Sunday: Walking Philadelphia

by David Safier

Sunday morning we drove to the campaign headquarters we were sent to, a storefront that had just been opened Saturday morning to cover a lower/lower middle class neighborhood. Driving down the almost-empty streets in a strange city, where most of the stores were shuttered for Sunday with heavy metal grates (all local stores, indicating that national chains didn’t think this area worthy of setting up shop) was a bit unnerving, since we knew we would be canvassing in the area.

When we walked in the storefront, six volunteers and three organizers were setting up shop, and in a half hour, a dozen volunteers had shown up. All of us were from out of town – New York, Washington D.C., Maine, Georgia and us from Arizona, all in town to help on Obama’s campaign. One of the organizers was an American woman who lived in Switzerland and decided to return to work on the campaign. Apparently, the main downtown headquarters was swamped with volunteers, so they sent them out to the neighborhood hubs.

The first job of the morning was to stand outside churches at the end of the Sunday service and pass out a mimeographed “prayer message” from Obama. It was a general statement of faith, respectful and nondenominational. Our church was about a mile away. We walked down the semi-mean streets with their closed stores (I don’t know how “mean” the streets get in Philadelphia, but these qualified, at least in part) to a mid-sized Catholic church with a Hispanic service in the top of the church and a Vietnamese service in the bottom – reinforcing the notion that the most segregated time of the week is Sunday morning. The people who came out took the papers we handed out graciously and with smiles. They were in that receptive, post-service mood where they are open to something given to them politely. Many walked away reading the page. Unfortunately, we ran out of fliers before we ran out of congregants.

When we returned to the storefront, we were given a walking list, campaign fliers and instructions. We drove to a mainly white ethnic neighborhood, with some Hispanic and African American families as well – streets of narrow, three story brick houses joined to one another. We covered 100 homes in about three hours, a much easier feat than in Tucson, where the homes are spread apart.

This was typical Clinton country, but we were mainly treated decently. Some people who we spent time talking with admitted, after saying they were Clinton supporters, that they were a little undecided, and they were genuinely open to talking about the two candidates. My thought was, they will most likely vote for Clinton in the primary. But when Obama is the candidate (no time for uncertainty now), our talk will make it easier for them to make the transition.

And the Obama supporters were delighted to see us.

Some people said other Obama volunteers had been by Saturday (“She talked my ear off for half an hour!”). We’re really blanketing the city. The Clinton campaign, which doesn’t have nearly as many on-the-ground volunteers, had driven past with a loudspeaker on a truck blasting a pro-Clinton message the day before.

We returned to the storefront to find another crop of volunteers, also out-of-towners, and hung around awhile putting “Your polling place is …” stickers on door hangers to be hung up Monday.

It’s always educational, and good for the soul, to walk in unfamiliar areas and talk with people you don’t usually talk with. Stereotypes fall and commonalities surface, for us and, I imagine, for those who we talk to.

It’s Monday morning. Soon we’ll go to the storefront, pick up door hangers and stroll down whatever neighborhood they pick for us. People will be at work, so we’re past meet-and-greet time. It’s crunch time now, to let them know we’re serious about wanting their votes.