VOP Front Porch Diaries

Matthew King

Charlottesville Team

At first this door did not seem like it was going to be a very enjoyable experience.  There were two large, loud dogs who rushed out the door once their owner came out, and jumped all over me.  So I did what any one else would have done in that situation, and gave her my rap and explained to her why I was on her deck.  To my amazement, she said she had heard of VOP and before being prompted with any questions she expressed her desire to canvass for health care reform.  She mentioned she did not know about the public health insurance option, but wanted to be because she felt that everyone not only should have, but NEEDS access to affordable health care. 

Meanwhile, my organizer, Harold had been looking for people that could help VOP phonebank for health care.  Luckily, after I told Harold about her he gave her some more information and now she is going to help the VOP phonebank for health care reform.  I’m sure that this woman will help VOP move towards its goal of getting everyone to have access to affordable health care.

Naomi Huntington

Roanoke Team

My last day of canvassing was extraordinary in its ordinariness. I spoke with around 25 people, visited just under one hundred homes, chatted with a big group of kids (and gave one of them my autograph!), was eaten alive by mosquitos, and got a small sunburn. Just an average day as an intern with the Virginia Organizing Project, knockin’ on doors for a living. But as I reflect, what is unique about my last day canvassing is how my definition of “ordinary” has changed over time.

At the beginning of the summer, an ordinary day would not include a man telling me that he and all of his neighbors are out of work.

At the beginning of the summer, an ordinary day would not include a woman telling me that their biracial children’s friends had been called a derided by a racial slur at her elementary school.

At the beginning of the summer, an ordinary day would not include a woman telling me that she had recently been diagnosed with skin cancer, that she was in constant, excruciating pain, and that she could not afford any form of treatment.

A woman, diagnosed with skin cancer and unable to afford a trip to the doctor–ordinary? Racism towards children, by children–ordinary? Rampant unemployment–ordinary? Sadly, such stories are far more common, far more usual, than I ever imagined. It’s amazing how much you can learn if you simply listen to the people who, much of the time, haven’t ever been asked for their opinions, and what I’ve learned from my summer is that we, Virginians and the Virginia Organizing Project, have a lot of work to do. We should not live in a world when these stories do not register shock, outrage, a demand for change. And this is why I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to work for the VOP. As I knocked on my last door, I reflected that our work for communities will never be finished, and we will never live in a utopia. But by empowering people with a few simple questions–what do you think is important? by mobilizing activists, and by making connections with one another, we sure can work for that dream.

Natalie Grossman

Fredericksburg Team

While canvassing I talked to a woman who had quit her job with a police department because she couldn’t stand the racism, sexism, and discrimination towards immigrants happening in and out of the police department.  She shared with me a few stories illustrating this corruption and explained to me that she was not afraid to speak up about it.  I think she is a courageous person to have taken a stand like that.  Now without her job she loses her health insurance at the end of the month. 

Even though she may suffer a financial burden which effects all aspects of living including health care, she can live with her integrity and principles.  It’s unjust for a society to punish people for standing up for freedom from oppression and reward those who apathetically perpetuate the system and live solely for individualistic needs.  Hats off to anyone taking a stand.  Fight the Power!

Pylynn Virankabutra

Southwest Team

Having the chance to work as a VOP intern, I have seen both good and bad things about my community.  I have seen poverty beyond my belief, people living day by day without health care, racial profiling in work settings, and so forth.  I have talked to numerous people with the same problem of not having the financial stability because they have been laid off from a minimum wage job, people having to choose between either paying rent or taking their spouses to the doctor, children living in poverty dreaming that someday they will have the chance to go to college, people on drugs that cannot see beyond the day, and so on.  It breaks my heart everyday when I see hopelessness in people’s eyes, despair when talking about health care, and doubt of how the future would be.

Last week, my team had the chance to travel to a community two hours away from our office.  We were canvassing in one of the public housing and saw a group of young adolescence boys there.  We talked to them for a while and one of the boy’s father said that racism is still very big in the area especially in schools.  The boy agreed because it happened to him and it just broke my heart to see a child having to go through the stupidity of being labeled.  The father seeing my reaction laughed and said that it would not be long before they would pack up and move out of the area.

I can’t help but wonder how many people would have the opportunity to pack up and move?  I can’t imagine living in the community where racism still exists.  It angers me how people treats each other and it disgusts me seeing children living in this environment.  After talking to them for a while we continued canvassing while being accompanied by them.  They walked around with us and talked to other residents while letting us know who was and was not home.  Before saying goodbye to them, one of my teammate asked one of the boys about college.  He said that he really wants to go and that he dreams of playing football for scholarship.  I truly hope that he will continue to follow that dream and work hard to get it.

 After that day, I realized how powerful reaching out to the community can be.  Talking to the boys, we have sent a message that we do not tolerate racism.  We have sent a message that a community when come together we can actually make a change, we have sent a message of how the healthcare system needs to be changed, and we have sent a message that education is one thing that can never be taken away.  I feel so privileged to have this chance of being one of the VOP interns and having the chance to work with the people in the community.  I will use this experience in my counseling field and hopefully help and inspire children in my community to be compassionate toward each other, respect each others’ rights, and have hope that when they come together they can make a change.

Matt King

Charlottesville Team

It had been one of those days where it seemed like I hadn’t really gotten to talk to anyone.  Everybody was not home, or had too much going on at the time, and the ones that did want to talk had no interest in helping VOP achieve our goals.  Our team had been doing a good job of keeping the mood light and supportive, but I really felt that I needed to talk to one person who was remotely supportive so that I could feel that I would have a productive day.  Sure enough, the odds swung back in my favor for that day.  

Behind one of my last doors of the day happened to be a woman who worked with Meals on Wheels.  She told me that she had found the VOP website and had printed off some information for some of the people that she served, but said she was not really sure of all we did.  I was more than happy to explain more to her about health care and give her more ways that VOP can help her.  It was obviously a good connection for the both of us, since I needed to find someone supportive and she needed to know how she could better help the people she is serving meals to.

Niti Patel

Charlottesville Team

It was another typical canvassing day.  I had done a bunch of doors, some good, some bad, but all in all nothing out of the ordinary.  I walked up to another door, scanning the area for loose dogs.  With the coast clear, I walked up and rang the doorbell.  Just as a man opened the door, I felt something on my leg.  A little annoyed at the fact that I hadn’t seen the dog beforehand, I looked down to give him a little nudge, but to my great surprise it was a little baby snake wrapped around my ankle.  Before I could even think twice about it, I immediately shook my leg in a frenzied manner.  My hurried movements were just enough to whirl the baby snake off my ankle and into the shrubbery that had begun to consume the front porch.  The forty-some-year-old-man, equally stunned, asked if I was okay.  I assured him that I was fine, and attempted to finish my rap as he poked a broom into the foliage in hopes of finding and identifying the reptile.  Half stunned, half relieved, I couldn’t quite find the words to my now routine VOP rap, as I awkwardly shifted back and forth between talking about snakebites and health care reform.  My initial thoughts were of relief: I didn’t feel or see the bite.  As the conversation progressed, however, I soon learned that neither of these senses were particularly telling of the miniscule yet potentially lethal bite of an immature snake.  Eventually he gave up looking, as it appeared the snake had long made his escape.  I finished doing my survey, and decided to take the man’s advice in watching the ankle carefully.

After informing my fellow canvassers, who then told our organizer, one thing led to another and the next thing I knew we were on our way to the ER.  The whole time, my team was calm and collected, which helped me to remain calm.  In the end, everything was fine, and I walked away unharmed.  I did, however, accrue one thing: a health care story of my own.  A week or so after the incident, I received a bill from the ER for about $450, and a week after that another from the doctor who examined me (for a grand total of about a minute), for $150, both of which my health insurance wouldn’t cover.  Luckily with some help from the VOP, I got things sorted out, but the absurdly high ER costs along with the insufficient health insurance coverage are just two more reasons why our health care system needs reform.

Andrew Pericak

Charlottesville Team

As an intern for the Virginia Organizing Project, charged with the task of going house-to-house to talk to citizens, I spend a lot of time during the day staring at closed doors. I have just rung the doorbell, and I stand on the front porch of the house, waiting for any sign of life inside. I listen closely for any movement; I often hear the sudden commotion of dogs, excited by that ringing sound the box on the wall just made, but sometimes the movement sounds more human. But then there are the other times when there is no sound at all. I just stand there, hoping the person on the other side walks really silently or is wearing slippers.

Needless to stay, as I stand waiting at the door, listening to nothing other than the cars drive by on the road behind me, my mind starts to wander. Among other fascinating topics I have contemplated, I’ve found myself frequently looking at the brand names of the door’s knobs and deadbolts. It’s interesting: these lock brands have obscure, unique names.

We are all familiar with Kwikset, a company who decided it would be comical to replace the awkward and rarely-used “qu” with a much more common “k,” and threw out the “c” because it’s mostly silent anyway. I’ve seen some other, less common companies: the classy, refined Baldwin; the bold and up-front Defiant, the simple and matter-of-fact Weiser, and the royal and majestic Pegasus. (I’m not describing the look of the deadbolt or of the knob, I’m just describing the font of the brand name. Seriously, 99% of deadbolts look exactly the same.) There are many other brands as well that I have seen, but these are just a few of the ones I could find online.

But I think the deadbolt brand I see most often is the innocently-named, super-confusing Schlage. I stare at the door, and my eye is immediately drawn to the word. Schlage. And every time I see that word, I think, How in the world do you pronounce that?

The point is, I have no idea what the correct pronunciation is, and I don’t think I’ll ever know. As I ran into this unfortunate, metaphorical brick wall, a more-enlightened realization eventually dawned on me. As an intern talking to people I’ve never met nor seen before, my pronunciation is paramount. No, not the pronunciation of their deadbolt’s company, nor the pronunciation of the citizens’ names—although that is quite important and oftentimes the greatest challenge I face. It is the pronunciation of the issues at hand that becomes my number-one priority as I give my face-to-face interview.

For example, it is easy to say that the VOP supports a public health insurance option. But to explain what that means and why it is an important benefit—the true pronunciation of the issue—is my (difficult) goal when I knock on a stranger’s door. I’ll admit, I’m still learning how to clearly, concisely, and precisely pronounce this issue, since it is so multi-faceted and ever changing. But every day, as I  read more about the public health insurance option, my pronunciation gets even better. I hope one day to be “fluent” in this language, that my pronunciation would cause the listener to believe I was a “native speaker” when it came to affordable health care.

Sylvia Sierra

Fredericksburg Team

In the past five weeks of working on the Summer Civic Engagement Project as an intern, canvassing as a full time job has changed my perspective in many ways, mostly relating to how people engage or don’t engage with each other on a daily basis about the community or societal issues that are most important to them, and the factors that may contribute to their behavior.

One thing that has become very apparent to me is the way in which my canvassing team, in Fredericksburg Virginia, have been excluded from knocking on doors in different areas. On only our second day of Canvassing, two of our group members were stopped by an off-duty police officer and told that they couldn’t canvass on a certain street (which happens to be in a low-income area) because “the people there don’t care about politics anyway.” Of course this statement and interference from the police frustrated our group to no end, and also was a hint to us that we could be blocked from going into certain areas that were deemed separate from the rest of civil society.

This has also become apparent in the many times managers of apartment buildings have approached us telling us that there is “no soliciting,” or, my personal favorite, “no door-knocking” in those apartments. Many times it seems that this is a way to keep certain sectors of the population from having to deal with anyone outside of their smaller community. Then of course, there are the few areas that have signs telling us that we are not technically supposed to talk to the people who live there, and even signs telling us we will be “prosecuted to the full extent of the law” if we “solicit, distribute literature or loiter.” All of these techniques, which exist for whatever number of reasons, undoubtedly make it harder for communities to connect with people in a meaningful way about the issues that affect them the most, which for me is the basis of serious community organizing.

Despite the frustration of not being able to talk to everyone in a community, the best part of the day is finding that one person who legitimately cares about the issues, and is critically thinking about the bigger picture. Most of the time these people are very knowledgeable about health care reform in America or all the different ways in which the environment is being exploited and what we can do about it, and it’s great just to learn from their experiences and from the research they have done. Exchanging these stories with other members of my team makes the frustration worth the outcome of building stronger connections with diverse people all over Virginia who are working towards true equality and change in America.

Amber Austin

Virginia Beach Team

 When I was canvassing this past Saturday afternoon in a low income area of Virginia Beach, I received many responses to the questions that I asked about “What issue do you find the most important to you within your local community?” and “How would you rate having affordable health care on a scale of one to five?.” As I approached a group of people standing in the street talking, I begin to introduce myself and said: “Hi, my name is Amber and I am an intern with the Virginia Organizing Project… and I continued with my rap. The man that I was talking to said that his most important issue was the cost of health care and I said Virginia Organizing Project is dedicated to that and health care is one of the issues we are working on this summer. He then began to tell me that he worked for the government and had affordable health care but he knew of others that did not have the same option as he did.

Then, this man told me how he was in a car accident and the person who hit him was a contract worker for a company and lied and said that he had insurance when he really didn’t. Even though he was hit and his insurance covered it… he still had to come out of pocket and pay for court fees, some medical fees and other things. This man whom I spoke with felt that the companies were taking over with the cost of health care.  The gentlemen that I spoke with that day told me a story that will always be with me and even though he may work for the government and has great benefits and health care…. He is still one of the many individuals out there that are suffering from everything that is happening.

Anna Halbrooks-Fulks

Fredericksburg Team

The other week my co-worker, Matt and I were canvassing in a lower-income neighborhood. Many of the residents spoke Spanish and neither of us spoke Spanish so it was difficult to communicate with them. We spoke with one latino resident who told us that many of the people in his community would go to a baseball field in the morning to get picked up to go to work. He said that the police would come by and harass them. His desperation was apparent.

This man’s experience in this country has been dehumanizing in many ways.  I will never understand why so many people are so opposed to the rights- be it access to healthcare or education- of those who are trying to make a better life for their families and themselves by traveling to a new place. Before we left the man said “I came to America where there is supposed to be freedom. But when this happens I ask myself, where is the freedom?”