How Many Activists Does It Take to Find a Clipboard?
September 4th, 2008by Gina Frangello
Last weekend, I went down to the Chicago jazz festival to help register voters. I know, I know: Obama already has Illinois in the bag–but still, I loved the idea of helping as many people be a part of that vote as possible, especially African-American voters who haven’t always had stunning turn-outs in other election years, and Latino voters, who the media keeps saying aren’t really “decided” yet. I turned up at Grant Park at the designated time, and was pleased to see there were quite a few volunteers congregating around, excited to help get out the vote.
That was when things started to go astray . . .
Like a parody of the disorganization that often plagues not only the Democratic party, but progressive activists of all stripes, it turned out that about a dozen people had turned up . . . but there were no clipboards, no voter registration forms, nothing for us to work with. One fiftysomething woman in a cowboy hat seemed to be the leader of the group, but she had no idea what had gone wrong. Her first phone call yielded the message that the clipboards were “on their way over.” But an hour and a half later, nothing had arrived. Finally, it was revealed that whoever was dropping off material hadn’t really known we were going to be at Grant Park, and now had to drive the material over, which would take at least half an hour. By this point, more than half the people who had shown up to volunteer had left (which was somewhat curious, since we had all volunteered for a 3 hour block, so it’s not like they had something else they had to do.) I decided to take my kids over to Millennium Park (yes, I was stupid enough to have brought my kids), and come back in half an hour to see whether everything had arrived.
Cut to 45 minutes later. My kids are wet from the wading pool at Millennium Park; it’s 90 degrees outside and we’re all getting a little too much sun. I keep trying to call the cowboy-hatted leader of the volunteers, but she’s not picking up her phone. Finally, she sees my number on her phone and calls back: Come on over–the stuff just arrived. So off I go.
For the next hour, I walked around Millennium Park asking people if they were registered to vote. If they weren’t, I had forms right there that they could fill out on the spot, and we would mail the form for them. I walked around the wading pool, the park, the cafe, and stood on the corner of Michigan Avenue. I talked to almost every single person who passed me.
I spoke to at least 100 people. I did not register a single voter.
There were a number of reasons for this shoddy outcome. For starters, while it is common for those of us who live in Chicago to refer to the downtown area as “full of tourists,” even I–a Chicago native–had no idea how true that really is. About 75% of the people I spoke to were not from Illinois, which meant they were ineligible to be registered by me. (Side note to self: I knew I had been avoiding Millennium Park for a reason.)
Of the remaining 25%, most people said they were already registered. I am happy to report that every single African-American I approached but one was already registered and seemed quite pleased about it–they were by far the friendliest and most receptive of the people I spoke to that day. The one African-American woman I talked to who had not yet registered said that she wanted to register and planned to do it; she was working security at the Park and couldn’t fill out the form on duty, but she took one to fill out later.
All the white people were registered. I did not ask them who they were voting for. I would have, had most of them not been tourists (white people are reasonably sane in Chicago, at least outside the Gold Coast), but since they were from God Knows Where, I was afraid one of them would start spouting off about McCain and the NRA and the evils of gay marriage and how much they love the Iraq war, just like my (blue collar, I should specify) suburban cousins do at family gatherings, and then I would be even more depressed than I already was due to the tardy clipboards, and would feel shell-shocked like I always do after a family gathering. So I just said I was glad to hear they planned on voting and went on my way.
But thus far, none of these developments were shocking. White people (especially those at a big urban tourist destination, usually with their spouse and kids) are registered to vote. Check. African-Americans, whether tourists or local, seem enthusiastic to vote and are reporting a higher incidence of registration than would have been found in a year when John Kerry was their best bet. Check. Progressive volunteers are disorganized and the amount of time spent actually volunteering, rather than sitting around yapping about how badly the world sucks, was reduced by two-thirds. Check.
I did, however, get one big shock. While there were not a huge number of Latinos in Millennium Park that afternoon, of the ones I approached, not a single one planned to vote in the upcoming election! Several (men, usually) said they were registered, but did not intend to actually vote. Others (mainly women) claimed not to be registered, and when I asked if they wanted to register, insisted that they did not. No amount of argument on my part could sway them. They said (almost every single one) that they did not “care.”
Okay, so before anyone jumps to the conclusion that maybe these people weren’t citizens or something, I should specify that the very first thing I asked everyone I approached, after saying I was registering people to vote, is whether they were citizens of the United States. I asked everybody this question, and quite a few people (of all ethnicities) said no, they were not. It was a tourist destination, after all. Indian, Mexican and Russian families were all out at Millennium Park that day. But among the Latinos who said they were citizens (and these all spoke fluent English, and seemed as linguistically capable of following politics as I myself am), the most common response I got to asking if they would like to register so that they could vote was derisive laughter, a wave of the hand, and a sarcastic, “Oh, no way.”
I kid you not.
What the hell is going on? My sample was small, and not statistically significant, clearly. But not one Black or White person I spoke to responded in quite this manner, so something still seems fishy. Does anyone have any idea what is happening? Is something particular going on in this election season to turn off Latino voters? Did I just run into a bunch of apathetic exceptions on this particular Sunday, or is the second largest ethnic group in the entire country planning, in some large number, to sit back mockingly and abstain from involvement while the rest of us duke this one out?
Thoughts?
Is Millenium Park the one with the huge spitting statues? I love that place. We saw the Blue Angels from there once.
Why do you assume they are telling you the truth about being citizens? They might not be and therefore reluctant to answer that question in case it were a trap.
I love the spitting statues. Don’t know what I think about the lima bean, though.
yep, that’s the place. it’s surreal, like a futuristic movie set.
Sounds like a bummer of a day, Gina. I would have suspected Millennium Park would have been a bust with all the tourists… I take every single person who visits me in Chicago there.
Maybe a street festival - one of the hundreds in Chicago - would be a better place to approach Illinois citizens. I hope you try again.
I, for one, registered at Lollapalooza this year.
Regardless, I have no answer for your Latino question. I’ll be checking back to see if anyone else does.
Well, I’ll just throw this out there as a generalization that many people will hopefully prove wrong!!! First, I agree with the lying thing about being a citizen. But, here are a couple of dark thoughts (based on my experiencec here in NYC and also based on an article I read recently about the Mexican community in LA): Hispanic populations tend to be socially conservative- pro-life, Christian, against divorce, so on and so forth. So why don’ they register and then vote for McCain? That would be the real question. And a lot of my Dominican friends are also, yipes, racist towards blacks. (Please understand that this is not ALWAYS true, I’m just riffing a bit on the presented theme). Again, why don’t they register and vote McCain? But immigrant populations are not the same as African Americans- perhaps they are more cynical or jaded, less trusting of government in general. Spain, of course, has massive turn outs of voters. But Mexico? THe DR? Ecuador? I would wonder if in thier native countries, they do vote, but the immigrant experience “seperates” them in some way from what they would do in their own country. And this feeling is passed on to second and third generation Latinos.
When I was deeply freaked out about Bush being re-elected my friend, Kenia (Dominican), said, “well that other guy was pro gay marriage” and didn’t care at all about Bush being re-elected. I wanted to hit her. Then the rage subsided. She’s my friend. Of course, she didn’t vote, either.
I agree that there is a disturbing trend of Republicanism due to social conservatism among this population, yes. I mean, in reality that social conservatism has infected the whole working class–most of my extended family among them–but the strongly Catholic/religious among them especially so. Prejudice against blacks, gays, non-Christians and pro-choicers: that is the rally cry among Republicans to get the blue collar in their corner. It is extremely distressing that so many blue collar Americans, including recent immigrants, are so easily led by their prejudices and also by what they think is the more “religious” nature of the Republican party (despite that someone like George W. Bush put half the state of Texas to death when he was governor, and Catholics are supposed to be as against the death penalty as they are against abortion, though few actually follow this and instead are easily duped to believe that abortion is the only issue of religious significance.) I remember in the 1980s, all of my relatives and all of working class Chicago were proud Democrats and would NEVER have considered voting for a Republican because of the obvious economic disadvantages to them. Now the disadvantages are even greater: dwindling health insurance, rabid immigration policies, etc., and yet blue collar Americans and immigrants continue to somehow believe that a man with 7 or 8 houses better represents their interests than a Black man who spent years working on the south side of Chicago. It is lunacy, and it is stupidity. Since I am not running for president, and since I grew up below the poverty line and my relatives are all blue collar, I feel completely free to say that I agree with everything Obama is being slammed for saying in San Francisco, and would myself have put it much more strongly. When people are willing and eager to sell THEMSELVES down the river, surely they do deserve what they get.
Yet the rest of us have to go down that river with them. Which fucking sucks.
I do think many elections in Central and South America have the rep of being so corrupt as to not really be legit or reflective of the people’s will, and maybe that is why the Latinos I spoke to responded that way? Maybe they think it is “quaint” that we dumb Americans still think elections are fair. Which, given everything that happened in 2000 and 2004, maybe it IS quaint, and we are a bunch of morons.
Okay, now I need a drink. This is all very horrifying.
That article I mention (although I read so much crap that I can’t remember the actual source), refered to the Mexican community in LA as socially conservative, but economincally liberal. Meaning, that they wanted financial protection- insurance, solid wages, health care- but again, they were anti-gay, anti-choice, etc…The article was discussing, among other things, a candidate who was trying to appeal to those contradictory positions. (I think Hillary may have been trying to do that in a broader sense). I have some sympathy for these views (not that I agree with them!) because I am friends and associates with all sorts of people, the aforementioned Kenia, and these people are from a very different place. As a very liberal American, I take it upon myself not to hang out with people “just llike me”, a thing that really bothers me about the well educated middle class. This to me is the biggest problem with liberal America (of which I am a part): how to not be condescending to people who are a lot less sophisticated than us. How not to talk down to them, tell them how they should vote, tell them that actually being gay isn’t a bad thing, etc… Is education the answer? Yes and no. Some things just take time.
It’s one thing to blame the Republicans but I also think we need to be frank about this: these people may seem to us that they are voting against their own interests, but if their main interest is to stop gay marriage, than we are wrong.
This doesn’t address the not-voting. Interesting what you say about coming from corrupt nations may affect that. I wonder what the population vote is in Mexico and the DR. Anyway, just to be funny here, maybe you should be happy that the Latinos were not voting!
i say that instead of voting, we all make out.
Well I had a pretty deep reply ready, one that transcended political history from Napoleon to Andrew Jackson’s palm reader to that guy at the gym who told me he hoped they found naked pictures of that chick that’s running for president or something, one that dabbled in metaphysical theologies of race baiting aliens tampering with voting machines ironically made by the same folks that make slot machines. I was going tie all this thesis into a point that would have resonated in the pit of your belly like the Bass that Ate Miami
and then Lenore came and tore it all down with ten little words.
Vote Lenore.
Here here!
Lenore’s got the Woman card AND the Jewish card wrapped up in her pro-Gay Marriage rainbow-gloved hands!
And with the lovely Irene as her running mate, I think it’s a winning team!
I nominate Kimberly as Secretary of Cool.
I’ve heard so many ridiculous excuses for not voting that I’m starting to get immune to this kind of apathy.
It’s sick, really. We’re always yapping about what a great thing democracy is, but only a tiny percentage of our country even exercises that right.
Well, I’m hanging out on the innernet (I like to drop my ts), drinking vodka, smoking (which is basically against the law) and watching tennis hoping that Roddick will lose to a Serb. But I really think religion is the core of this discussion and deserves thought. How religious were your parents? And their parents? And how did that affect their political views? In the past, and still now really, politicians have to do the whole “I’m Christian” thing. Obama is doing it, no? Palin, I thought, was the person/woman to bring female friendly voters to the right. But NO. She’s actually the choice of a VP to bring more right-wingers in! Pro-choice. The war is one “of God”. No Hillary voters will be swayed by that. One thing my husband told me, is white blue collar men liked Hillary (polls) more than Obama. And, it seems, it wasn’t because of anything political; it was because they are just racist. This is the polls. Not any experience from my life. But hey, numbers talk.
I guess the secular is the much smaller group here, and everywhere. In the past- I’m thinking way past- Democrats with social reform still were very Christian, gay stuff wasn’t in the media, and abortion was never discussed but in back alleys. And all of those thing that are so who we are- pro-choice, being gay in normal, etc.. is still shocking. What kills me is all of that matters more than War. And economics? I just can’t even go there.
What I think about is- religion isn’t just a thing people grew up with for so many. It’s the thing that kept their family together, it’s the thing that made their fathers stay with their mothers. It’s the place that their communities gathered and that made sense of their lives. It’s the thing that made a family cohere- it’s so much to them. It’s so wrong in so many ways ( if you don’t believe in Christ, you go to hell! If you are not part of the tribe, you don’t get citizenship!) but the long long arm of it has given so many so much. I think of Shalom Auslander, unable to shake off Judiasm. I think of the power of the work of Flannery O’Connor, Greene, Tolstoy. The morals of so many religions are not just crutches- they are crucial to the continuity of their societies, whether it be small town Alaska, Mexico, or Israel. This is not a small thing. Whoah. Roddick lost. I am happy.And man, I have had too much vodka.
I’m such a typical lazy American I think I might be able to offer some insight.
We’ve been spoiled. Our country has had peace for so long that we don’t really understand the importance of the documentation in order to be heard, to have a voice in our own political system. Like a child whose food magically appears from the frig and who believes that money comes from the bank, we have been catered too far too much and have no clue as to the value of a clipboard. And when we see one, we’ll say anything not to be swayed from our shoe shopping or late for the latest blockbuster movie…
I agree with pb that it is all coming down to religion, yes, which I frankly find terrifying because: a) I personally am increasingly scared of religion and convinced it has harmed people collectively much more than it has helped people individually and b) because we live in a nation that is supposed to separate church and state, and our founding fathers were by and large secular: more Deists than typical Christians, even if they could not stand up and say so at the time. But I am especially scared because: c) the interpretation of religion by the Religious Right in the United States seems to be so arbitrary and selective that it is essentially meaningless. Running around carrying signs that say “Christ hates fags” is just beyond the logical scope of any religion. Being rabid proponents of capital punishment but against abortion to the point of blowing up abortion clinics or opposing a woman’s right to choose even in cases of rape, incest or the endangering of the mother’s life does not follow any sensical religious teaching: it is just picking and choosing to the “power” group’s liking.
To me, to say that I “understand” that people are just not as sophisticated as we liberals are and therefore can be excused for having these damaging viewpoints and taking these sometimes very harmful actions, from supporting an unjust war to helping support a culture in which hate crimes occur against gays to keeping women in completely poverty stricken and subservient by denying them any sexual education and birth control is itself condescending. What, these poor folks are so dumb that we have to just overlook and forgive their hateful views and behavior? I don’t buy it. I am a liberal, and yes I’m educated and, I suppose, “sophisticated,” but I grew up in a family that made less than 10K annually, my father did not even graduate from elementary school, my mother was a secretary, I lived in the ghetto, my friends got pregnant or murdered in some significant numbers, and a black kid who accidentally rode into my neighborhood was once beaten unconscious with bricks for daring to be there. Yet I managed to figure out how not to be a total asshole to my fellow human beings in the name of what the priest said, etc. If I could figure it out, why can’t these other people? Because they don’t WANT to. It benefits them to think the same way as everyone else in their community and to “fit in.” To challenge things is to no longer fit in and to become a target yourself. I certainly no longer fit in to my former environment, and have lost a lot of formerly close bonds and community over the changes I sought in my life. It’s not about money (I probably make way less money than most of my cousins now, being a writer and college instructor)–it’s not even about God and morality really, since most of my cousins are religious in name only, and did plenty of drugs and had plenty of sex when they were young–some were even criminals and dealers. Now they vote Republican. Why? I don’t know exactly, but I know wrath and hate for people who are not white, not straight and not American has a lot to do with it. Plus, they want to identify with the rich. They think if they vote like rich people, they ARE like rich people.
Note that I say they want to identify with the rich. They do NOT want to identify with intellectuals. It is about money, not knowledge. They don’t like intellectuals. They think Republicans have dicks and Democrats have pussies, and they are misogynists and don’t like pussies.
I realize I’m being a bit inflammatory, but in all honesty I think the liberal middle class is afraid to say aloud that the working class is shooting itself in the foot and taking us down with them because of their prejudices against other oppressed groups (blacks, gays) who should be their allies. And I find this moronic, and don’t care how un-p.c. it makes me. I don’t want to hang out with people like that so I can be open minded and “respect” their views. I want to smack them (and their priests) upside their heads and move to freaking Canada.
Wow, I’m just reading this now. I didn’t mean to be a a proponet of PC stuff or whatever. I just hang with a lot of Hispanic people here cause that is my neighborhood in Brooklyn and I actually like talking with peoplle who are very different than me- I don’t do it to be PC. I speak Spanish, so that might be part of it. In fact, the school my kids went to was 75% Hispanic, so I just was like, hey, let’s talk. I agree with you politically, but I’m not sure I agree that we are “afraid” to tell “working class” people that they are shooting themselves in the foot. Actually, most middle class liberals I know don’t associate at all with anyone working class or Republican. But my experience is very limited. Also, I catch myself all the time being condescending, so I said that as a personal thing. It’s hard not to be condescending when I think I’m right, and I think other people are wrong, and I think it’s because they’re not educated. It’s very interesting what you say about people just wanting to be rich. The conservatives I know have no delusion of being wealthy, they are just from poor countries, driving cabs, cleaning houses, taking care of other peoples kids, and grew up thinking being gay or having an abortion is bad. I disagree with them. I think their children, growing up in a more secular environement and a more prosperous environment, will grow apart from them in the best way. That’s what I meant about “time” instead of just education being a factor.
I too have thought of moving to Canada. Every summer, I go to Canada for a week. I take a train there, and then take cabs. Last time I was in Toronto, a cab driver asked me if I were American. Cringing, I said yes. The rest of the ride, he ranted on and on how 9/11 was actually done by Israel, secretly. Now, I love national healthcare, I love Canada. But I was like, damn, crazy dumbasses everywhere! And that is the sad truth. But yeah, I’m with you on the rage of political problems thing here.
OK, I just reread my Vodka posts from last night So I guess I was saying “liberal america” in general. And what I want to ask about that is this: when Jimmy Carter went to talk with Hamas, he was vilified. And I think he just wanted to talk, or so I think. I don’t think vilifying our “enemies” (and they are our enemies) helps. Maybe I am wrong. So, I’m sorry. I guess I just feel I know peope who - like I said - vote against gay marriage, and not against the war - because that is, very very unfortunately what they care about. What to do about that? How are we to convince homophobes they are wrong? I find it almost impossible in my personal experience. I guess I am feeling disappointed with how I represented myself here. My mother never became a citizen of this country because during the Cold War, her sister was living in East Germany and she was so socialist herself. In fact, she never became a citizen here, ever, I am, very much, on your side. But I am confused as to how to communicate with the majority of people who think differently than me. And maybe that makes me silly and PC, but I really want to that, really want to bring people over to the left. How not to vilify social conservatives? I understand you figured it out, but how to make others come to the left? I feel we have failed and I want to find a way to convince others to come to our side. Is that making me PC? So beyond beng disappointed in how I represent myself here, I admit, I am disappointed with what I feel is the left’s responsibilty. And maybe that is dumb of me.
No, really I did not mean that I thought you were saying what you said to be “pc.” I’m sorry it came out that way. I meant only that I think it is UN-pc to admit, as I was doing, that I am really, really pissed off at working class America, the people of my roots, and to think that they are behaving as they are out of a greedy and willful stupidity and religious convictions that are illogical and hypocritical. I really did not mean to target YOU as the recipient of my agitation. I can tell that you feel the same way I do for the most part, and in truth you sound like a nicer, more generous person than I am, ha, in that you have been so open and receptive to friendships with people who see the world very differently. I must admit that I am not open in that way, not when it comes to relationships with people who I see as wanting to harm others and impair their quality of life, i.e. discrimination against homosexuals and the poor, racism, support of an unnecessary war that is claiming too many lives. I get too livid and upset and cannot just ignore those topics and focus on other areas of relationship. Yet I also understand that without trying to form personal relationships, no education and understanding can ever take place. You may not have had much luck converting your friends, but the chances are higher that you will make them see compassion and reason than that I will, if I am too pissed off at them to befriend them. I get that. I think I have just had it up to my ears with my own family and the entirety of my former community turning against the political party that always had its back (at least far more than the Republicans do!) and making these marginal social issues like gay marriage the overriding issues of entire elections. I am so mad I can’t see straight. But I’m not mad at YOU. You seem like a really smart and thoughtful person (from your responses to my other post too.) I was just venting. I am just not a proponent of “to each his own.” I feel like some of the ideas–that translate into political policy–held by the Republican party are downright criminal and will be looked back on by history as war crimes and crimes against humanity, and it makes me just devastated.
But I’m really so hopeful that Obama will win, with or without the jaded Latinos of Millennium Park, ha. I really do think the tide is changing. Humanity has often pulled itself from the brink of disaster, in WWII, in the Cold War, and now, as we head for an environmental crisis and the collapse of the global economic system, I do mostly believe that our better nature will triumph and we will derail this runaway train before the damage is irreparable.
I have no idea how to convince others of anything, though I try. I have convinced quite a few of my friends that the death penalty is wrong (they are Democrats, but were pro-Capital punishment), and felt very good about that despite the futility of our small opinions in a culture that loves the death penalty. I convinced a college roommate that her parents being a Republican didn’t mean she should be, and she is now politically liberal. But I have never succeeded in convincing any of my family members of ANYTHING, so clearly I have no real answers to that.
You are very nice to clarify that you don’t think I’m a bad person! Cause I was feeling like I came off like one and I felt like an idiot! I also think that even though I can be critical of liberal america, that doesn’t make me less liberal. I love all of your views, I do. But just like being critical of america doesn’t mean you are a bad american, I think it is important to take our party to task for thier failures. I just want us to reach further and I am lost as how to do so. And that to me is a huge concern. I, and I am guessing, like many people, am formed so much by our factual lives- where we live, how we live there. You seem unique in your growing apart as you say, in that most of your family holds onto thier ideas that jibe more with republican views. I don’t know how to convince people that the war and econimcs are more important than christian ideas about homosexuality and abortion. I just don’t! But I don’t think they are less than me. I worry about that about myself. I mean that, too, and so this discussion brings up all sorts of insecurities of mine. I do hang out with a lot of Hispanics who are very socially conservative. I also didn’t get involved with this Obama fundraiser recently because the woman I know who was heading it refused to buy a house in my neighborhood because of the “niggers” (she went to Brown, she’s super “liberal”). So, I just get confused. Yes, I vote and I will always vote democrat. But the reality to me is so much more complicated. And I may be really wrong. I still vote like you, but maybe I symapthize too much with my domincan and ecuadoran buddies, regardless I will always vote democrat. I just don’t want you to think I am the enemy. Also, I m not better than you for hanging out with the people I do- I live here, that’s my life,.
Regarding families and stuff- I didn’t vote at 18 when I could have, because I experienced so much stress in my family, so much rage. My mother HATED this country. But I was like, but we live here? (she doesn’t live here anymore). So it took a while for me to be like, you know, it;s OK to live here, you vote democrat, and you do your best. Is that enough? Maybe not. But to be very humbled, I just do what I do. I vote left. I give away as much money as we can. Is that enough? You know, maybe not. But that’s what I do. I really love reading your work.
That’s really scary about the woman holding the Obama fundraiser who was previously openly racist. Yes, clearly that exemplifies the worst kind of hypocrisy, and much as we would like to believe that only exists on the “other” side, Democrats do suffer from it too. Yuck.
Gina - just wanted to say that I’m really enjoying your posts. I just finished reading through the comments, too - phew! I know I’m weighing in late, but I just wanted to put my two cents in about the religious right. I think you’re absolutely correct in saying that much of the religious right - particularly the evangelicals - have turned this election into a “God” issue. My own mother has only recently been convinced (reluctantly, I might add) that Obama is not harboring secret plans for Jihad and that he is not, in fact, a closet radical Muslim.
Did you happen to see the “debate” between Obama and McCain at the megachurch? I believe it was this event that allowed her to first see him as a respectable person at all. I’m not sure what the goal was, but I think it actually had the effect of helping much of the religious right see Obama outside of the email rumors, etc., and as a real person
I found it interesting what you said in the comments about the interpretation of religion by the religious right being so arbitrary as to be essentially meaningless. I have often felt this way. ( I come from a strong evangelical background, which I shed somewhere in my 20s.) One of my biggest complaints was that people seemed to always give answers in cliches. I don’t think it’s that people don’t “want” to think, though. Having been there myself, I remember believing that I really was thinking through the issues. In hindsight, though, I have to attribute much of this to a kind of brainwashing. It’s that people are taken through a certain kind of logic in which the thinking has been done for them - while being told all the while that what they’re doing is “thinking through the issues.” Opposing views are offered, and then ripped apart “logically.” The church service is, in a lot of ways, a vehicle for a motivational speaker to tell you what to think. They’re kind of like a weekly pep rally. Then we go to classes, Wednesday night church, social events, potluck suppers - and everything gets reinforced over and over. In my case, I went to Christian high school, Christian undergrad …all which demanded that I “think through the issues,” but none which actually encouraged me or rewarded me for coming to any conclusion other than theirs. Strange how convincing it is at the time.
One word, though, I would have been outraged to have been lumped together with the militant right wingers (abortion clinic bombers, etc.) - much like peaceful muslims don’t want to be lumped together with non-peaceful ones. Also, no one I knew in my religious circles voted a certain way because they wanted to be associated with being rich. It really was about trying to maintain some kind of moral order - to honor God…to keep the demons at bay (when you believe they’re real, they really are quite scary - haha)…or whatever. It was people sincerely trying to do what was right.
On the other side now, I totally understand the disconnect - although I still manage to get derisively furious about “them” not thinking things through. In some cases, though, they are in such a holding pattern that it would take a huge paradigm shift for them to be able to see outside of it. The church services, after all, march on.
Oh - and I’m totally impressed that you took your kids with you to volunteer. You’re a braver soul than I!
You’re right about the distinction between the Religious Right voters (however hypocritical I may view their religious dogma to be) and the “general” blue collar voters who sell themselves down the river on economic issues because of more vague prejudices and the conviction that the Republicans are the beer-drinkers and the Democrats the swillers-at-a-wine-tasting, combined with a misguided desire to identify with the “rich and powerful” rather than the “smart and bleeding heart.” I should have specified earlier that my own family, which was urban ghetto Chicago Catholic Italian, was not particularly religious, though I did attend Catholic school and go to Catholic church. Urban Catholics, other than the real extremists and particularly in the 1970s and 80s when I was a kid, rarely seem(ed) to possess the sort of frenzied religious zeal of the Evangelical Protestant movements, and were never as strongly associated with being Biblical literalists or anti-evolutionists or anything. The pro-life vs. pro-choice debate was not even on the radar when I was a kid, and that sole issue is probably what has catapulted Catholics into the arena of the larger Religious Right (in a very sad way); when I was growing up, the Born Again or Baptist types really didn’t want anything to do with sinning Catholics who drank and danced and didn’t usually read the Bible much, and the feeling was, I think, mutual. Catholics still had a kind of “dirty ethnic” connotation when I was a kid, too (which I liked, and which seems to be gone now.) We were Italian and Polish and Mexican, still half-immigrant in our lifestyles. Irish were the exception to this, but in my hood, we didn’t know any Irish people–they had more money and lived somewhere else in the city, and were busy being corrupt local politicians (which, again, I liked just fine, and seemed part of the larger Dirty Ethnic Catholic vibe–part of what differentiated us from the no-dancing, no-drinking white folks crowd.) Ah, but all that nostalgia of those good (and bad) old days is beside the point . . .
You’re right: religious voters really do vote their conscience, no matter that I think their consciences are lazy and not really doing independently critical work. You’re no doubt right about the brainwashing. I’ve never been part of a community like that, really, but I do remember my terror of hell as a kid due to Catholic teaching, so I get enough of it to know how people can totally buy in and start acting out of fear of the “demons.”
The urban poor (other than Black voters, who despite their low turnout have never been as gullible as white voters, and have never sided with the Republicans in any significant numbers) have somehow bought into the Republicans as a kind of JR from “Dallas” television series they love to watch and envy. They somehow don’t resent the rich old boys from the GOP their money, corruption and power because they think they have big dicks, eat steak, shoot guns, wear cowboy hats, and are cool.
They think anyone who is a Democrat is basically a bleeding heart pansy, and they HATE “pansies.”
They would rather identify with JR than with Diane Chambers from Cheers, in other words. Further, I think some of them truly believe, even if subconsciously, that if they vote with JR, they will somehow “be” JR. And if they vote Democrat, they will somehow magically lose their dicks and end up in an endless college seminar listening to a bunch of castrated smarty pants. This is a different crowd from those who are “voting God.”
The huge genius of the Republican party is in having somehow melded the blue-collar-beer-drinking-JR-wanna-bes with the mega-church-crowd. These two groups would seem to be natural enemies, but now seem to vote in an intimidating solid block. They have been united by their fear of minorities of all stripes, foreigners, and non-Christians, and a shared low-level misogyny. The Republicans are geniuses of spin.
I’ve never heard anyone explain it like that - excellent. Thanks for that. ( :
Holy moly–this worries me (and I am capable of incessant worrying!). Have you talked to anyone in the Hispanic community to figure this out? Did you run into any hockey moms? Did they say how they’re voting? They scare me more than anything.
As a Latino I have to say that someone trying to understand the American Latino vote because of talking to a few Latinos in a Chicago park is pretty silly. Sorry, but that’s just my perception of this article.
I wouldn’t lump whites, I wouldn’t lump blacks, nor would I lump Latinos into one big blob. Latinos as a diverse culture have a hard enough time defining themselves as a group, and I believe, understand that they are made up like any other cross section of America in a dynamic strata of people and beliefs.
As for me, I get bored by both candidates. And while I am voting for Obama in this election, I’m also aware that voting in this election for me is really about voting for or against propositions.
I mean, really, the popular vote is a sham. It doesn’t count. It instills false pride and can be a big letdown because somehow people think their presidential vote matters more than the electoral college. More than one president has lost the popular vote. Remember Al Gore?
I don’t recommend generalizing from my comment either. I know both conservative and liberal Latinos. Send an email to the UFW, or Mas Magazine, see what they say.
Darn, I typed up a long response, but it didn’t take. I’ll just write a short version.
As a Latino, I find the article fun until it gets to the topic of Latinos. Generalizing about such diverse cultures as Latinos from meeting a few people at a park is just wrong.
Maybe I should go talk to a few whities today down at a local park and generalize from what they have to say…
Just doesn’t work that way.
Well that was kind of my whole point, Nick–it seemed strange, yet was obviously too small to be any kind of actual “sample” (which I said in the original post.) Yet it was odd. I mean, if you did go out and talk to a bunch of people in a park today and every black or Latino or Asian person you spoke to responded in one way, and all the whites responded in another totally different way, wouldn’t you in fact think that WAS weird? It would be weird! That is all I meant, and I wondered if I was missing something, if it was indicative of a larger sentiment among Latinos or if it was not and was in fact just a random occurrence based on my small sample.
The larger discussion that came out of this, I hope you realize, was not meant to apply to Latinos in any singular way. Not all Latinos are “blue collar voters” or even religious. PB, Erica, etc. and I started talking about a larger class-and-voting issue that is not singular to any one ethnic group (except that I have asserted that Black voters seem not to buy into the same pro-Republican hype that other blue collar voters of various ethnicities have been buying into in larger numbers.)
The discussion stopped being about Latinos other than my noting one strange incident at a park, which I tried to be clear that I was bringing up only for its oddness, and that I could not begin to really draw larger conclusions from it. I hope that was clear and I apologize if it wasn’t–I certainly wasn’t trying to be a racist jag-off or anything!