The following piece was produced by HuffPost's OffTheBus.
Late on a Sunday afternoon I am locked into the gated parking lot of a sketchy jumble of apartments somewhere in Hayward in Northern California . For several hours, I've been following a small band of canvassers for Obama. It's "Walk For Barack" California Canvassing to Latino Communities Weekend. On Friday, Debbie Mesloh, Obama's California Communications Director, has shot me an email about the event. "Media is welcome to come 'spend the day in the life' of a canvasser, interview volunteers or take photos." I'm one of the three fools, along with Matt (Hayward Daily Review) and Mike (photographer/stringer for the Oakland Tribune), who has been enticed by Debbie's offer. In fact, there is near-parity between canvassers and press: four to three. What is this--New Hampshire?
Matt and I are locked into the sketchy parking lot because a guy has called down to Matt from his apartment balcony. As the rest of our group moves on to the next apartment cluster ("complex" is too fancy a noun for these humble abodes), I indulge my curiosity and trot after Matt. The guy upstairs is a Kaqchikel-speaking Guatemalan Indian who has recognized Matt because he's been researching an article on these particular illegal immigrants making a new life in Hayward. As Matt and the Guatemalan converse in fractured Spanish, I fruitlessly shake the gate latch. With gracious amiability, Matt's acquaintance comes down and lets us out. Right about now I'm thinking that instead of Hayward I could be in San Diego. I could've flown down to the Southland for the opening of the new Obama campaign office there. That had been the plan. I could've been listening to live jazz and the African harp and contemplating the food and drink. Instead the light is waning on this cold and blustery day, and Molly, keeper of the congressional district voter data, hasn't turned half the pages of the print-out. It seems like we've been walking for miles, even though it's been only two, and we've far to go.
Barack Obama had sure better appreciate this. Like so many in the Obama grassroots, Molly, Christiana, John and William have made sacrifices to work for their candidate. Molly, a recent graduate from U. C. Santa Barbara, works full-time as a waitress. She's due on the job soon, and tonight she'll have to lock it up late. Christiana is a full-time student at U. C. Berkeley, as well as a wife and mother to a new baby. She's one of the Obamatized--a person for whom Barack has been a motivation to political action. Her story isn't quite what I usually hear, in that, for Christiana, it wasn't the 2004 convention speech but an appearance with Barbara Boxer that made her "all teary-eyed."
The afternoon hasn't produced many voters. Although the canvassers are knocking on the doors of registered Democrats only, it doesn't mean much in a California neighborhood like this. Because our state has "motor voter" registration, anybody with a driver's license is likely to be registered to vote. On these streets, where the apartment turnover is high, more often than not the voter roll print-out is out-of-date. Nevertheless, the little group is determined, and at Molly's call we search the mazes of apartment alleys and corridors for all the Democrats on each page of the list. The ace in our collective pocket is Virginia, our energetic Puerto Rican leader, whose fluent Spanish makes up for our miserable linguistic deficiency. Esperanza in Oakland had put me on to Virginia, when in the morning I showed up, as planned, for the Oakland Latino Canvass. Once I realized that I was the only loiterer in San Antonio Park, I called Obama HQ and was told to call Esperanza, who informed me that because Saturday's canvass had knocked on "a thousand doors" (that's amazing, Esperanza!), the Sunday canvass was cancelled. Esperanza told me to phone Virginia, who with a maniacal laugh invited me down to Hayward.
Now Virginia chivvies us. "On, my darlings!" she chortles. Often a face will flit from a window, or a curtain will twitch; but no one will answer the door. "We look like the INS," Virginia says. "Or documentary filmmakers," William suggests. "You wish," I say. "We don't look that cool." I'm thinking that we're more like a group of charismatic Catholics, whose new church is in a store-front nearby, and for whom Sunday afternoon proselytizing is a regular thing. We hesitate in a driveway lined with a chicken-wired dog run where two ill-kempt Chihuahuas jump and screech at us. I've been covering the Obama grassroots long enough to know that the threatening bark is the choral accompaniment to canvassing, but this is more intense than usual. Although canvassers are supposed to work in pairs, one pair to each side of the street, our group has stayed together.
Molly is keeping the precinct walking tally, noting on a scale of 1-5 whether a listee is likely to vote for Obama. The catch of the day is Easter, a fetching African-American girl who has just turned 18. Virginia and I find Easter sitting on the back steps of her apartment building. Easter says that she's registered to vote but hasn't made up her mind about any candidate. Virginia launches into Obama's position on crack versus powder cocaine. Above our heads, a Hispanic gentleman reclines on his balcony sofa like a model in a Manet painting and stares down at us. Laughing, Easter interrupts Virginia with an admission that she's been planning to vote for Hillary "because Bill is cool." Appalled, I now offer my two cents. Between us, Virginia and I turn Easter for Obama. At this point, Mike finds us and takes Easter's picture for the Tribune.
The afternoon wears on. I always try to maintain some distance between the people and events I'm covering, but all such pretense is long gone. I'm juggling a clipboard and brochures as I try to pull Virginia away from a door where she's chatting at great length with a woman not eligible to vote while her seven-to-eight year-old daughter looks on avidly and her husband and son, with long-suffering expressions, carry in sacks of groceries. Virginia lingers with an elderly woman who will need a ride to the polls. She spends time with another woman who has a son and nephew in Iraq. At another door, it's not Virginia but the man of the house who wants to talk and leans against his doorjamb discussing Obama while his wife, making a point of huffiness, hauls out the trash bag by bag. Finally, Molly says she has to get to work, and the canvass comes to an end. A chunk of the voter list has been checked off, but we haven't been able to go as far as planned. Matt and Mike have long since departed. The long walk hasn't yielded many potential voters--for any candidate--and I'm wondering frankly if, strategically, canvassing poor neighborhoods is the best use of a campaign's time and energy, of Virginia's considerable talents. Wouldn't a better page in the campaign playbook be to try to reach those middle class Hispanic women who turned out in force for Hillary's fall rally in Oakland? Middle class Hispanics, however, don't live in any one neighborhood and therefore would be harder to reach in a walking canvass. In the end, the afternoon has been one of planting seeds--in the mind of Easter and the little girl rooted at the door with her Spanish-speaking mother, in the minds and hearts of all the Hispanic women who open the doors of small, dark apartments to Virginia's mellifluous persuasion. Even a casual observer like me can see their spirits lift, their sense that somehow their worth has been validated by a hovering group of strangers whose leader wants to talk American politics.