Farmer Daniel Greenfield

Daniel and I often go out on sign duty, posting large 4 x 8 foot signs, a number of which are replacements for those that have been take down by vandels. One of the interesting things I found out about Daniel is that he is the only PhD farmer I know. The other day I got a chance to visit Daniel's farm.

Early Morning Assembly

Three vets met for our Saturday early morning assembly. Willie is a Korean war vet. John and I are Vietnam era vets. All agree that Obama has a great record on veterans benefits. It is absolutely essential that we honor our vets by providing them with first class health care, especially for PTSD. It is absolutely shameful that so many of our vets are homeless, about 25 per cent of all homeless are vets.

In the picture above, notice all the young people. In our office, the entire operation is run by young people.

It is really good to see that our country is in such good hands.

Saturday Walking a Cuyahoga Falls Neighborhood

Willie and I spent Saturday walking another Cuyahoga Falls Neighborhood near the park where we assemble for our walking assignments. One of the interesting people we met was Ed Warner. He has lived in the neighborhood for around 20 years. In that time he has seen many changes as the neighborhood has transitioned from one of older families to younger. He works on road construction as a flagman or pipelayer, whatever is needed. He said that the economy has really hurt him, as work has become more difficult to come by. As a union man he is especially worried about his pension. Now he has began to notice more and more homes up for sale due to bankrupcies, though it is not as bad as in other neighborhoods. Ed is convinced that we can not afford another four more year of the same.

Sometime ago a middeclass income could buy a very nice house in this neighborhood. Not anymore. These people are falling further and further behind.

Workin' the Phone bank

Phone Bank at Akron Democratic Headquarters

Bert Powers, Phone Bank Coordinator

The phone bank is always waiting for volunteers with time on their hands. Bert is the phone bank coordinator here in the Akron office. I was asking him what attracted him to the Obama campaign. Like many, he mentioned Barack's speech to the 2004 convention that brought down the house. He said that after the primary he was on the bus and as it passed by the campaign office he decided on the spur of the moment to walk in and volunteer. Before he knew it, he was the head coordinator of the phone bank. He trains new volunteers and passes out assignments. When asked what he found most rewarding, he mentioned training new volunteers and meeting new people. He also talked about the very positive environment here in the office. And he said that when he is not here, he feels like he is genuinely missed.

I asked him about his e-mail address that had the words bipolar in it. He is not hesitant to talk about his disability and is a living testament that people with mental illness can have a productive life. He is an incredible advocate for progressive attitudes toward mental illness -- a message reinforced with his contageous joy he brings to each day.

Who Would Have Known?

Max and Matthew Lesko

For those of you who are insomniacs and have spent the late night hours flipping through the cable channels, you may have come across a fellow with a suit covered with question marks selling his book on government programs that YOU might benefit from.





The fellow with the question mark suit was here at headquarters the other night. It turns out that he is the father of Max, the head field coordinater who runs our operation here. Several days ago Max asked his father to come out here from Washington, D.C. and help out.

Canvassing - Saturday and Sunday

Willie working to convert an undecided voter



Willie

On Saturday morning a group of canvassers assembled at a local park in Cuyahoga Falls and went over the procedures for our work that morning. Another old timer, Willie, and I paired up. Willie has lived in Cuyahoga Falls and Akron most of his life. As he worked for the Ohio Trucking Association, we had much in common. In a previous life I ran dump trucks.

Willie was a good introduction into much of the pain Ohio is feeling due to the financial crisis we have been going through. Most of its industry closed a long time ago as jobs were shipped out of country. The housing market has also been hard hit. Just the other day the Akron Beacon Journal reported the tragic story of a distraught 90 year-old widow, Addie Polk, shooting herself because she was unable to face immanent eviction from her home of forty hears. Fortunately, she survived. And by the next day the mortgage company was shamed into cancelling her debt.

It would seem obvious that the financial interests of the people we were talking with should be with the Democrats, but that was sometimes a tough sell. We ran into one Rush Limbaugh Ditto Head who, though recently unemployed insisted that the folks who brought us to this point of ruin were precisely the ones to get us out. Go figure.

By Sunday evening Willie and I had walked 12 hours. At least this is cheaper than joining a gym.

Democratic Headquarters

On Thursday afternoon I rolled into the Akron Central Democratic Headquarters on 3 Merriman Drive. After being interviewed by the office manager Liz, I was assigned to Brad, one ofthe field organizers. Brad has been assigned to Cayahoga Falls, a blue color neighborhood, which in the past had been known as Caucasian Falls, due to the restrictive covenants in property deeds prohibiting sales to any persons of color. It has changed some since the 1970's, but not much. I was given housing with a family nearby (more about that in a later post).

Here is Brad showing me the territory of Cayahoga Falls.

On Friday Brad got me oriented to our mission and I worked the rest of the day on the phone bank. You have to be able to handle a lot of rejection with equinamity. But we do make a few connections with people ready to be persuaded to Obama and we even manage to recruit a few volunteers. By mid afternoon the parking lot is packed with 30 - 40 cars.

Thursday, Akron, OH

Well, I finally rolled into town and found the Obama Headquarters. AND was put immediately to work on the phone bank.

After Liz, the person who orients new out-of-state volunteers had time to orient me, she decided that I could best be used working with their other organizer, beginning tomorrow.

The campaign has housed me with a wonderful ardent Democrat and her son, who is a senior in high school. And is as smart as Obama. The colleges are recruiting him! He also has broken about every track record in the league for cross country this year. I'll bet they are after him. Nice to see such a focused young person.

Unfortunately, Akron and the surrounding cities are suffering through a major economic downturn. I can imagine that college hopes are a distant dream for many families here. I can see why Obama's economic message is beginning to resonate here in Ohio.

Tonight we watched the debate. It was great. Form did not win over substance, no matter how folksy. Two snap polls gave it to Joe.

Even my conservative friends are beginning to value competence over party label.

Well, it's late and I'll put up some pictures tomorrow. John

Wednesday, October 1

It was wonderful t see wind-powered Kansas as I drove through the rolling countryside early in morning.

I stopped by the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum on my way through Abilene. When I saw this familiar quotation from President Eisenhower, I was reminded of how great it felt to have a president that people respected.

"Every gun made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. . .This is not a way of life at all. . .Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." from "The Chance for Peace" Address in 1953. Eisenhower understood that a nation cold, hungry, under educated and poorly housed was a cache of "weapons of mass destruction" hidden in our midst.

I still have my "I Like Ike" button.

Later that evening I listened to a program about a person in Harlem making a real difference in the outcomes for many kids there. The program is called "Baby College." It is a program for parents wanting something more for their children than they have had. Drawing from the latest research on child development, these parents begin learning parenting skills that make a difference. The program includes schools from preschool to 12th grade. Children coming up through this program are now in the third grade, and in one of the poorest parts of the nation have scores on the New York state test that are on par with those of the the most affluent parts of the state. The write up of this program is in a new book, Whatever It Takes. As I heard the testimony of parents in this program, tears of hope flowed down my cheeks. Go get it. There are many signs of hope, even in the midst of Wall Street meltdown.

When I looked at the polls this morning, I saw more signs of hope. Obama up in Michigan, Florida (imagine -- Florida!), Ohio and Pennsylvania. Maybe our job in Ohio will be just bringing the votes we already have and making sure they are counted. That's a lot easier job than having to recruit the votes in the first place.

I'm going to add a couple more pictures from Abilene but I'm not sure where they will end up. Aparently I have two duplicates. But I can't seem to delete the copies. The building is downtown Abilene and the hose is the Eisenhower home. Oh well. Time to hit the road.

Monday, September 29, Hays, KS

Took a break near Vail to enjoy the view of the headwaters of the Colorado River. It's actually blue and clear.(Actually this picture should be after the one at Grand Junction, but I haven't mastered Blogspot yet)

This is one of the wonders I saw after a few miles down the highway. No wonder people love living in the wonderful State of Colorado. This was near Grand Junction.

I wasn't quite prepared for the smog I encountered when I came in to Denver.

During the midst of all this beautiful scenery I listened as congress argued and the stock market dove to a loss of 800 at one point.

I began to wonder if we should contact Queen Elizabeth and confess our inability to govern ourselves. Maybe she might be willing to take us back if we are contrite.

Can we survive as a nation until Obama can take over? Or will we be a cadaver country by then? I can only think that Barack's calm demenor will provide the reassurance that people are yearning for. Fortunately my TV gets the Rachael Maddow show and she and her commentators helped it all seem better - that and some readings from William Sloan Coffin. More tomorrow.

Sunday, September 28 - On the Road

Today I got out of the house around 10:00 a.m. Drove 750 miles. On the way found what must be the only Starbucks in Utah at St. George. I took a state highway, 89, for part of the trip through Utah and saw some some of the most beautiful country in America. It's amazing what one misses at 30,000 feet. At McDonalds (yeah, I know.....) the owner saw my Veterans for Obama button and insisted that the meal was on the house -- in Utah no less. Got the same response at the Holiday in Grand Junction, CO -- but no free room. It's off to bed.

Saturday, Sunday, Sept. 20-21 Camp Obama

I had received my acceptance for Camp Obama and looked forward to meeting a whole bunch of "fired-up-ready-to-go" people, and that is just what I found early Saturday morning at Camp Obama -- 352 of us in a Long Beach Teamsters union hall all shouting, "Yes we can, Yes we can, Yes we can."

Camp Obama is the training provided for Deputy Field Organizers who are sent out into the 16 or so battleground states. Most of my cohort were headed to Nevada, but some of us were going to be heading to Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio; I have been assigned to Akron, OH. Lately that number of battleground states has been slowly increasing.

We began Saturday morning by sharing our stories of what in our life led us to be involved in service. Just as an individual's story involves a plot line with challenges that confront him/her with choices for which there is no preparation, that is how we face life. We were asked to look at those times where there was an urgent need to pay attention to the unexpected challenges we had faced and the choices we made.

I found something strangely theological about this. By looking at those choice points in my life, I found myself looking at times of brokenness (sin?) wherein I was forced to make a decision where there were no certain answers. I was taken back to a time in my life as a young boy when I was confronted with racism in our neighborhood. I grew up in a community of privilege. My father was a dentist and we lived in a very nice neighborhood.

When I was in the fourth or fifth grade an African American family moved in down the street from us. Many of the boys in our block assembled around the moving van that morning eager to see who the new family might be, and better yet, if they had any boys old enough to fit in. I suspect that most of us had absolutely no idea of what it meant for this family to be black. This was just not in our social repertoire. But there were boys, and we did understand that. Especially if they could play ball. Toward the middle of the day the mother brought out cookies and milk and we slowly began to make friends.

Later the next week the family was gone, on vacation so we thought. What had really happened was that while they had been absent from their new home, someone had taken the garden hose and put it inside the upstairs window and turned on the water. I heard that it had run for two days before any one came by and noticed it. The family moved away. Not much was said directly around the dinner table, but I knew that something was really wrong. As we kids pieced together the real story from what our various families had shared, we came face to face the evil of race hatred.

It would come to bother me greatly that in our little neighborhood church ABSOLUTELY NOTHING was said about this injustice. Nobody there wanted to talk about it. I slowly began to spiritually and emotionally withdraw until I dropped out.

It would only be on a college group trip by campus church group to Nebraska where Dr. Martin Luther King was the main presenter that I began to have my conscience quickened. Three things happened that semester break. I met the woman on our bus trip out there who would be my wife of 43 years. I began to realize that the church is meant to be more than a social club -- that Christianity could actually be dangerous as well as transforming. And I knew that my calling in life was to be inextricably caught up in the lives of what Jesus called "the least of these." It would take me quite a few years to figure out what all this meant. And I'm still trying to get it right.

Politically, I came from a Republican household. My mother was the founding president of the Signal Hill Women's Republican Club. My dad touted the Republicans as the champions of small business. Early on, when Nixon ran against Kennedy, though I began as a Nixon campaign worker, I harbored a secret doubt that Kennedy might in fact be the better man. When Goldwater ran against Johnson, I as the editor of our campus faith group wrote an editorial blasting Goldwater as a warmonger and urging my fellow students as a faith decision to support Johnson. Later I found out that the poor campus minister took an awful lot of heat from some very conservative supporters of the ministry.

Later I have come see that many of the values I affirm as a person of faith are enshrined in the platform of the Democratic Party. As I studied history, FDR stood out as one who embodied the values of community, economic justice, and a government that supports the highest aspirations of its citizens.

In Camp Obama the telling of story is important as it enables others to know the wellsprings of our individual commitments. As we share our stories, we discover the story of us and the values underlying our commitment to this movement. We begin do discern how our stories also mesh with the values in Obama's story and the challenge of the "urgent now" confronting our nation in this election.

This idea of story encapsulates the method behind the slogan of our organizing work: "People centered, numbers driven."

The numbers reflect the reality of our commitment to this work. It is the tangible results of what we are doing. If you can't measure it or the effect of it, it probably isn't there, or it didn't happen. As an Episcopalian, the numbers represent a reality that is sacramental. In the reality I discern a grace beyond my understanding. For me that grace points to the actual presence of what Dr. King called the "Beloved Community." It is the truth that we do matter to each other. In my organizing work for Progressive Christians Uniting, I say that when Jesus said that all were invited to the table, he meant ALL. In a political way, I find that I need to be working to see that this ALL is fully embodied in our nation's promise. ALL! Without exception.

Tomorrow I crank over my Buick and head out to Akron.

More later on the road.

John

P.S. If any are interested in where I hang my hat go to: www.progressivechristiansuniting.org and http://www.allsaints-pas.org