Know your senator

 

Flagstaff, Arizona: I spent the morning walking around the college town of Flagstaff in Northern Arizona. Being in McCain’s home state, I decided to see if young people here had a different take on the Senator. Although many of the people were proudly apathetic about politics, the people I talked to with an opinion had some strong opinions about the candidate. Here are the most telling quotes of the day (it’s important to note that many of the people I talked to admitted that Flagstaff is a more liberal town than most in Arizona).

Devin Fairchild a 27 year-old student at Northern Arizona University Student with nicotine stains on his thumb and forefinger, was sitting on a city bench when he said: “You can’t read a paper without seeing John McCain on the cover in Arizona. Before he was caught up in this election cycle he seemed more moderate, and now it’s all about being bullheaded about the war, and being more in lined with the Republican Party. I don’t know which is the real McCain. Maybe he was always really conservative on social issues, but he had no reason to make it a big deal when he was a senator here, or maybe he is actually changing his beliefs to get elected. I don’t know, but he’s definitely promoting a different image of himself now….For me, I was never going to vote for McCain, but I think he is alienating a lot of young people with his move to the right.”

Colten Fitchett, who is 17 but will be 18 by the time of the election, wore a blue bandanna, large-framed sunglasses with translucent concentric stars on the lenses, and army pants, and was standing in the town square when he told me: “It doesn’t make sense to me. He used to be a different kind of politician, and now he is just like Bush. Who is going to want to vote for a guy just like the president who fucked everything up already?”

Holly Pyle, 21, was walking down the main drag when she said: “I really liked him during the fist election. I thought he was some sort of closet democrat, and I could have seen myself voting for him. The more and more he’s out there campaigning though, the more he starts to look like the enemy. I could never vote for a guy who says the things he says about gay marriage and abortion. I guess I’m at least glad he said all these things so I know not to vote for him now, but I kind of wish he was the McCain of old so at least I could be proud to have him coming from my state.”

The Town Hall Protest

Albuquerque, NM: 30 minutes before John McCain was scheduled to go onstage at the Albuquerque Hotel for his Town Meeting forum, a group of seven security guards and secret service men gathered around Chris Salas, 20.

Clutching a ticket for the event, and wearing “National Abortion Rights Action League” T-shirt Salas was escorted from the building. Leaving the hotel, Salas returned to the crowd of liberal protesters stationed outside.

“It was disappointing, but kind of empowering,” Salas said of the experience. “We knew we had the right to be there, my friend got us tickets from the overflow pile, and all we wanted to do was as Senator McCain about where he stood on pro-choice issues. So we went inside, and I guess they figured out we were too liberal for John McCain when the security cameras saw our shirts. So they kicked us out, told us we were trespassing and threatened us with arrest. We said we had tickets, but they said we falsified who we were when we got our tickets. All I did was give them my name, and I gave my real name, so I don’t know what I could have falsified.”

Salas said he wanted to ask the Senator about why his campaign literature seemed to boast about getting a zero percent on the Planned Parenthood scorecard, and why he advocated abstinence-only education programs, programs that Salas believes only “increases the number of abortions because people are not being properly educated.”

“I just wanted to go in there and learn more about his policies,” he said. “I thought it was an open forum, but I guess it wasn’t. That’s OK, this is more my scene anyway.”

The scene he was talking about—stretching along the main drag leading to Historic Downtown Albuquerque—was made up of about 50 sign holders, young and old, waving cardboard and plastic with slogans like “You like Bush’s economy? Hire McCain,” and chanting “Yes we can.”

Buck Glanz, 25, the coordinator for the protest and staffer for the New Mexico Democratic Party, stood with a sign that read, “’Economics is something that I really never understood,’ John McCain, December 2007.”

“We’re out here mostly to convey to the media, Republicans, and undecided voters that McCain is not right for New Mexico,” Glanz said. “I don’t think his economic policies will represent New Mexico in any way and I think his stance on the war will be detrimental to the country and to the young New Mexicans who are out there fighting and dying. Especially since they are not getting taken care of when they come back.”

Glanz recognized that standing in the hot sun holding signs in protest of John McCain would not be the deciding factor in the upcoming election.

“There was a time in history, not so long ago, where protests serviced a more tangible function in society,” he said as cars honked their support and bullhorns blared. “Whether it was obstruction or civil disobedience like a boycott, protest was part of the fabric of society. Nowadays its really more of a media event. John McCain’s in town, the media reports that, and then they report on us, or show pictures of us standing out here holding signs. At least it evens the playing fields a little.”

Still, Glanz said he was willing to do whatever it took to help get the right guy in office.

“More than anything I think that Obama thinks,” Glanz said. “When I hear him speak it’s obvious to me that he is thinking hard about what he is saying. He interprets and is actually aware of what is going on, and can therefore make educated decisions. Whereas more and more I’m starting to feel that McCain is saying something, and he is saying something that he feels like needs to be said or that people want to hear. I want someone who will change their opinions occasionally, flip flop if you will, when evidence changes or circumstances dictate otherwise. I don’t know if that is true about Obama, but that is what he is saying to me.”

For some at the protest, however, this idea of flip-flopping was a major issue for protesting against McCain.

“I’m out here against McCain because he’s changed his positions,” said Jesse Lifton, 22, a protester down from Pennsylvania working for the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund. “He was a very liberal senator and now he is a very very very conservative presidential candidate. I don’t know what to trust with him. He was pretty liberal about the environment, but now he wants to drill offshore. In addition to the ecological problem, this solution won’t even lower any gas price. Any economist will tell you the same, when oil companies see they can get four dollars a gallon for it, why the hell would they lower the price?”

In one sentence, Lifton then summed up two of the most common problems many of these protesters (at least the younger ones) had with McCain:

“Not only has he shown that he doesn’t understand Iraq and the Sunni-Shiite divide,” he said, “but the man’s is 72 and I don’t feel like he’ll work a 12 hour day.”

The Civil Rights Institute

The permanent exhibit of the Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Alabama, begins with a replica of the iconic Elliott Erwitt photograph of the two water fountains, one marked “white” and the other marked “colored.” Walking passed the fountains—connected to the same pipe but clearly offering a different drinking experience—forces the participant to feel as if he has traveled through time, to a place where segregation and Jim Crow were the norms.

With Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee for the president of the United States, a lot has changed since the photo was taken in 1950. Though clearly a moment of historical significance for African-Americans and Americans in general, Obama’s candidacy is about much more than just race. I talked with nearly all of the young people who were at the museum at the same time as me (all of them African-American), and none of them said that Obama’s being black had much affect on their decision to vote for him (but they all did say they were going to vote for him). Many of the people I talked with recognized how important an moment it was for the African-American community, but said that just that fact would not have been nearly enough to vote for Obama.

Patrick Banks, a 24 year old, was leading a group of young African-Americans and Jews on a trip through the South when I met him in the Institute.

“I like Obama because he is doing the same kind of thing this trip does,” Banks said. “We are teaching these to become agents of change. It’s about looking forward. Jews and blacks have had plenty of adversity in the past, but with enough agents of change, the future can look much brighter. Barack is looking forward where McCain is looking back. That’s why you hear McCain talk so much about his experience, and credential wise he has Barack beat. But, he is stagnant. McCain might have the credentials, but it is not about that.”

Banks also said his choice to vote for Obama was not affected by the candidate’s race. In fact, he said that he initially supported John Edwards.

Near the end of the self-guided tour, I met a young man named Frederick Williams. Williams stood a good 6’3 with a strong build and an even stronger handshake. He wore a diamond stud in his ear and a neatly groomed goatee. Having just returned from Iraq, Williams said his identity as a soldier was more important in the political scene than his identity as a black man.

“It doesn’t matter what your skin color is, it matters what your policy is,” he said about whether or not he considered Obama’s race as a factor in his voting.  “It’s easy to look at Barack’s skin color and think that he automatically represents change. He represents change because of the direction he wants to take the country in. I was in Iraq, and if Barack wanted to keep us there, it wouldn’t matter what his skin color was, I wouldn’t vote for him. Keeping us in war, that’s not change.  I want someone who is not just going to get us out, but have a plan. If we just leave, it’s going to be chaos out there, and I think and hope that Barack won’t just high tail it out of there without a plan.”

The tractor pull

Hazel Green, Alabama: “Where are your redneck clothes?” a girl named Hannah asked me from the bleachers. I wore a green polo shirt and khakis. Everyone else wore sleeveless shirts and jeans.

The Hazel Green annual tractor pull attracted some 1,500 people to watch as local farmers showed off their 4,000 horsepower diesel tractors (for competition use only). The event began with a tractor sitting at the start of a dirt pathway. A group of men hitched an enormous trailer carrying a weight known as the sled. The machine revved its engine sending a geyser of grey and then black smoke into the air, and suddenly, took off down the path with a deafening shriek. As the tractor careened to the end of the path, the sled slide down toward the front end of the trailer, pushing the weight into the back of the tractor and eventually causing it to stop. Whoever pulled the weight the farthest, won.

In addition to being quite a spectacle, the tractor pull was also a meeting ground for local young people. One guy described it to me as “the perfect place to find girls.” Groups gathered away from the roar of the tractors, beside concession stands shilling corn on the cob and T-shirts that read, “I love HIS big tractor” and “Long Live Dale, Jr.”

Despite being a clear interloper with my “country-club” attire, I decided to brave the masses and see what the average young tractor-pulling enthusiast felt about Barack Obama and John McCain.

“Here’s what I have to say about politics,” said a friendly sounding baby-faced high school graduate named Adam, “fuck it. Still though, I’m going to vote for John McCain because I don’t want to black Muslim in charge of this country. You just can’t trust a black man with this country, what can I say?”

His girlfriend, Brittney stood beside him smiling. Parting her short blond hair and standing up as tall as she could, (no more than 5’2”) she spoke next.

“It’s nothing personal to Obama,” she said with an eerily sweet drawl, “but it’s like I learned in church: As a black man trying to be a leader, he is like the anti-Christ. If he were to become president, it would be the beginning of what could be called an apocalypse.”

The third member of the group, another recent high school grad named Chris, chimed in.

“There’s really nothing I can do about it,” he said. “I’m a Southern boy, born and bred, and I just can’t have a black president, and there’s nothing more to say about it.”

The next group I approached was a group of six, the most prominent of which was a 19-year-old who weighed well over 300 pounds and went by Big Cal.

“Ah, man,” he said, “you don’t want to know what I have to say about it. Plus, ain’t know newspaper that would print what I have to say.” When I told him I wanted to hear what everyone had to say he reluctantly responded in a slow southern drawl, “All I know is I’d rather not see that Jew win. Having a Muslim nigger as our president, that’s not OK.”

Two of his friends, who referred to themselves as “Little Curt” and “Littler Curt,” nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, it can’t be a black or a woman,” Little Curt said.

When I told him he didn’t have to worry about a woman anymore, he had an answer.

“Well,” he said, “we damn sure have to worry since Obama is going to make her his vice president. And everyone knows that motherfucker is going to get shot.”

One day after writing this post, the Washington Post leads with this story about racism in the U.S.

The Gas Price Effect

As many of you know, George Bush asked Congress yesterday to end a moratorium on offshore drilling. Part of the reason he is doing this now clearly has to do with the fact that gas prices have risen above $4 a gallon. Bush may be making it seem as if offshore drilling will bring instant relief to gas consumers, but really this will bring no effect on gas prices until 2030. 

I have decided to conduct a little experiment on how young people are reacting to this request (one that has been publicly supported by John McCain). I am going to see how gas prices of a region affect young people’s view of this plan. During the next four days I will be in Tennessee, Alabama, and Missouri (which famously has the lowest gas prices in the country).

Of course the difference in gas prices will only fluctuate by about 30 cents, but maybe that’s the tipping point for who is going to support this plan. If not, I will at least get to see how young people in general respond to the idea of offshore drilling as a means of eventual lower gas prices.