Urban Agriculture

Stuck in an abandoned factory still. 2 days until polls open although early voting makes it feel a little less climactic. Why isn't election day a national holiday? Early voting has certainly helped percentage turnout, plus the historic nature of this election helps as well. Now if we can keep everyone who voted politically engaged.

In the so called war room, we sit around several tables with our laptops out and our Nextels on. In the morning, Meet the Press or some other news show is usually on the screen, interspersed with people's conversations. We're occasionaly interrupted when we have to check into our sites; all of the desks disperse to sound of chirping phones. To my surprise it's only slightly annoying. But most of the time it's tranquil around here now that all of the ordering is done. Really, it's not at all like how it was for most of the month. Constant running around, constant ordering, constant frustrations on how the leadership of this team operated. Looking back, I got considerable autonomy, partially because there was not a good apparatus to funnel my ideas through, but mostly because you don't need much supervision when it comes to ordering Nextels, and port-a-potties, and lunches.

When I put it like that, when I write down what I actually accomplished, it doesn't look like much. But, as in everything important, the devils in the details. Ordering Nextels wasn't just about placing an order for Nextels- it was making a connection tree for 500 phones across 10 cities. It was holding a training for all of the people who would teach their staff how to use them. It was testing those connections (although I definitely skimped on that). And it is answering every goddamn question that any person has about their functioning. Lunches and port-a-potties were similar- the order is the last thing that happens, calculations about the number of canvassers, the number of flakes, the amount of people who can hygienically use a portable toilet. Haggling with companies over rental prices, getting squeezed both by your director and the company you're dealing with.

When things were buzzing at the beginning, I felt very disconnected from the actual campaign. I felt more like I was planning a 4 day concert festival instead of a GOTV effort. It's kind of like being in the accounting department for Proctor & Gamble. Yeah, your company makes toothpaste and diapers and all of those other household goods so vital to our consumer society. But YOU work on spreadsheets and control systems, you worry about Sarbanes-Oxley and internal audits. In the end, accounting is very important to the process of making paper clips but it just doesn't seem like at the time. That's how I felt- how was what I was doing helping get Mr. O elected president? Then the get out the vote canvassing started. The drivers needed to check in with their Nextels, the waiting lines for pay receipts meant that a lot of people had to go to the bathroom. The hungry canvassers ate their lunches as they traveled between their respective areas.

Went out to my site yesterday night. I work for our largest site, in the heart of Milwaukee's northside. The northside's rough, just another blighted side of a Midwestern factory city trying desperately to regain its former glory. We're staging out of, get this, another abandoned factory. I heard that we had as many as 250 people we had to turn away on day one- all of them lined up to work, ready to make 80-100 bucks for a long day of canvassing or, for the lucky and felony free, driving. Who says that people in the hood don't want to work? I don't know what brings them there- a genuine belief in the policies of Mr. Obama perhaps. Or would they do the same thing if McCain was offering the same amount of money to knock on doors for him? Maybe they're worried about making rent or paying for formula- maybe their SSI wasn't covering their necessities. Maybe they just want to get high. Regardless of their reason, they came out in droves because had plenty of work to give. But apparently not enough work; to the people we turned away there probably is never enough work. So they'll walk off looking for some other hustle. Or they'll come back Tuesday, when we'll need all the canvassers and drivers we can get.

By the time I got there late that night the vans had been gone for a long time, and they wouldn't be coming back until late evening. Except one, which came back early because the canvassers refused to go back out to their turf. It was a little cold outside and it may have seemed pointless, but an agreement is an agreement and they refused to complete their end of the bargain. If they'd been smarter, they could have just chileld in teh car until the night was over. Then they'd still have a job tomorrow. As it was, they were all fired. After the van parked, they all shuttled over to the pay table to collect their receipts, where they were told that we would not need their services tomorrow, that there were plenty of people we could use who would complete all of the tasks we'd asked them to do.
I noticed the look on their faces; a mix of a slowly realized dejection and a mild acceptance. There were some arguments- only one lady argued vehemently, most of the people just stood there before slowly walking away. What I noticed even more though was WHO they were, the people who would be available on a Monday at 2:00pm or all day Tuesday. You had a few college kids doing it because of their political inclinations as well as for the money. But there was also a Hispanic man with a bad hip, who slid across the asphalt gingerly in a cane. I could only imagine him having to walk up and down the block, up and down the stairs for 6 hours. Standing next to him was a middle-aged Black lady, dark and short, with a jacket about five sizes too big for her and an entire row of missing teeth. Most troubling of all were the two young boys who claimed they were 18 but in my estimation looked closer to 15. Decked out in their M&M race car jackets that for some reason are popular in Milwaukee. They were eating fries out of a McDonalds bag- younger than they look, younger than they act too. In my mind they were the answer to teh question "What happened to all of my classmates when they dropped out between freshman and sophomore year." Scrounging for money, not many prospects, they weren't particularly tough, they didn't sell drugs. They just bounced around for awhile before they got desperate and either got their GED (hopefully) or ended up in jail on a possession or gun charge.
And we had to fire them all. As a person, it hurts to let people go who need the money. As a representative for an entity, they're expendable, another group of door knocking bodies, and there are plenty more from wherever they came from.

A break in the action, so I walk alone to the corner store down the street. It's about three of these industrial deserted blocks from central. To my left, halfway there is a fenced in area of shrubs, brown and overgrown by weeds. A sign above the gate read "Urban Agriculture;" I had to shake my head and smile at the unintentional aptness. The bell rings as I walk into the store, a husky lady is blocking the path to my destination. Mercifully, she heads to the counter to pay for her 12 o'clock beer and I stoop low to pick up two 99 cent bags of Flaming Hots (cheetos for those not in the know). When I arrived at the store, I thought I would end up having a "Juneau Breakfast" (also known as a Milwaukee Public Schools breakfast), Flaming Hots and a 20 oz. coke. But then I saw a Giant Peach soda, something I hadn't had since I lived in Nashville and I just couldn't resist.
Fruit soda is a funny thing. Except for a few Fanta commercials, it's almost exclusively marketed in urban areas. There is also a scale for just how "hood" fruit sodas are- orange and grape are two universally accepted fruit sodas, with strawberry just a little bit behind them. Once you get to the exotic fruits, like peach or pineapple though, you are completely in hood territory. I guess I just want to know what the justification for it all is? How come some fruit sodas are more marketable than others to a broader public? Even something like Tahitian Treat is not universally liked. It was relatively hard for me to find it at the grocery stores near my house in Nashville, but very easy for me to find it once I went to the projects. One time, when me and my brother were driving back from the library we passed a corner store that had a Tahitian Treat advertisement on their door; we did a quick u-turn, bought a 2 liter, and drank it on our way home. I bet the makers of all these fruit sodas just hope that someone thinks they actually have fruit juice or something. They sure are good- those rich folks don't know what they're missing.