I've mentioned in bits and pieces about working for the John Kerry campaign. It's what brought me to "the North," and the swing state that is Pennsylvania, but I've never really talked much about what it was actually like working for the campaign.
Perhaps that's because it's only recently that I've been able to not want to rip people's heads off simply for mentioning the November loss that I felt more deeply than almost anything else in my life.
Nonetheless.
My job was to go door to door in some of the swankier neighborhoods in Pennsylvania and parts of New Jersey (yes, there are swanky neighborhoods in Jersey) and, after delivering a small speech about why people should support John Kerry, ask for money.
I don't know if anyone reading this has ever had a job that required them to go door to door, but it is quite simply the hardest thing you can do.
It was an awesome way for me to get quickly familiar with parts of Philly that I wouldn't have normally seen, but it was also at the top of a very long list of strange and difficult things that I did after moving from Mississippi, and quite frankly, that list continues today.
I can't say that I ever had a door actually slammed in my face; most people were surprisingly polite, more so than I would be if a Bush supporter came to my house asking for money, but I did have a fair share of interesting experiences.
Dogs became the enemy. While most people in the suburbs prefer to keep their Rottweilers locked up inside, so that terror fills any unsuspecting idealist waiting on their front porch, invisible fencing is big here. So, you think you're safe, and all of a sudden, a dog that rivals Cujo, completely untethered, starts to barrel toward you, and you think, "You know what, John Kerry, screw you. I'm not getting ravaged by Spike, the Smith family bodyguard for you. I don't even have health care working for you."
So, past the dogs, sometimes the people did absolutely suck. I realize that it's annoying to have people knock on your door, but sometimes I tried to put it in perspective for them.
In our office, counting door to door people and those people on the street that accosted everyone in the state with "Wanna beat Bush?" we had roughly 70 people, mostly between the ages of 18 and 30 (actually mostly between 18 and 24, but I'm a little older than that, and this is my blog, so bite me) involved, really involved in politics, and this job was hard.
We went door to door from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the stifling heat, rain, and way underlit streets. I have two words for people: house numbers. How hard is it to have it somewhat clear as to what your address is? Sorry, off on a tangent.
My two favorite experiences, although there were many, were as follows:
1. I knocked on a door in a town called Churchville. We had little to no luck in Churchville; I don't know if the name made it a foregone conclusion for Bush, but we soldiered on, since it was late in the campaign, and it was an area that we hadn't been to before.
A woman answered the door with the yappiest dog I've ever seen jumping up and down, trying to play with me. I love dogs, not dogs like that, but I indulged the dog and made little cooing noises. The woman seemed to like this, and she also seemed to not notice that I was covered in Kerry/Edwards regalia.
When I began my speech, "Hi, my name is Emily, and I'm with the Democratic National Committee. We're in the neighborhood today talking to people about John Kerry." Well, that made it clear what I wanted, finally, and she narrowed her eyes, glared at me, and said, "Ech, John Kerry! I don't want to hear what you have to say. You should be ashamed to be out talking about him."
And, THEN, she spit at me. That's right, a woman who looked to be a little older than my mother, spit at me. I looked at her in total disbelief and asked, "Did you just spit at me"? She slammed the door without a word. Then, if that weren't enough, when I went across the street to her neighbor's, she came outside with her husband and yelled, "She's not home, and she doesn't want to hear what you have to say either. We all think the same around here." WOW.
After I got about $50 in that neighborhood, I wanted to go back to her house and wave it in her face, but I refrained, because she gave me a great story.
Story #2: I forget where this happened, but it was toward the end of the campaign when we were concentrating on getting out the vote and no longer fundraising. I knocked on someone's door, and she said, "Who is it"? When I told her, "I'm Emily with PA Victory '04, and I want to talk about John Kerry," she said, "Emily, I'm busy right now."
I turned to leave and she said, "Wait, do you play the flute?" I HATED talking to people through closed doors, because you can't hear them sometimes, and I thought, surely, I had not heard her correctly.
"I'm sorry?"
"Do you play the flute?"
"Ummm..no?"
"Okay, then, bye."
I don't know how many times I've wished I said yes, so that I could see what the hell was going on inside her house. But, alas.
If I wrote every day for a month, I don't think I'd be able to touch upon all of the awesome, unique things that I saw and did while working for the Democratic Party,honestly. As hard as it was and as much as I hated the result of the election, I wouldn't trade that for anything.
13 comments:
even funnier than your two little stories about how rude kerry supporters can be, not to mention the total disregard for local and state statutues governing leashed dogs, is the fact you worked for john "it's a crime to have so many uninsured workers in this country" kerry. you would think that if he honestly cared about young uninsured workers he might start by changing his own employment practices. but i guess this is just one more example of how democrats say one thing and do another, i feel sorry for the poor fools how bought it. i only wish that you had come to my door, i would have pointed out to you how funny it is to support a candidate in support of an idea that he himself doesn't practice. but what the hell, he's kerry, his position shifts more than a subterranean fault line. except he wears his fault lines in his face.
Well, if I had come to your door and you had tried to point that out to me, I can't tell you how receptive I would've been to it at that point.
Oh, and if you notice, those weren't stories about how rude Kerry supporters were. You Republicans should pay closer attention to what the little people have to say.
i'm sorry. were you talking to me?
Typical..
i do however notice that you are not addressing the issue of uninsured workers. don't you think it's slightly hypocritical for him to argue against the same practices that he employed to get elected? or is this just another liberal arguement that the end justifies the means? just curious.
Technically, I was not employed by John Kerry, so while I may have slight attitude about not having had medical insurance while working that particular job, I can't really blame him, since he didn't sign my paychecks.
Technically, I wasn't even directly employed by the DNC, so I can't even, in good conscience, blame them.
so then it's ok to us uninsured labor so long as it's done through a shell company? i wonder why the unions of this country said nothing about you not being "organized". you would think that the democrats would want to employ only good american union labor to do their dirty work. oh, that's right. they couldn't make a profit by using union labor. what was i thinking. funny how the same practices the democratic leadership complains about are actually used by them when their money is involved. i may be a cold hearted republican, but at least i'll tell you to your face i am screwing you. but who am i to expose the liberal hypocracy.
Geez; settle down, "dog catcher." Most of the people involved with our particular organization and some that were with other similar outfits, weren't full-time, therefore, the company wasn't required to offer health insurance.
We weren't doing it to get prescription coverage; and if you check with the mirror image organizations on the GOP side, I'm sure it was exactly the same.
that's fine, but you don't hear the republicans whinning and crying about the working uninsured in the country. i just wanted to point out how when kerry had the chance to set an example he didn't, at least not a "positive" example for employee rights. it's just another example of talking the talk, but failing to follow his own utopian vision of a socialist america. if kerry fealt strongly about the issue he would have refused to take money from organizations which employed such distasteful work practices. but liie i said, who am i to point this out? you liberals are smart people (snicker), you can figure it out.
Sometimes, I would really like to throw stuff at your head. You seem slightly incapable of an argument in which you don't throw a disparaging or smarmy comment at me about "liberals." It's quite annoying.
as i recall, you don't need a reason to throw things at me (or poke me with a finger in the forehead) so i look at it as though i am paying it forward. i know that's not exactly what the movie had in mind, but what the hell. i have to get my jabs in via internet where i'm safe. if i said such things in person the conversation would quickly resemble the boston massacre, or shoud i say the bost massacahhhh. but don't despair ms. yellow dog, even though i always prove myself to be right it doesn't distract from your kooky political cuteness.
Whether you prove yourself to be right is highly debatable, but since you called me cute, and I'm a quickly lapsing feminist, I'll forgive you.
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