Politics. With the Ohio primary election lurking, the home phone has been ringing off the hook with state, local and national pleas for support. Thank god for caller ID – although i’ve let calls* from Hillary and Barack go right to voicemail because i didn’t recognize the numbers…
Things are also interesting at the local level. i spent about 4 hours yesterday afternoon preparing a 10,000 piece mailing for a local candidate, Bob. This gentleman is running for county office, after serving as a city and township official for over a decade…
Most amusing to me? He is a member of that party. The one that bought our white house in the last two elections. Yet there i sat for 4 hours, sticking labels on envelopes at breakneck speed – so fast that a junior team member had to supply water-cooling for my fingers. i was that dedicated. I’ve also ghost-written his campaign literature, and sent him draft ‘letters to the editor’ for others to send to local newspapers.
As a libertarian** at heart, this may seem strange. All i know is that if it weren’t for the assistance of Bob a few years ago, there wouldn’t be a sk8park in our small city.
Leading a rag-tag bunch of sk8r punks into the city council chambers on numerous occasions, i was getting nowhere. Until Bob showed up at one of our planning meetings. He was impressed with the tenacity of the group, and the fact that we came to the city planning to raise as much of our own money as possible.
With his support, lots of press releases, car washes, benefit concerts and generous donors, we did it. Raised $25,000 on our own, and got the city to hack up the $100,000 to do it right… So, to quote a wise and scraped-up eldersk8sman, “it’s very important that the youth of today has a controlled environment to hurt itself in”.
Couldn’t agree more. And if Bob needs me to stuff his envelopes, then i shall continue to stuff his envelopes. Guess that’s how politics works…
_______
* those damned recorded messages… please, please, please don’t insult me and waste my bandwidth…
** key challenge with libertarians? they disdain organizational structure. hard to get their shit together, it is… so lately, i’m just an avowed “anti-wingnut”, and will generally vote in such a manner to maximize the chances we’ll get an administration in place that will stop with the egregious disregard for the constitution… oh, and stop invading other countries…
Trailer Park Refugee 