A dark spot on the sun
Barton Howe
Posted: 05.15.2008 / 9:10 AM EDT
The sun’s out and I think it’s actually warm for the first time in months. Never known for beautiful winters, this one on the coast of Oregon has been a particularly long and cold one. Indeed, as I walked to my mailbox the other day to get my mail-in-ballot, it seemed I could actually feel the sun on my skin.
Weird.
Unfortunately, my experiences walking about on these beautiful days has not been shared by everyone here in Lincoln City. My buddy Mike has been out canvasing for Barack Obama and he’s been horrified by what he’s found.
Canvasers — I think that’s what they’re called — are those people that go door-to-door talking to people about their candidate. A hold-over from a time before TV and internet and other means of mass communication, it’s grass roots politicking at its best. And in Oregon it takes on particular importance with our mail-in-ballot system.
The only state to do all of its voting by mail, we get our ballots in the mail and have two weeks to send them in. For candidates it’s a challenge; there is no way to stage a last-minute rush to get voters as many people send them in early. (The state says that with a week to go 20 percent of them are already in.) Thus the importance of the canvaser: out seemingly everywhere for two weeks, they knock on thousands of doors to make sure that the ballot gets in sometime, and hopefully marked with their candidates name.
That’s what my friend Mike was doing the other day, knocking on doors according to a list he’d been given by the local Obama coordinator, or whatever they’re called. Most places he said were fine, although he did notice a lot of people didn’t want to open their doors at all. (With a large older population that might be expected.)
What he didn’t expect, however, was the barrage of racial insults and eptithets he heard from some people. The “N” word was frequent, with one woman going so far as to scream at her neighbors that he was here for the “Dirty N…” Others were content just to tell him they would never vote for that “G– D— N—–.”
When he told me this — he had my address, too — I wanted to throw up. And then I heard on CNN the next day that this is happening all over the country to Obama canvasers. I supose there’s some solace in knowing that we’re not the only town with pockets stuck in the 19th century.
Speaking to the bigger picture, I worry at some level that these people will destroy any chance this man has of getting elected, should he be the nominee. Clearly racism is alive and well in some parts of this country and anyone who believes it isn’t should just talk to my friend.
But I also want to have faith: faith that even if these people do vote, far more people like me will, as well. More African-Americans, more worldly people, more people with open minds, more people that want this country to move forward instead of fall back into hatred.
But on a more local level I am not so sanguine. This is not the Lincoln City I know, but it is clearly there, and that makes me sad. That so many people lurk in the shadows of this town so completely hamstrung my their hate — and freely willing to share it — makes me wonder: What community are we? Are we the first town on the coast to have a gay rights ordinance, or one where hatred goes unchecked in our neighborhoods? Are we a town where everyone feels free to be themselves, or are we a town that has fewer than 2 percent African-Americans because they know what they might hear?
Which is why on a sunny day in Oregon there’s a but of a chill in the air and things aren’t quite as bright as they should be. That makes me sad, too.
