Retribution

Today was a very slow day in the office, which gave me the chance to get out and do some canvassing. It was great to get out on my own in the neighborhoods and talk to people. It is certainly a very diverse town.

There are many beautiful Victorian houses that look like perfect dollhouses in life-size. I will try and bring my camera around next time because I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many beautiful houses in one place. People of all economic status, race and age told me they are supporting Obama, but I also saw plenty of McCain Signs and even a nOpe sign, with the ‘O’ as the Obama symbol.

At one house I knocked on an open door and heard the woman inside say, “Now what’s that white woman doing here”. Her son came to the door but was reticent to tell me who he was voting for. When he seemed to gain confidence in the fact that I really was there working for Obama, he said he wanted to vote for Obama, but he had heard that if Obama wins that black people will lose there jobs. People are worried about retribution. I told him that his vote was secret and that no one would ever know who he voted for but he didn’t seem so sure. It made me all the more determined to make sure that Obama does get elected.

11 Hours

I slept for 11 hours last night - with no drugs! I guess I really needed it. That's the good thing about everyone in Franklin being in Church on a Sunday morning. It gives me time to catch up on sleep!

Telemarketing Flashback

I am the manager of the Obama campaign office in Franklin City and Southampton County Virginia. Part of my job is make sure that hundreds of phone calls are made to potential voters every day and I sometimes get to make some of those calls myself. Fortunately my skills honed during my brief by stellar telemarketing career are still there.

Mostly it is just reminding me of the funny things you learn about people when you call them out of the blue. The old folks tell you way too much about themselves and can’t seem to avoid letting you know that they live alone and no one is there right now. The answering machines are the best though. In one day I had to listen to a women ranting a bible quote about Jehovah on her answering machine (and this is not an anti-religion statement, she was just all fire and brimstone) and then a short while later receive multiple options on one answering machine for what had to have been ‘night-time’ entertainment. One of the women said (and imagine this in a Anna Nicole Smith sexy voice), “Hi, you’ve made the right choice in choosing Star but at the wrong time because I’m not here…”. This contradiction I think captures some strange tension in this town. I really could not think of a better place to be campaigning for Obama!

Church

This evening a volunteer asked if I had been invited to a church tomorrow. The implication was that I would of course be going to church on Sunday, as she assumes I do every Sunday, but that it would be nicer to go with someone. When I hesitated, pretending to be deeply involved in my data entry, she mistook the reason for my hesitation and quickly notified me that her church was integrated. My colleague, who is here volunteering from Maryland didn’t understand her at first and thought she meant that the Catholics and Protestants went to the same Church (clearly she is no more a church goer than myself). The volunteer quickly and clearly explained that no, her church had both black and white members and everyone was welcome.

I almost started laughing and only held myself back because she was deadly serious. My colleague from Maryland is black and was so taken aback that the volunteer had to explain to her that not all churches here are integrated and that it is still quite a recent thing. Fortunately this conversation distracted everyone from the fact that I had not answered the original question so I am off the hook, for this Sunday anyway. Even better – the whole county is in church tomorrow morning so I get to sleep in!

The Franklin Flood - high water mark is at the top of the plaque

The Paper Mill leaning over Franklin Town Hall

An Unfortunate common sight (see McCain sign)

The Pace House Inn - my home away from home

Obama Office in Franklin

Franklin

Franklin is an Independent City of a little over 8,000 souls in the south eastern corner of the state of Virginia close to the North Carolina border. It split from Southampton County and was chartered as an Independent City in 1960 and some say it did so because it somehow allowed them to delay desegregating the schools. (Schools were eventually desegregated for the first time in 1965 – 10 years after Brown vs. the Board of Education.)

Just a few miles from Franklin is the site of the slave Nat Turner’s 1831 uprising in which over 55 slave owners were killed. Virginia considered abolishing slavery after that incident, but instead became more repressive in their treatment of slaves and free blacks. Many say that they are still fighting the civil war down here.

The town is now about evenly divided racially. It’s economy (and the skyline) is dominated by a paper mill that is now owned by International Paper. There was a major flood here in the center of town in 1999, which decimated down town and probably helped the speed collapse of many businesses given that there is a Walmart just two miles away.

People are all very friendly and even McCain supporters tend to polite about their disagreements. If I could have picked where I want to be working on this election, I could not have picked a better place.

Vietnam to Virginia

So I decided not to take the job in Vietnam. When on your first day of your new job you discover that half of your new colleagues are leaving the company, it is generally not a good sign. I gave it a shot for the month that I was out there, but it was clear that the organization had issues that were not going to fixable so I decided not to get on board a sinking ship.

I also decided not to go back to my old job. I realized that a large part of what was so attractive about the job in Vietnam was that it was not my old job. So I have opted for change. I am still figuring out exactly what change I am looking for, but so far things seems to have worked out well.

My situation made it easy to decide to go independent for a while and see if I can make it work. In other words, I am going to continue to work in international development, probably working for my old firm at times, but I will not be a full-time employee of theirs and so I will have the option of saying no when I want. It also gives me an opportunity to get to know lots of different firms and to pick and choose interesting assignments. Of course, that is assuming that people will actually want me to work for them.

So far so good on that front. Given the life-cycle of consulting assignment it is taking a few weeks for the first assignment to come through, but this morning I was asked to do an assignment in Ghana. Unfortunately, they want me to get started and do a few days of work over the next two weeks and that could be difficult. It’s the run up to the election…but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I decided to make the best possible use of my down time and I now find myself in the tiny town of Franklin in Virginia campaigning for Obama.