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Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Activism

I haven't written in a few days because I have been very busy with election matters and I haven't had time for anything. I worked on Monday and then went to poll monitor training in the evening although not before I called a friend of mine to console her because she was having a very bad day. The poll monitor training was great and very energizing, the leader was a young black minister by the name of Daryl Sims. He was very funny and he had a way of talking (kind of like a minister, I guess) that could just energize a crowd. The training consisted of going over the voter's bill of rights, telling us what kind of problems we may encounter, answering questions, assigning us our polling stations, and giving us these really cool, black long-sleeved t-shirts. I had to be back to the field office at 5 AM, so after making a quick call to my sister and sending an email out to my friends and family reminding them to vote on Tuesday, I went to bed.

Tuesday was a very long day. I got up at 3:45 AM to be at the field office at 5 AM. We were supposed to be sent to our polling stations in groups of two or more, but somehow I ended up by myself. According to data Election Protection had received from the city, the school I went to was supposed to be where precinct 58 was which was supposed to be the precinct I was watching. I went in and looked around and while there were 4 precincts there, none of them was 58. I called up Daryl and told his voice mail because I didn't get him immediately and watched and waited. After about an hour, I called him again. Because one of the precincts was in one of the wards we were watching, he told me to stay there. I was fine for about an hour. The election judges had no problem with my being there but at about 8 AM, an election investigator came up to me, asked for my credentials (I had none), and told me I had to leave when I could not come up with any. I could stand 100 feet from the polling place, which the way the judges had it set up, was on the sidewalk in front of the entrance. I hung out with the area precinct captain for a while and at about 8:30 AM, our van driver came by and dropped off breakfast for me. From the time the polls opened at 6 AM, there seemed to be a steady stream of voters and only a few that were not allowed to vote and only then because they were at the wrong polling station. I was picked up at 10 AM, we ran around to the other precincts, picking up and dropping off volunteers and arrived at the field office at about 11 AM. As I had decided to volunteer for the entire day, I asked Daryl if anything needed to be done. He told me to stick around and see what came up so I waited around for a while. In that time, I called Sharon because I new she was going to be paying close attention to the election to see what news there was. Its hard to know the big picture when you're on the front line. She told me that early projections were giving Florida to Kerry and she told me she would send me text message updates while I was out. My next job was to help deliver lunches to the volunteers. That took about an hour after which I had lunch and was sent out to a different precinct whose volunteer had to leave suddenly. I was going to be there for about an hour and a half. My relief showed up at about 2 AM but I stuck around til 3 PM after which I was sent to another precinct, one of who's volunteers didn't show up. So I worked there until the polls closed at 7 PM. Sharon had sent me about three text messages letting me know who won what. Illinois was considered strongly in the Kerry camp so at 7:01 PM, I called to see if Illinois had been called for Kerry yet. I did this as a joke and was very surprised to here that it had. By this time, I was very tired and knew that if I went directly home, I would fall asleep, but after a brief foray into the ridiculous, I made it home and very quickly fell asleep on my couch while trying to watch election results.

I got up this morning to find out that Bush had all but won and only Ohio was still out. This disappointed me but I decided that while I don't like the President, it isn't going to change my life immensely. It did give me a reason to continue with my activism and after work today, I went to an anti-war protest. I am going to do what I can to ensure that my government will not destroy the world for future generations.

Which brings us up to the present. Everyone have a great evening and goodnight.

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