On the Hill. . .

Hello all! And so begins a new adventure. One month ago, I started packing my things to leave North Dakota three days before my departure date. This is unusual for me; I usually put off packing until the last possible moment. It definitely meant that I was ready to leave Nodak and venture home, albeit briefly, to spend some much-needed time with my family.

Back East

My visit back in Kingston was short but very sweet. Seeing my siblings and parents so seldomly allows me to see how each of them is changing. They’re all changing in very good ways, but it’s a scary reminder of how quickly time passes. It also felt wonderful to catch up with so many great friends who are all doing wonderful things. This made me miss home, but also feel thankful to have such a great place to come back to.

Sunday April 17^th my parents drove me along the familiar route down to Syracuse. I hopped on a plane to New York City and spent the next four days learning to street canvass in the NYC suburbs. I stayed with my friend Sam’s parents in Teaneck, New Jersey, and they were a riot! They do community theater, and they told me stories of how when they first moved into their house as a young couple they didn’t have any furniture except for a piano, so the hardwood floor of their living room became main stage for their troop of musical theater friends. Sam's Dad played show tunes and jazz in the car, and their impressive use of pop-culture references left me clueless on several occasions.

Art and the Canvass

It’s been a while since I learned a skill so completely. When I was younger, I did this reasonably frequently, from learning to play the piano, flute, or guitar, to learning to paddle solo or do spinal rollovers in the pool. University courses focused much less on developing acute skills and much more on honing higher level thought processes and specific writing, reading and presentation styles.

So, I now feel like I’m back in a kayaking skills clinic, which is somewhat refreshing. Canvassing is a skill that you can improve drastically with a good trainer and lots of practice. Once you’ve got the basics, it requires you to artfully read people and respond to their motivations or concerns in a professional manner.  Whitewater paddling is actually a great analogy for canvassing; you want to get to the point where you can navigate through class 3 or class 4 rapids without really thinking about it, because your brain knows exactly how to respond to the river’s push and pull. Likewise, you need to have the basics down to be a good canvasser, but have enough experience to navigate each unique interaction effectively and not get thrown by unexpected obstacles. 

The conversations you get to have while canvassing can also be pretty neat. In the NY suburbs where I was fundraising on behalf of anti-hydrofracking legislation, I spoke to an elderly man who sold his land to gas companies several years ago and now can't drink his well water. I talked to another guy who was hiking the Appalachian Trail one chunk at a time (which happily reminded me of my boyfriend Alex, who has hiked the whole thing), and we also reminisced about great kayaking trips we'd been on. Here in Washington D.C., where I'm fundraising for the Human Rights Campaign (the nation's largest gay and lesbian civil rights group), I met two teens the other day whose friend had just come out and was having problems with their parents. They were eager to support an organization that is working on behalf of someone they love.

All in all, the positive aspects of canvassing outweigh the negatives. It's still hard work, and it's very repetitive, but I think the structure and discipline of the job is good for me. I'm also learning how to responsibly manage canvassing site plans, budgets, employees, and the several thousand dollars we raise each day, which can only be good things to have under my belt moving forward. With that said, this summer's going to be long, exhausting, and hard, but I don't regret doing it (yet). 

The Real World

I think that living in D.C. is helping to complete my new perspective on the United States, and in many ways on Canada as well. I didn't have a chance in Berkeley or Houston to travel very widely in the area, and so I only got a good sense of the people and communities in the places in which I worked. In most cases, these areas were middle to upper middle class and primarily white (although in Houston I did work quite a bit with the marginalized Hispanic communities along refinery row). In Fargo, goodness knows that you'd be hard pressed to find an abundance of diverse neighborhoods, and there, it was even hard to find yourself surrounded by a high level of affluence. It was mostly middle class, middle America on every block. 

Here in D.C. I'm getting exposure to the highest echelons of society, and also to some of the lowest. D.C. is infamous for its high crime rate outside of the city center, and it's impressive how visible the disparity is between neighborhoods. The makeup of people waiting for the metro changes drastically from one station to the next. Walking around eastern market today I had to chuckle to myself a few times. Canadians see preppy American college students in movies and on TV, but I don't know how many of us believe that people are actually that preppy in real life. Well I've found the real ones here in D.C. I can't really talk, because I love my boat shoes, but the number of apparently wealthy young professionals and students is quite impressive. 

On my bike ride home from work today I left the beautiful neoclassical architecture of Capitol Hill and within 10 minutes was riding along the Metro Branch Trail, gazing at the coal fired power plant to my left in the center of an obviously low-income neighborhood. And the disparity is not simply between the largely white upper middle class and the largely black lower class in the city, but there is also a large Hispanic population, especially as you go north towards Silver Spring, which is really interesting. I'd love to learn the history of each of these neighborhoods. 

I've gotten to experience more diversity here than anywhere else I've been this year, and it makes the potential impacts of the Republicans' massive cuts to social programs and education that much more real for me. And, despite the socioeconomic disparity here, there's something really nice about walking around Chinatown and seeing people of every color and social status. The great public transit in the city means that everyone can be mobile and go just about everywhere. It's a bit pricey, but I think it's still a great equalizer. 

And Off to Bed

Well, I should get to sleep. It does feel comforting in some ways to be back on the east coast, even if it's quite a bit further south than I'm used to being. Raccoons squabbling over garbage woke me up yesterday morning, and a cardinal flew into a tree in the garden this afternoon. The first few mosquitos have been making their way into my room when I leave the patio door open, and although it takes ages to hunt them down before I go to bed, hearing their annoying sound in my ear brings back great memories of east coast summers.