This article is a must-read, but the following is so incredibly amusing. For context, Broad and Ridge is about five blocks from ACORN headquarters, my homebase in 2004, when I worked registering voters in Delaware and Montgomery counties. It’s not an unsafe neighborhood at all, although once you get a few blocks off Broad it can be pretty sketchy. Mainly, it is just a strip of North Broad Street where the businesses have all left. But it is too heavily trafficked by both cars and police to be remotely unsafe. Broad Street, along with Market, is one of the two main drags in Philly.
The rally at Broad Street and Ridge Avenue was supposed to start at 4 p.m. Forty-five minutes later, I sat on the Divine Lorraine’s abandoned steps and called headquarters, asking where everyone was.
“They left already,” a staffer said over the phone. “They should be there.”
There were commuters, homeless men and store owners milling about. I thought I’d have seen someone hopping around with a hand-painted “Honk for Hillary” sign. The only remotely political thing happening was the five or six members of ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), asking people if they wanted to register for the general election.
Finally, at 5 p.m., I spotted a volunteer captain standing on the center island between Ridge and Fairmount avenues. He quickly looked around and returned the way he came, going north on Broad Street.
I followed him a few blocks to Cobre, a Latin-themed restaurant where Chelsea Clinton was scheduled to make an appearance that night. “Sorry,” he said when I caught up, “we got held up at the last stop.” He asked if I’d like to help. “You can be captain of this section, and we’ll go down to Ridge.” He gave me a handful of fliers.
That left me with Lara*, a spunky twentysomething who the Obama campaign would love to have in their corner. Everyone who dared pass her got a flier.
“Chelsea’s going to be here tonight,” she said to a guy on a bike.
“Who?” he asked.
I gradually learned more about why the other volunteers were delayed. “Actually,” Lara said, “we were kind of late because we saw all the bombed-out houses and we were scared to park [the volunteer captain’s] really nice car near them.”
She studied my face. “We were scared.” At Broad and Ridge.
I’m sorry, but for a Philadelphian, that is laugh out loud funny. And it really says a tremendous amount about the difference in the two campaigns.