While canvassing for Obama Saturday in Northeast Philadelphia — the 55th Ward I believe — my partner and I stopped for a bathroom break at a tavern on Verree Road near Griffith Street. The place was choked with cigarette fumes, despite Philadelphia’s smoking ban. Middle-aged white men in ball caps were drinking and puffing away at 11:30 am. You knew it as soon as you walked in: this was not Obama country.
I’d lost track of my friend momentarily, so I waited outside for a bit. A burly guy in his 60s, walking toward the bar, spotted my Obama t-shirt, which was partly concealed by my jacket. “What does that say?” he asked. I opened my jacket up.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he said. He took a few more steps toward the bar, looked back at me and growled, “What are you, sick?”
Later in the afternoon we happened upon a set of neighbors: a gritty working-class white family right next door to a beefy African-American man who had just pulled up in his car, proudly displaying the Obama t-shirts he bought over on Germantown Avenue. We spent a few minutes with all of them in spirited conversation. The whites were just as pumped for Obama as their neighbor was. The black man sounded off on the past eight awful years but then said, “I don’t hate Bush. I can’t love Christ if I hate Bush. I hate what Bush does.”
In the space of a few hours, I encountered the most bone-chilling hate and the most moving profession of faith I may ever hear.
Religion has loomed large in this election — Palin the Christian Nationalist, Obama the Secret Muslim, on and on. I’ll never accept the idea that America is a “Christian nation,” but I do know I am humbled by the Christianity of that ordinary man standing in his driveway. On Friday night Bill Maher declared, “Religion warps thinking.” Except when it ennobles thinking.
Riding back to the field office in the car, my friends put their iPod on shuffle and a Marvin Gaye song came on. It’s probably the least known song from What’s Going On and yet it’s my hands-down favorite: “God Is Love.”
Don’t go and talk about my Father
God is my friend
He made this world for us to live in
And gave us everything
And all He asks of us
Is we give each other love
Our day in the field drew to a close, and I wondered: What will it be, United States of America? Will we squander one of the greatest opportunities in our history? Will we choose “drill, baby, drill!” over a 21st-century agenda for change? The world is watching us.
There is a massive phone-bank Get Out the Vote effort happening all over New York in the next few crucial days. Details are here. We must prevail.
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