I've been doing voter registration with East End Neighbors here in the south part of Decatur (Atlanta), Georgia. I was a bit apprehensive at the start. I can be painfully shy with strangers, and I wasn't real sure how this white girl would be received knocking on doors in my overwhelmingly African-American neighborhood. What's happened is that I've had a GREAT time and met lots of warm, wonderful people.
(Hint: voter registration is actually FUN -- you should try it!)
One moment earlier this week was just to priceless not to share:
Scene: Driveway beside a small ranch house. A group of surly looking young men stand in the background looking surly. A young woman sits on the hood of a car with a laptop. Several children are underfoot, loosely watched by a incredibly tiny and worn, but feisty-looking woman (ITWFLW).
Yours truly approaches, introduces myself and explains that I'm doing voter registration. The young woman sitting perks up. She's 19, has never voted, but wants to register. Plus it will get her 30 points at school! Yay!
Several of the young men slink away, but I call over the car to a large young man lurking in the background.
Me: Do you want to register too?
Him: Aw, my vote don't count.
ITWFLW rounds on him: What?!? Who told you that LIE, boy?
Him (quieter): That's what they said at school...
ITWFLW (emits intensely derisive noise): You git your sorry ass over here and fill out that form. You voting!
Him (sheepishly takes voter registration form and fills it out)
Me (grins)
Addendum: I also got to chat with ITWFLW about the Georgia ACLU's project on voting rights for ex-felons. She nodded sagely, jerked her head to the vanished young men and took the relevant pamphlets. "I'll git 'em!"
We aren't allowed to communicate any partisan affiliation while doing voter registration, but I suspect that if ITWFLW has anything to say about it, we'll score AT LEAST two and probably more first time voters for Obama :-)