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Edited on Sat Aug-23-08 10:57 AM by TygrBright
At the urging of an excited, insistent phone-banker, I stopped by the local Obama HQ. Here's how long it's been since I've been excited enough to go to a candidate's local campaign headquarters: I told the pleasant, energetic-looking volunteer who greeted me that although I wasn't a very good phone banker, I'm a whiz at data entry and stuffing envelopes.
She gaped at me for a moment, then laughed. "Honey, I haven't seen an envelope since I've been here!"
I looked around and it's true... dang! No stacks of boxes with printers' logos on them. And where were the rows of tables with phones? There were the tables, and at one end of one of them... A basket of cell phones?
Of course! It makes perfect sense, but...
I feel old.
I feel even older as I'm handed off to Zach, who's a college student from California, working the Obama Campaign for the summer. He seems a bit doubtful that an old codger like me will grasp the nuances of database entry, but soon he's leaving me on my own because there are so many more newly-arriving volunteers that have to be put to productive work.
After entering a stack of information, I take some time to look around. In spite of the lack of 20th-Century technology, there is a familiar feel here: The maps on the wall, the general air of barely-organized chaos, the hand-lettered signs stuck up on virtually every surface, clipboards full of sign-up sheets, amateur photos from local events, the lingering smell of pizza (and, this being Santa Fe, chile...) in the air. But that's not what's tickling my deja-vu reflex.
I watch the goings-on some more. The campaign staff are all young, few of them local. They are engaging as a litter of golden retriever pups, in their energy and friendliness-- though somewhat better coordinated. There is a clear skeleton of solid organizing infrastructure, but they've obviously felt free --even encouraged-- to flesh it out with their own individual passion and personality. It feels... familiar. And familiar in a way that goes back a long way... back before Clinton, certainly.
Then I have it.
The skeletal infrastructure shows the fingermarks of the long-gone Saul Allinsky, the shrewdly-directed passion of the skilled community organizers of my youth. And the energy of the volunteers-- both the youthful staff and the mostly-older locals-- recalls the driving, hopeful passion I felt in a community center in Minneapolis one winter evening, listening to some college professor from downstate --a guy I'd never heard of-- announce his candidacy for the Senate against a well-funded, popular Republican incumbent. The room was full of the same kind of energy, and the same kind of people --farm people and workers from the meat-packing plant and union folks and college students who'd come up from Northfield to cheer on Paul Wellstone because they knew he could make a difference.
Well, damn.
Don't get me wrong --Obama is very different from Paul, a man I grew to know and love dearly and admire deeply. Paul's passion was impulsive and freely-expressed; Obama's is quieter and more strategic. Paul was driven by the most idealistic of progressive principles and ideology; Obama seems determined to keep his ideology large enough to embrace those reluctant centrists and give working room for compromise. I can see the usefulness in that even while I feel nostalgia for Paul's steadfast refusal to budge one iota on a bill or a position he felt strongly about.
But the Obama supporters' passion and hopefulness and determination reminds me of the folks who travelled with the Green Bus. And further back-- the youngsters who hand-lettered signs to carry to Kennedy campaign rallies.
Suddenly, I don't feel so old anymore.
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