Despair and Hope in Florida

Today I spent four hours working at a phone bank in Nyack, NY. It's not the first time I've phone banked, but it was probably the most unusual and saddest series of phone calls that I have ever made. My first several pages of calls went out to Clearwater. Nearly all the people on my list vote at the same polling locations, so I was basically blanketing a part of a neighborhood.

The first call I made was to a disconnected number, and so was the second. I got a few answering machines, and then another disconnected number. It was quite a while before I talked to a live person, and what she told me broke my heart.

She listened to my scripted sales pitch and then told me that she had already voted, but she kept me on the phone. She asked me how to phone banking was going.

"I've gotten a lot of disconnected numbers," I told her.

She asked me where I had been calling. I told her that all my phone calls were in her area.

"Well that makes sense," she said. "On this block alone, we've got seven houses that were foreclosed in the past six months. I would bet there's more on the next block."

"These were good people that lost their homes. I don't think any of those I know still live in the area. I hope they've registered to vote where they're at now."

She thanked me for making phone calls for Barack Obama and with that, we ended the call.

After a few more disconnected numbers and some more answering machines. I also talked to two undecided voters who were leaning toward Obama only because they were afraid for the economy under a McCain administration. I also talked to few hostile voters, which I was well prepared for. But about a quarter of the numbers I called were disconnected lines.

The next page of numbers was near a college campus, so most of the names were of voters between 18-22 years old. None of these young people had voted, but they intended to do so on Nov. 4. My small sampling tells me that young voters turned out in low numbers in early voting not because of a lack of interest, but because of general procrastination, busy schedules, and other campus activities. But every young voter I talked to seemed enthusiastic about voting for Barack Obama on Nov. 4.

The last live person that I talked to was another middle-aged woman in St. Petersburg. I do think I got through seven words of my pitch when I heard what sounded like weeping on the other end of the line.

"I'll vote for Barack Obama, but it's too late for me. My ex-husband stopped paying child support a long time back, I lost my job in June and my unemployment checks are ending soon. If a supermarket has a cashier's job open, there will be fifty people before me waiting for an application.

"I got my second notice from the mortgage company. The cupboard is bare, I missed my November payment. I've got nowhere to go and no family or friends to turn to."

I didn't know what to say to her, but "I am so sorry."

And then she pulled herself together and said, "I did nothing to deserve this. I feel that there is no hope for me. Change cannot come soon enough. Nobody is bailing me out. I don't know where I'll be come December, I don't know where my children will go to school. I'm voting for Obama because I believe that he can best help those that will follow me."

I thanked her for her time and she thanked me back. As we were saying goodbye, she said, "promise me that you'll make more of these calls, I think what you're doing is so very patriotic."