Last weekend (April 18-20) six carloads of Vermonters hit the ground in eastern Pennsylvania. We canvassed in Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Allentown, Doylestown, Abington and Philadelphia. Were you in Pennsylvania too? If so I'd love to hear from you!Friday afternoon my group arrived in Philly just in time to go to the Center City Obama office, get rally tickets and walk to the rally. Already a vast river of humanity was flowing to the rally site adjacent to Independence Hall (below). By nightfall there were 35,000 people - an all-time record crowd here to see Barack!While we waited for Barack to show up, the sound system belted out hope-mongering songs like Brooks & Dunn's Only In America and Earth, Wind & Fire's Shining Star. (For a complete playlist email blackice09@gmail.com.) After the third time through the playlist, will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas got up on stage and led us in a rousing rendition of the Yes We Can song (below).
When Barack finally walked on stage, the cheering was so deafening I had to put my fingers in my ears for 2-3 minutes before the noise subsided. Barack gave an impassioned speech (photo below), interrupted by countless bursts of applause - watch the entire speech here - then stepped off the podium to shake hands at the front of the crowd. People started reaching over each other trying to shake Barack's hand, and suddenly we were being pushed forward with an irresistible force. Thankfully no one was crushed or trampled. When Barack moved past us the pushing let up.
Saturday morning I went out to Northeast Philly (photo below) with another volunteer who had just flown in from Santa Barbara, CA. We set out on foot to canvass a nearby neighborhood. What an experience! Surprise #1: A lot of voters were still undecided. Surprise #2: Many of them were eager to ask us questions - and they listened thoughtfully to our answers. This is how canvassing is supposed to work. (Unlike here in New England, where most voters had already made up their minds and didn't care to listen.)
My favorite voter contact was a young stay-at-home mom with 2 young kids. When we first knocked on her door, she leaned out of an upstairs window, said she was about to jump in the shower, and asked us to please come back later because she wanted to talk to us. We did, and this time she came to the door with her hair wrapped in a towel. She said she was worried about the future - thanks to the rising cost of gasoline and other essentials, her husband's income was no longer enough to pay their bills. I explained Barack's plans to help middle-income taxpayers with tax breaks financed by repealing tax credits for oil companies and enacting a windfall profits tax. I also said Barack would work to make college more affordable by making the federal student loan program truly nonprofit and offering a free college education to partcipants in a national service program. By the time we left, she was 100% for Barack and ready to convert her husband too!Saturday evening we were joined at dinner by US Congressman Patrick Murphy, who represents the area northeast of Philly. Only thirty-nine years old, Patrick is the only Iraq war veteran in Congress, and he was the very first member of Congress from outside Illinois to endorse Barack. (Many more have followed his lead!) Like Barack, Patrick is an inspirational leader who is committed to ending the Iraq war and moving our country in a new direction. And that means electing more people like Patrick Murphy to Congress in November.Read the sequel: Sign wars, a waffle and a slumlord in Scranton.
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