SPARKS, Nev. - Day Three of San Antonio continued the momentum of Sen. Barack Obama's (D - Ill.) campaign and, for me, had highlights like meeting Ray's wife, Ryan from The O.C. and training volunteers for the essential work of the campaign.
By this point, the routine was established: morning phone banking and various afternoon activities. I know I've written about this before, but the phone conversations went swimmingly, compared to Reno-Sparks calls. More Southern hospitality and at that point, I was drafted by English-speaking volunteers as the de facto interpreter for primarily Spanish-speaking voters.
The problem was, I only took two years of Spanish in high school and completely forgot how to conjugate verbs in the future tense while my past tense conjugation was rusty, at best. So when I got a Spanish-speaker, the conversation (if you can call it that) translated like this: "Hello, I call myself Alfred and I work for Barack Obama. Is (name) over there? I am sorry, my Spanish is bad. I want to know if you vote in Tuesday? You vote for Obama or Clinton?"
That's not to say we didn't have fluent Spanish-speaking volunteers on calls, but they were busy having actual and polite conversations, whereas I came across ignorant and rude. Let this be a lesson to any high school or college student: actively invest time and study into a foreign language, you never really know when it'll come in handy.
The voters were gracious enough to speak slowly and clearly to me. If they supported Obama, they were enthusiastic; if they supported Sen. Hillary Clinton (D - N.Y.), they were friendly and civil; and other times, the voter didn't live there any more.
By the time I wrapped up phone banking, our office received a visit from Kerry Washington (Della Bea Robinson from Ray, Alicia Masters from Fantastic Four and Kay Amin from The Last King of Scotland) and Benjamin McKenzie (Ryan from The O.C.). The two young stars weren't just any celebrity endorsers, they were active surrogate speakers and well-educated. Washington earned her theater degree from George Washington University and McKenzie studied foreign affairs and economics at the University of Virginia.
While they were short in speech, both were thankful to the volunteers for their involvement in the campaign and reminded us who and what we were working for and towards; they also observed the calls and stood for photos.
Then, the real fun began for me.
Our office then hosted three out-of-state volunteers, complete with hiking and back packs. Rachel Frank and Halley Griffin were volunteers from Washington state and Julie Grannen was a volunteer from California. After direction from my boss, I gave them a crash-course in canvassing and we sailed off to what could be described by suburban-dwellers as a "rough" neighborhood in north central San Antonio.
When we found a parking spot to fan out, I saw dogs of all sizes walking around the streets. In between the houses with well-kept lawns and yards, there were equal amounts of dirt driveways and abandoned cars. At first I was out of my element.
The majority of my canvassing experience in Nevada and South Dakota was in genteel neighborhoods with leash laws and city ordinances about the landscaping. Then, I remembered where I'd grown up, the Rosebud Reservation. If I could handle rabid rezdogs with mange and my father's junkyard as a child, this neighborhood was nothing.
The other thing they don't tell you in campaign school is that if you
have a fear of dogs, you'd better get over it fast or it will be a
trial-by-fire. The only fear I had happened when a large dog started barking at me and my canvassing companion, Rachel, from a school parking lot across the street on our right. Just as we walked behind a car to avoid any chase, there was another dog sitting on the porch of a house on our left. Just as I was sure we'd be getting both our legs bitten into, the dogs saw each other and proceeded to bark tear into each other, a chain-link fence with an open gate, the only barrier.
Also during my canvass, I compared and contrasted the Hispanic presence in San Antonio with the presence in Reno. In Nevada, Hispanics tend to be treated with a low level suspicion by the rest of the population as though they are all undocumented or illegal immigrants, regardless of actual citizenship status. In San Antonio, they seem to be part of the fabric of the community. Homes have crests displaying the family names without fear of being treated differently. Of course, the two cities aren't just separated by miles, they're separated by history as well as progressive and accepting attitudes.
After canvassing was finished, the three volunteers and I swooped back to our office for some rest and more crash-courses in phone banking.
At the end of the evening, the staffers announced that we'd be going to a nearby restaurant for some late-night food. Bonding time is always amazing because the time you take to have a conversation and share stories is golden.
During our dinner, I found out that field organizer Jennifer Romo was pursuing a master's degree in library sciences. She cracked me up when she said being a young librarian was essentially a waiting game: waiting for the older librarians to either retire or die so she could move up.
Deputy field organizer Joe Tognetti was educated at a Catholic high school and we compared notes on our experience with the church and it's many, sometimes odd, inconsistencies.
Washington state volunteer Halley Griffin is pursuing a career in journalism, a subject we talked about ad nauseum. Evidently, none of the staff writers at the alternative weekly paper where she interned wanted to interview Hans Blix, former UN weapons inspector, so she was saddled with the task. After Googling and reading the article, Halley has an amazing future ahead of her.
Now if only she can stop getting the "crap" assignments.