DCDemocrat reminded me of what we were doing a year ago today. Then I saw Senator John Kerry at Rosa Parks funeral service looking more dignified and presidential than Dubya could on his best day.
This originally appeared on Dec. 17, 2004 on DailyKos.
I began writing this diary several times and stopped. It’s taken a while for the outcome of Nov. 2nd to fade away enough for me to post.
The day ended badly. But the movement that began with this election campaign doesn’t have to end there.
And I’m going to focus on the positive. If you want to go negative about Kerry or West Virginia, red states in general, Daily Kos, etc., this is not the diary for you.
Nov. 2nd began early for me, but it was earlier still for others. DCDemocrat, our friend Sean, and other volunteers were up about 2 a.m. planting our remaining K/E yard signs. A lot of our signs had been stolen by the Bush Cult. They were out planting more in the public spaces.
I slept in until 4:30 a.m. I woke immediately alert with a tense alertness, the kind of waking that would happen on the mornings of big game day during the high school football days or on wedding days or when the wife wakes you and says, “The contractions are two minutes apart.”
I made my coffee and took it with me in the travel mug. It was cold outside. When I started the car, I had forgotten to turn the radio off the night before and Trick Daddy’s “Let’s Go” blasted loud in the quiet fog of the pre-dawn darkness.
Lets Gooooo! (Lets Gooooo!)
If you want it you can get it let me know (let me know)
The song with its driving hiphop beat to Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” fit my mood. A lot was at stake that day and we knew it and we’d worked hard for a victory. It had been a long time since I’d ridden in a car with people packing a lot of weapons to some place with a mingled sense of confidence, danger and trouble. But I had a similar feeling as I drove away that morning.
I know it sounds melodramatic, but this is how I felt. I love my country and it felt like I was going off to fight in the only way possible for it. I believed and still believe, that Bush represents a terrible threat — for so many reasons, from his ineptness in preventing the Sept. 11th attacks to his corruptness in handling the economy — to the land I love.
I arrived at the parking lot of the vacant supermarket that closed after WalMart moved in to town. I joined the other volunteers from Project Next already there. Shenna, the GOTV coordinator, and others gave us our instructions as we waited for the bus to arrive from DC.
Project Next volunteers on the bus during a trip in August — great, bright people.
The bus arrived and I paired up with a man on his first canvass to Martinsburg. He was part of Run Against Bush, had seen an email about the GOTV in West Virginia when he arrived home from work at 2 a.m., and decided to get on the bus and go. I had canvassed several times the neigbhorhood we were assigned and we headed off with our door knockers. We worked quickly, he on one side of the street and me on mine, hanging red hangers on the doors of our previously identified Kerry voters.
At some point the sun rose, but we didn’t have time to notice. We finished about an hour after day break. People were moving about on their way to work. Cars filled a parking lot of a precinct place. We returned to the parking lot.
Shenna and the other Next coordinators had maps stretched over the trunk of a car, marking the neighborhoods finished as people reported back. Other volunteers were sent out to check polling places of our predominantly African American neighborhoods to make sure there were no vote challengers to disrupt them. There were reports of two polling places being moved at the last minute. Volunteers were sent out to direct people to the new locations.
I was sent to Camp Kerry where a group of our sign wavers had reported voters had stopped their for directions to the polling place. I took supplies to make a directional sign and dropped it off. The young people were there with the veterans, waving to the passing cars.
I drove past another intersection. DCDemocrat, Sean and others waved their signs. I returned to the main location and returned with water for them and the other wavers.
At one of the intersections at the north end of Martinsburg, we had about 14 wavers to the Bush cult’s four. The day had grown warmer, but our people had so much energy and enthusiasm. A police officer pulled up and spoke to me, saying he had received a complaint from a passing motorist about our people in the road. He told me if he had to return he’d be writing tickets. I spoke to one of the Bush people, a decent guy who had given his water to two of our women before I had arrived. We agreed to pull everybody to the grass and off the shoulder.
I crossed the road and spoke to the people there. Our people were absolutely wonderful. I told them all of the information I had from our other locations, how we outnumbered the Bush wavers 45 to 10 at the different sites.
I went back to our main location. I had to leave for work. I hugged Shenna and a couple of the other volunteers I had spent so many days and nights working with for a Democratic victory. Here and my favorite here. We thought we were going to win and we worked hard for it. We didn’t.
Others more politically astute than me have written why so I won’t go into that. I just wanted to tell my side of the story as I witnessed it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: every door knocked, every mile walked, every dime spent, every letter sent, I’d do it all over again for John Kerry.
