per precinct had stayed in line, Bush would have lost both Ohio and the election."
What a different world it would have been.
