Cross-posted to RaisingKaine.
Early in the campaign this summer, the Bristol Redevelopment and Housing Authority ejected Obama campaign supporters who were registering voters in the Bristol, Virginia, housing projects. A tiny committee of Democrats took on the BRHA's abrogation of First Amendment rights.
With the help of an excellent Bristol Herald Courier expose, demonstrating the speciousness of the Housing Authority's claim that no campaigning or voter registration was allowed in any federal public housing, we got the BRHA on the defensive.
Editorials opposing the BRHA's stance against right of free assembly, petitioning our government, and enfranchising the poor appeared in both the Roanoke Times (150 miles away) and the local paper. The BRHA relented, rescinding it's ban on political activity in August.
The ACLU of Virginia built on this victory by sending a letter to all state public housing authorities warning them not to abridge free political activity on their properties.
Since that time, a small group of volunteers began the task of contacting residents in over 400 garden apartments, duplexes, and elderly and disabled apartments, a sizable group of city citizens, considering Bristol's population is only 17,000. We are working in virgin territory. No campaign has ever systematically visited people living in these homes.
I worked solo last night in the lower section of the largest Bristol housing project. There are many folks with felony convictions hanging over their heads, who have lost their political rights. Mostly though, people just respond by saying, "I don't vote."
Among my first few door knocks last night, a young white woman with piercings in her tongue and lip and a large tatoo running down from her right shoulder to her elbow responded "I don't vote."
I've learned never to just take this common response for a full answer. I asked who she would vote for if she was registered. "I don't know ," she said, attempting to keep her two tow-headed youngsters inside the screen door.
"I'm sick of the way things are going in the country and in my own life. Last year at this time, I was homeless." She described herself as a "single mom", engaged to a guy deploying to Iraq. She had been unable to meet rent payments on minimum wages and eventually ended up in the project apartment.
She invited me in to talk while her sister cooked dinner. She has no health insurance for her and the little ones. "The price of food and gas is sky high."
She said that since she didn't have cable, she had not watched the campaign. She was very frustrated with Bush. "This war needs to end. Yesterday!"
I mentioned that Barack was raised by a single mom, about how he described at the Lebanon rally on Tuesday that he vividly recalled his mom, laying on her bed, arguing on the phone with insurance companies about covering her procedures to cope with her cancer.
I told the two women about Obama's work as a community organizer to rebuild the economic and social fabric of a Chicago neighborhood where the steel mill that employed much of the community had shut down. I compared Barack's history to McCain's claim that the threshold for being rich is an annual income of $5 million, that he couldn't tell how many houses he owned. "Which man can understand something about how you are living?" I asked her.
We talked about Obama's position on coal and green energy. We talked about Barack's plan to bring combat troops home within 16 months.
In the end, she agreed to register, and so did her sister, who turns 18 in October. They appeared energized by our conversation. I felt as if I was spreading a little of Obama's audacious hope to these two newly enfranchised women. By the time I left, they said they were committed to vote for Obama and would be sure to vote. "When is Election Day?" the mom asked.
Last night, I got into numerous lengthy conversations and was only able to knock on 22 doors, getting a response from 12. I registered 5 new Obama supporters, including one illiterate, wheelchair-bound woman, and identified four more Obama supporters who were already registered. That is a pretty dense response. Earlier this week, a colleague registered a 90-year-old African American woman who had never voted before.
This is important work. Don't be afraid. These are ordinary people. Except these folks have experienced the worst that George W. had to dish out.
Find your local public housing or subsidized housing units; get some registration forms; get to work.