Civic Duty and Sore Feet!

Well, Saturday is a couple days past now, and my feet are finally feeling well enough to talk about my experiences without complaining. :-)

Saturday went well. We went canvassing as part of the DNC's Neighbor-to-Neighbor National Organizing Day, a 50-state canvass across the country.

In all, there were over 1,000 efforts, with tens of thousands of volunteers walking their neighborhoods, knocking on doors, and talking to their base about the upcoming election.

Michele and I canvassed together. We were assigned the very neat area near 19th and Washington, by downtown Golden. Right down the block from where I used to work. :-)

I was, of course, practicing my "script" the whole way in the car. But, by the time we'd parked and walked several blocks to our first house, I was both too winded (very hilly!) and nervous to remember. But I got it enough together to greet someone at that very first house.

It was an older man, maybe in his 60's, who was listed as a Democrat, but said he switched to a Republican.

I was interrupted as I explained what we were doing, handing him a piece of literature outlining the major positions of the party. I decided to engage him on why he switched parties, but I was thrown off by two things:

1) He said he switched because, and I quote, "He got tired of the Democrats bitching and complaining about the Republicans." Ummm, OK? Isn't that what the minority party is supposed to do?

2) He had a bead of snot hanging from his nose.

This was very disturbing to both Michele and I, so I mockingly showed my disapproval in his switch but told him to keep the literature and hoped he'd change his mind come Novemeber.

...

Many houses came and went. Michele and I never open our door if it rings, and we're not expecting anyone, so it wasn't surprising that the majority of houses had doorbells that went unanswered. But, in total, we talked to about 25 homeowners, and all went well. There were, of course, some highlights:

* There was an apartment where we rang, but after 30 seconds, got no answer, so we walked away...but as we got to the end of the sidewalk, the door opened. We turned to find a man, early 30's, looking slightly stoned. I introduced myself, verified he was "Trevor," and he responded with "What is this? Oh, I hate liberals."

* There was a house where the guy answered the door with no shirt on. A bit uncomfortable. Woulda been more exciting if it was a woman?

* There was a woman getting out of her car in the parking lot of an apartment complex we had a couple stops at. We rang on the first bell, not no one answered. So we move to the second one, and as I'm about to hit the doorbell we hear, "Uh uh!" It was the woman in the parking lot's door. I asked, "Are you Stephanie?" And she responded quit rudely with, "Whow ants to know?" Ironoically, when I told her who we were (which couldn't have been too hard ot figure out since we were wearing shirts that said DEMOCRAT in huge letters), she seemed pretty comfortable ins aying she's a Democrat and was already intent on voting for our people.

* There were 3 houses where the homeowners were quite excited to see us and greeted us very warmly and excitedly.

It took us 2.5 hours to hand out all our material. Towards the end, we had to start dropping off all of it at the doors because we had no time to talk. By the end, we were tired and beat...

Still, it was great to do our part in "the process." I'd definitely do it again...tho there's no way I can fathom how anyone can go door to door selling things or soliciting for money. I have a new admiration for these brave folks.

(Except Girl Scouts, selling cookies for $3 a box has to be pretty easy.)