My Perilous Day in the Activist Trenches

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," leaning left since 1978 ... and that's just the way it is. Two weeks of living in Baltimore schooled me pretty quick on the notion that the government should be responsible for its poorest and most vulnerable citizens.

I have just returned from Netroots Nation, which is probably the most lefty gathering you can find that isn't an out-and-out Communist Manifesto.

Front loading: Elizabeth Warren was there, at the candidate forum, but I didn't get to meet her. It doesn't matter. She owned that forum. She was fearless, funny, and genuine. And smart. And she shouted out for public school teachers and unions. (Unions always get tepid applause. No one remembers what it was like back in the day.)

Of more moment to me was my perilous morning registering voters on the streets of Philadelphia. I volunteered for this task in order to make the cost of the convention more affordable. With this task, I moved over from an anonymous face in a march to an activist -- and I promptly learned the difference between marching and acting.

My voter registration tutorial consisted of the following information. Approach people with the idea that you're looking to defeat Trump, you want to register Democrats. Are they registered? If the person wanted to register Democrat, I was to fill out the form. If the person wanted to register Republican, I was to hand them the form, tell them to fill it out and mail it in. Seemed perfectly reasonable to me, to be honest.

The voter registration leader said we would be lucky if we got two forms in our three hour shift. Within 90 minutes I had registered four Democratic voters.

I was congratulating myself on seeming to have a knack for it when I was approached by a mixed-race couple. They wanted to register. The woman, African American, went first. She registered as a Democrat. The man then smirked and said he wanted to register as a Republican. So I took a blank form off the clipboard and handed it to him with a smile.

I guess you can imagine how that went.

It escalated with just the amount of rapidity you would expect in these troubled times, but I would not engage the man with words. I said, "I tried to give you the form."

He said, "No you didn't! I'm going to get you!" And he snapped a photo of my Netroots Nation badge, which (unfortunately) listed my school as my affiliation. So the dude knows who to call. (This was a rookie error on my part when I filled out my Netroots application. I should have put NJEA and not my local school.)

I've never gotten a disciplinary memo on my job, so if I do it will be my first. I think the dude will have to make up some big-ass story, but he certainly seems capable of doing it. There are no doubt security cameras on City Hall Plaza that caught the exchange, but what the hell.

Still, that irked Republican will have to call my school, find an administrator on duty in the summertime, and concoct a tale that will suggest I'm not providing a safe, secure, and caring environment for my students. More power to him.

If my administration takes me to task for wearing the school name while registering voters, then I will apologize and not do it again. As I say, rookie error.

So, Anne, you ask ... will you do any more voter registration?

Count on it. Pennsylvania went for Trump by 44,000 votes statewide. I know who to approach about registration, I know what neighborhoods to visit, and it turns out I'm not afraid to approach people respectfully. I believe I could register as many as 50 people by November of 2020.

When I returned from my shift with five voter registration forms, the coordinator was so impressed he asked me to spearhead the entire Philadelphia operation. That was an easy "no," but I feel really good about the fact that there are now five new Democrats in Philly, thanks to me.