November 2008 Archives

I don't know what else there is to say about this election that hasn't already been said.

Y'all know where I stand and I'm sure the majority of the six of you that still read this blog knew where I was going to stand before I said where I stand.

My pastor went out on a major limb the other week and endorsed Obama, which was a great affirmation of why I'm a parishioner there.

"Get your notepads ready," he said before he started his homily. "When you write to the Archbishop about what I'm about to say I want you to get everything down correctly. Don't paraphrase, quote."

Then he unfurled a brilliant endorsement of Obama that I wish I had a copy of.

I don't get to be proud to be Catholic very often. But that was one of those days.

Then again, if you'd been paying attention, you knew who he was voting for before that Sunday. Cuz he kept dropping hints in his homilies. Like when he preached about Judges, Chapters 4&5. (A guy named Barak figures prominently)

At any rate, I bit the bullet and voted last week so I could canvass today. I did some phone banking last night, left a few dozen messages for folks and only had one angry McCain voter on my list. But everyone I spoke to was tired and ready for this election to be over.

Living in a swing state is rough. Saturday we had one door to door canvasser and four phone calls asking if we had voted yet. Add that to the THREE pollsters we spoke to last week and the dozens of other messages we come home to every day and the constant TV barrage we've been exposed to, I get why people are tired.

I checked in this morning at Obama HQ and ran into Capt. Sully, my old boss from The Minuteman. I'm glad she finally got around to volunteering and I'm sad I didn't run into her at lunch. But oh well...

Since I didn't have a partner I was assigned to a "high traffic area." Basically, loiter at a busy intersection and talk to passersby and hand out stickers. It was a good time, but of the five dozen folks I talked to, only two hadn't voted yet and the five dozen folks I didn't talk to crossed the street to get away from me because they were tired of this election.

So I came home after lunch rather than back go out.

This town has been saturation bombed and we're bleary-eyed and exhausted.

Plus, this whole volunteering experience has reminded me of how strange this town is and how Jekkyl and Hyde I am about living here. This is an incredibly Balkanized town. People know each other in pockets with no real overarching sense of community identity. Being a Santa Fean means so many different things, too many different things for a town of 60,000 and as is most often the case, I found myself not really fitting in with the identity held by those around me.

I tried to pretend. I tried to fit in, but I was the token young Latino in a crowd of older Anglos. No one my age out canvassing, no one my skin tone out wandering the streets on a Tuesday morning, because everyone else had a job they had to be at...and my coworkers were all too exhausted after the October we've had to wake up early enough to canvass...

Plus, at heart, I'm an introvert and between the performative extroversion that is my job and then canvassing, my well of extroversion had been tapped.

So I'm at home rather than back out on the streets.

This town doesn't need me annoying more people.

I'm hopeful.

I'm scared, but I'm hopeful. I don't know how much of the anxiety I'm feeling comes from the experience of coming home to Hill House eight years ago to find Florida blowing in the wind like so many answers. I don't know how much of the anxiety comes from being at KJHK four years ago, on the air and delivering the returns to people and watching the country slip away. I don't know how much of it comes from Toaster's imminent arrival and wondering how we're going to make ends meet.

There you go.

One more voice in the steady stream of voices.

To all those who've volunteered, worked, canvassed, called, cooked, donated or voted for any of the candidates, thank you.

Thank you for taking the time to make this a stronger country for my child. Thank you for attempting to make this country the one my parents believed in. No matter what happens, let's get to work tomorrow to actually make this a better place.

My parents arrived in  this country nearly forty years ago.  My father arrived seeking a quality of life he didn't see for himself if he stayed in his native Colombia.  My mother arrived thinking she was just visiting her older sister; she stayed because the political instability in her native Chile made a return problematic.  Their stories may have started out as two variations on the American story, one looking for a better place to go, the other without anywhere else to turn, but in short order their stories merged and created mine.

They worked hard; my father as a teacher, my mother as a social worker.  They dedicated their lives to helping their communities, because they felt that the debt they incurred when a nation opened up her arms and welcomed them was one that could never be repaid.

How do you repay someone for the American Dream?

They came to this nation forty years ago with nothing and in the intervening years they've raised two children, put them through college and bought not only their own home, but sold that one to buy the home of their dreams.  

I was raised to believe in this America.  An America where hard work was rewarded and anyone willing to lend a hand would never want.  I played by the rules, went to school, worked hard, did my parents proud.  Won admission to some of the finest schools in this country and on graduation day set out to pay this nation back through public service.

Only, my story doesn't play out like that of my parents.  

Their first grandchild is on the way and my wife and I are scraping by to pay the bills.  

Their first grandchild is on the way and on the salary I make as a high school history teacher in a school where the majority of students are on free and reduced lunch will not allow my wife to take time off to raise our child.  

Their first grandchild is on the way and the salary my wife makes as a college admissions counselor will not allow me to take time off to raise our child.

Their first grandchild will be born with relatives halfway around the world serving their nation proudly in a war that runs the very real risk of defining this unborn child's life.

Their first grandchild will be born to a nation that looks nothing like the country they came to all those years ago.

That's why I had no choice but to make calls, knock on doors and vote for Barack Obama.  I cannot let my parents' legacy be ruined by blind ideology.  I cannot let my child live in an America unlike the one I was raised to believe, unlike the one my parents have spent their lives creating and defending.