Organizing for America | Maxim Thorne's Blog: Milwaukee Dreaming

Milwaukee Dreaming

By Maxim - Mar 17th, 2008 at 7:01 pm EDT

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I’ve been in Milwaukee for 2 days. The excitement on the airplane getting here was palpable – the SEIU folks also on the plane were chatting away about canvassing experience, like the depressing time they spent in abandoned neighborhoods in Michigan, how much they liked both Obama and missed Edwards, that sort of stuff. It was clear that everyone was aware of the tension and importance of winning Wisconsin. No one was buying that this was not Hillary territory. After New Hampshire, I thought I could handle the cold. OMG! Milwaukee is freezing (under 10 degrees), snowing, wet (I’ve fallen a couple of times already, as have all my companions!). We bought other knee high boots – even dock martins aren’t up to the task and height of the snow mounds. I canvassed today, Monday (President’s Day), in a lower income section of Milwaukee, around Teutonia and North 9th. (Yester night, my friend Jason and I went to several Irish bars, and some gay ones (we think), and found patrons really ready to talk about job security and needing protection that they hoped Barack or Hillary could deliver. A young woman, Chris, playing pool with her friend Brian stated at first that “no one helps people like her.” However, now she’s voting for Barack because she learned from us that Barack supported ending employment discrimination against transgendered people in Illinois – she teared up; you see she’d been fired, she said, because her boss said he and his clients couldn’t tell whether she was a boy or girl. She invited us to Louis’s for $1 burghers on Tuesday night. We caught a bus back to the Hyatt where the bus driver didn’t have change and allowed us to travel gratis. The last thing I see from my window before I go to sleep is the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the famous sausage factory Usinger’s from my window – what a day and night). Today, President’s day, was overwhelming – I felt real joy from the folks I spoke to on Teutonia. From 11am to 8pm I knocked on doors, and faces lit up when I said I was here to encourage them to vote for Barack Obama on Tuesday. One elderly man said “I got this – it’s about time we had a black president.” An elderly woman said: “we voted early for the man – we did it in church. God is good.’ And a teenager, who I learned will turn 18 in July and so, can vote in Wisconsin, said: “I’m voting with my Mom and Dad, and we have five sisters and brothers and we are all going to vote for Obama!” So, painful as my rump is, I’m hopeful about tomorrow. I am doing election protection at Happy Hill School, Clara Barton School, and Silver Spring Neighborhood Center. I missed the training call, so I am off to read the manual that was just sent to me. I will say this, taking the time off to get involved in this history making, history changing campaign is the greatest experience of my life. Renewing America’s Promise (I’m going to use that more – “RAP”) – I feel so many people are now feeling renewed, hopeful, optimistic. That is the genius of America – and Barack has made me experience it, in all its hopefulness, ambition, job, camaraderie and sacrifice.

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