Thurday, October 28, 2004
My husband Alan and I begin our journey to Florida to help get out the vote and assist with the Election Protection organization's efforts to prevent voters' rights from being infringed upon. We leave the house at a little after 5am for our 8am flight at LAX in our Toyota Camry which sports one American flag sticker along with a "Kerry/Edwards" bumper sticker. I mention this because as we are sailing south on the 405 freeway in the early morning darkness at little over 70 miles per hour, with plenty of room on either side of us for faster vehicles to pass, the car behind us suddenly speeds up until it's very close on our tail and turns on it's high beams.
I don't speed up or change lanes, but the car stays on our tail for about 5 minutes before it jumps into the lane on our right to pass us. As it does so, the driver honks and flips us the bird through his sunroof. As he pulls ahead, we see he has a "W '04" sticker on his rear window. (A little aside: For the longest time when these particular "W" stickers first started appearing -- you know the ones, smallish oval stickers -- I thought they were parking stickers for Waste Management employees. The Waste Management logo, a green W alongside a yellow M, looks very similar.) Anyway, I hope this incident doesn't portend ugly encounters with similar assholes on election day. Maybe it's naive, but I'm hoping our Election Protection efforts will be wasted in the sense that they are unecessary -- in other words, that everything goes smoothly on election day. However, I can tell that Alan is already gearing up for a fight.
At the airport, waiting to board, we are sitting next to a red-faced white guy in his late fifties. He's very busy tapping away on some sort of hand held device and talking into the cellphone head-piece he's wearing. I notice he has a Tumi carry-on -- very expensive. A few minutes before they announce the start of boarding, he looks over at us, expressionless, and asks if we know what time the flight is scheduled to land. I begin to look through our itinerary to find the information, but I pause because it sounds like a young woman behind me is answering him. But, she's not. She's just talking to her travel mates. I notice that Mr. Tumi is staring at me now, looking very annoyed because I'm taking so long to give him the information he wants. The expression on his face startles me. Suddenly I feel like I'm his employee or servant or something. Anyway, I find the information and tell him when we're scheduled to land. Does he thank me? Does he even smile? Nope. He just turns away and starts tapping again on his hand held device. I think to myself, "Republican."
Boarding begins and we hear a familiar voice speaking to the boarding agent. We look up to see Samuel L. Jackson heading on board. For some completely irrational reason, the fact that Mr. Jackson will be on our flight calms my usual flying jitters. It's crazy, I know, but I don't have any Xanax, so it'll have to do.
About an hour into the flight, a flight attendant passing small bottles of water out to the passengers, stops when she sees my "John Kerry" button. She points to it and says something to the effect of "We can only hope." Her name is Judy and she seems eager to talk, so we do -- about how important this election is to us and to the future of our country and the world. We tell her what we're going to do in Florida and she really lights up. We discover that she's very informed as are her two young adult sons by her description. She leaves to continue her work but re-appears a short time later and thrusts a big bag of airline pretzel's and cookies into our arms. She comes back again with 2 liter bottles of water and later with a couple of bagels and cream cheese. I can't believe how nice she is. I think to myself, "Democrat."
Friday, October 29, 2004
We're spending today in Flagler Beach with Alan's mom, Flo, before we head out tomorrow to participate in the "get out the vote" activities. I'd like to take a day off from politics, but it's impossible. Flo is one of the coveted "Independent" voters. (By the way, she voted early and for Kerry.) We haven't even been here for 24 hours and already she's received 3 automated telephone calls from the Bush campaign which basically consist of a concerned sounding voice (twice female, once male) telling the listener of all the horrible things that will happen to them if Kerry is elected. "John Kerry wants to take away your prescription drug coverage, empty your bank account and rape your grandchildren." Okay, that's a slight exagerration of the content, but only slight. And every time we turn on the television, we are bombarded with political advertising. I'm pretty used to this stuff, but even I'm shocked by how deceptive and negative the Bush ads are. Those of us who live in California have no idea how lucky we are to be spared this constant barrage of ugly attack ads.
Tomorrow we will head into Jacksonville to the Election Protection field office with our big bag of pretzels and cookies. (Judy, if you're reading this, thanks again.)