I just got off the phone with my mother, who has been wheelchair-bound due to a botched surgery to remove spinal tumors 20 years ago. She asked me, "Where are all the Kerry people in Mississippi?" I told her I would find out for her.
I'd like to tell you a little bit about my mother. She raised us as she was raised, believing that while people should stand on their own two feet, sometimes they needed a hand. Helping someone that was down was only the Christian thing to do. She was against the "welfare state," against people not trying to better themselves, and taught us to believe that you don't sit on your butt and wait for someone to make things better, you busted your butt to
make things better.
We grew up poor, and I can remember her telling us kids she had already eaten when cooking supper, because there wasn't enough food. I remember the 18% mortgage on the house, and my father taking fried eggs between two slices of bread to work for lunch. I remember unemployment so bad that the ducks started disappearing out of the pond in front of the hospital. Throughout all of this, and even after hurricanes, my parents wouldn't apply for assistance, because that was seen as a stigma, that you had failed or didn't want to work hard enough.
Somewhere along the line, we determined that the conservative movement reflected our values better. Maybe because of the bad economic times of the 70s, maybe because we all bought into the "tax and spend liberal" line we were being fed. Reagan's military buildup brought jobs back to town (Trent Lott's home town, by the way,) which made everyone big supporters of him.
I voted for Reagan in my first Presidential election, as did most of my town. It was a schizophrenic decade, the 80s, with folks voting Republican nationally, but Democratic locally. The state Democratic machine still held sway, but it wasn't the typical Democratic machine, it was more that the people in power had traditionally been Democrats. Slowly that changed. Trent Lott was elected to Congress, and began accumulating power. The well to do and their kids began to see the lure of the GOP's "business first, damn the hippies and their laws" mantra, and the old Dems were eased out or roughly pushed aside. Then came Falwell, the Moral Majority, and their ilk. The "cool", the "urbane" thing was to blame folks that hit a rough spot for their own situation, instead of reaching out. It was obvious that they were "lazy" if they were in the situation they found themselves in.
My mom lives with my youngest brother, who cares for her, but she insists on doing the laundry and cooking from her wheelchair. I called her today because her 60th birthday is next week. I had promised her that I would send her a DVD of "Fahrenheit 9/11" for her birthday, since it is too painful for her to be in her wheelchair for more than an hour (and like it would ever be shown in a theater anywhere near her,) but she said that my brother was going to Wal Mart and would get it for her. God Bless him, my brother is voting for Kerry as well. He's a bright guy. Takes after his oldest brother. ;)
Mom is afraid her grandchildren are going to be drafted to fight in one of Bush's wars. She has seen first-hand the rising costs of medical care for the disabled. She sees the meanness of the Republicans, sees the lies, and sees what Bush and his gang are doing to the country, gutting it in service to their multinational corporate masters. As cut off as she is from all the information we take for granted, she still surprises me sometimes with what she has picked up. She simply is bewildered that so many people are so ignorant of what is going on. She can't wrap her mind around the fact that poor and blue collar working people would vote for Bush.
She asks me, "Where are all the Kerry people in Mississippi? I live on a corner lot, I could put a sign in my yard, but I can't find anyone here to get one from." I checked JohnKerry.com while I had her on the phone, and the only number they have for Mississippi is in Jackson. The closest activies are in Mobile, AL.
She tells me that they are having a huge classic car rally on the coast, "Cruising the Coast," with an expected 6,000 classic cars. She says "The Kerry people need to be there where all those people are going to be. Someone needs to tell them, but I can't find anyone." (Maybe True Majority should have one of the "protest cars" there?)
I told Mom that I would order her a yard sign from JohnKerry.com, and also send her some extras because it is a certainty that the local "Limboids" would tear it down, but she says it must be heavy, and the shipping would be too much. ;) I am going to order her a "Kerry Kit" so maybe she can sway some friends. (Mine is buried somewhere in my house under all the stacked furniture. We had serious water damage from Hurricane Jeanne and have the furniture stacked in the living room while waiting for a contractor to replace the drywall, carpet and insulation.)
Electoral-vote.com show MS at 46% Kerry, 51% Bush, and this is with apparently nothing happening on the ground, aside from the presumed activity on college campuses and in the capital. How great would it be if we could get Trent Lott's state to go blue? My mom feels like she's lost in the wilderness, trapped in her wheelchair in a surreal land of madness. She can't be the only one that feels this way in the state. Is there anyone on the MS Gulf Coast that can let my mom know she isn't alone in the whole state?
Thanks!