The local culture

Most of the people I met in Washington were kind, thoughtful, courteous and somewhat reserved, garbed in rain-resistant Gortex and subdued colors. 

So how do the numerous "Bikini Barista" drive-by coffee stands fit in? There are drive-by coffee stands of varying shapes and sizes in every town. But a surprising number of them sleazily sport unclad or underclad 19-year-old female baristas.

Then there are the teriyaki joints. I asked many people why there are teriyaki places on every commercial block in every town. Has this become the indigenous food? I was told that this phenomenon is a few years old and that many of the proprietors are Korean immigrants. It is thought of as healthy fast food. Interestingly they are independently owned, not a chain (the coffee stands are also independents). I suspect that these small businesses will eventually be replaced by franchises.

And what about cell phones? You don't see people driving or walking around talking on a mobile phone and no one has a blue light pulsing from an earpiece because no one is wearing a cell phone earpiece. Very unlike Californians who are slaves to our cell phones.

I felt like an exchange student, observing the local culture. Despite the homogenizing effect of television and the internet and movies, there are regional cultural differences that remain in this vast land, thank heavens. 

The Washington Way

Now we know how this story ended. A victory for Obama and for Governor Gregoire. Wonderful news all around.

Especially interesting to me are the unique characteristics of Washington's election laws that reflect voters' desire for a less partisan system. For example, under the initiative-based "Top Two Primary," the top two voter-getters in the primary compete in the general election and can be from the same party.

The candidates are identified on the ballot as "Prefers Republican" or Democrat or Green, etc. Interestingly, the Republican challenger to the governor "prefers GOP," while the other Republicans preferred "Republican."

Mail-only voting in 37 of the 39 counties creates its own challenges. Mail ballots must be postmarked by Election Day (in Oregon, which pioneered mail-only voting, ballots must be received by Election Day). The result is that no one knows when all ballots will be received to be counted. And, since every registered voter in the 37 counties was sent a mail-in ballot, no one knows how many people voted until the ballots are all received. In 2006 21% of ballots were received in the 3 days after Election Day.

Thus, in close races, it takes quite a while to know who won. 

Kandy's story

On Sunday I walked a precinct in Everett with Sarah, a community college art teacher. We were reaching out to sporadic or first-time voters, people who need extra encouragement to vote.

The results in our primarily white working class precinct were mixed: several McCain supporters (mostly white men over 40 and a few white women), one woman who said she wouldn't vote for either candidate because "these are the worst choices ever," some Obama supporters (South Asian and African-American).

The last house I approached was rundown. The top step was ornamented with a large flat round container stuffed with cigarette butts. I rang the bell, prepared for the rejection we'd received at a number of working class homes. Eventually a middle-aged man came to the door. He was heavily tattooed and they weren't art tattoos. I asked for Kandy (yes, with a "K"), the person on my list.

I asked Kandy, a 50 year-old blonde who looked like her life hadn't been easy, if she'd voted. To my astonishment, she burst into a smile a mile wide. "This is the first time in my life that I've registered to vote...just so I can vote for Obama!" 

As we were getting ready to drive back to the Labor Temple, Sarah and I decided to double back to Kandy's where I took off my Obama/Gregoire teeshirt and handed it to her. Her excitement at this somewhat sweaty gift was moving and she revealed that she'd completed her ballot since my earlier visit.

I feel as if I was in the presence of a powerful, wonderful force. Kandy and Obama transcended race, class and gender to come together to change the USA.

Labor City

Friday's work was in Tacoma, a city of great contrasts. It is, on one hand, a gritty industrial city etched with polluted industrial waterways that are crossed by bridges of varying designs and sizes. Freight railways serve the port and enormous rail yards also divide the area.

Yet, along the recently detoxified Thea Foss Waterway (site of a Superfund clean-up), a downtown district of magnificent beauty has arisen from new and renovated structures. Museum Row houses five art and history museums, including the standout Museum of Glass (its motto: "Hot glass. Cool art."). It features an art-filled pedestrian overpass, the Chihuly Bridge of Glass, that links the museum to downtown Tacoma.

I met with

 union members at Bates Technical College in downtown Tacoma. Frankly, the college blew me away. Bates offers an amazing array of vocational programs. The courses are competency-based, rather than "credit unit" based. In other words, when you know how to do something well, you are finished with the course, not before.

The college offers programs in boat building (appropriate for this area that relies on its waterways for business), sheet metal technology, digital media, electronic engineering, making dentures, broadcast and video production, biomedical service technician, apparel construction and patterning-making technology, architectural engineering, hearing instrument technology and at least 50 more programs.

But that's not all—for 65 years Bates has offered apprenticeship training programs in conjunction with local labor unions. Annually more than a thousand apprentices learn employable skills in 16 disciplines, from pipefitting to meat cutting.

I often wonder how Californians find their way into union apprenticeships. If there's anything this extensive in California community colleges, I haven't seen it yet. 

Banking on it

Tonight was a major Labor Council and AFT phone bank at the Machinists (IAM) union office in Seattle. Great turnout—all phone stations were overflowing with volunteers. 

37 of 39 Washington counties solely vote by mail. The two most urban counties give voters the option of voting at a polling place or voting by mail. So our task tonight was to call union voters to remind them to mail in their ballots.

This was a new experience for me because we used a computerized dialing system. You know when you pick up the phone and there are a few seconds of silence while you are saying, "Hello. Hello?" Well, that's the computer passing the call to the live person like me on the other end of the line. Since the computer is doing the dialing, it saves time and prevents misdialed numbers. The computer only passes a call to the phonebanker if there's an answer...either a person or answering machine. As the person called is saying hello his/her name flashes on the phonebanker's computer screen. 

Many of the people I spoke with were supportive and promised to mail in their ballots quickly if they had not already done so. But it was astonishing to speak with a few folks who did not know that there is an election, the names of the candidates, or when Election Day is. Being immersed in politics, I forget that many people are completely out of the loop.

No one makes minimum wage!

At a diner this morning in an affluent Seattle suburb I overheard a woman in the next booth rage, "I told my husband if he votes for Obama it's the end of our marriage. He asks me why I all I watch is Fox News. Well, it's because the other media—NBC, CNN, CBS, ABC—is biased. 

"Obama will destroy our quality of life. Tax, tax, tax and he'll reinstate the estate tax [at least she didn't say "death tax"]. There will be nothing to leave our kids. And these people are so stupid. If business owners are taxed, there will be no jobs. Who do they think people work for? Businesses are already making plans to move abroad if Obama wins.

"And the minimum wage! Why it's just for kids starting out. No one else earns minimum wage!"

It took all my restraint not to leap over the booth divider and ask her what world she lives in. But it clearly is a comfortable one where she doesn't understand that the short order cook who made her waffles is paid minimum wage and he's no youngster.

Two Americas...that's what Bill Maher calls it. Away from home, out of my comfort zone of friends and colleagues with similar views, there's no protective shield to prevent me from hearing this fury. The element of danger under the worst of the rants is frightening. Is it getting harsher because an Obama victory appears more likely?

My teammate Judy and I called a couple of hundred members of a vocational college local union today to ask them to volunteer one hour between now and Election Day. Many of the people we spoke with assured us that they had already voted or planned to do so. Some offered to help. But a few faculty members angrily said they were not supporting Governor Gregoire or Senator Obama.  Interestingly, most of the angry ones were men, and they sounded like white men.

What creates the rage? Is it the possibility of a power shift after the election? The fear of being left out and left behind? I don't remember this kind of fury in 2004 or did I just forget?

Through the rain forest

We awoke in Aberdeen to another sunny day and got on the road to the north shore of the Olympic Peninsula. Today's agenda was to meet with the faculty at Peninsula College in Port Angeles, the town from which the ferry to Victoria, British Columbia departs.

We traversed astounding terrain—through conifer forests, along roads fringed by a row of firs that mask the clear cutting behind them, through the Olympic National Forest and the Quinault Indian Reservation, next to the rain forest, along the breathtaking western Pacific shoreline, and then beside the Strait of Juan de Fuca that divides Washington and British Columbia. 

Grays Harbor members Lisa and Jacek alerted us to be on the lookout for Ruby Beach and its stunning rock formations and enormous driftwood logs (see photo). 

Peninsula College is another campus with new buildings and design elements that enhance and identify the campus. At Peninsula it's a tall glass clocktower that marks the student services building. And the view of Canada and the Strait from the campus isn't hard on the eyes either.

We met with a remarkable group of faculty. Fueled by delicious apple cider fresh-pressed by local union president Kathy, the members brainstormed strategies to ensure that supporters of Obama and Gregoire vote. They talked about ways to better communicate within the local on all topics, how to ensure that all faculty are asked to join the union, the merits of a union shop, and the difficulty of being several hours away (including a ferry crossing) from the Seattle area where state union activities occur.

What are we finding as we campaign in these fairly isolated communities? These small towns that Sarah Palin idealizes are polarized like everywhere in America. The Republican medical assisting teacher and her Green Party colleague, the massage therapy instructor (yes, Peninsula has a program for massage therapy licensing), are friends but "just can't discuss politics." A counselor watches PBS and her husband watches Fox News. 

Each of these towns has an active progressive social and peace community as well as fervent NRA members. But it's a small town. You have to interact and get along with your neighbors. You may press apple cider together, but you avoid the things that divide you unless it's an issue of local concern. 

Tomorrow we'll meet with blue collar community college workers in the Seattle area, and we'll meet at Starbucks, of course. After all this is Seattle.

Grays Harbor

My teammate Debbie and I drove south from the Seattle area this morning in vibrant sun through glorious foliage...flaming reds, yellows, oranges interspersed with deep green evergreens. Approaching Olympia we entered a dense fog bank reminiscent of Brigadoon. A few miles after turning west we emerged into a brilliant sunny day and proceeded to the coast and Aberdeen.

We spent today at Grays Harbor Community College...a shock for this Californian who is used to underfunded facilities. The campus is in a spectacular verdant setting. The buildings are new and beautifully designed for the hilly site (see photo). An English teacher explained that community colleges are part of the state, not individual districts as they are in California. The people who work at the colleges are state employees. By centralizing the system, the state is able to determine the need in each location and set up a schedule for renovating and rebuilding each facility. Thus the incredible Grays Harbor facility.

The faculty members we met are bright, thoughtful, interesting people. Many are already beating the pavement for Obama. An interesting contrast came when a conversation with a progressive leftwing faculty member (with his concerns about Obama) was followed by a conversation with a faculty member who opposes Obama because of his stand on the Second Amendment. Stimulating discussions, to say the least.

It was interesting to hear from a couple of faculty what a good job Governor Gregoire has done. The television commercials paid for by the Republican Party would make you think she is useless. One professor explained that Washington had a large financial reserve ("rainy day fund") that had been accrued in previous administrations by cutting services. When Gregoire became governor, she pushed to spend some of that money to improve needed facilities and services. So the Republicans tag her as a big spender. 

Washington also has one of the highest minimum wages in the country (a few cents higher than California)—anathema to business interests. I'm beginning to get a sense of the issues in the gubernatorial campaign here and understand why it's important to get out the vote for Gregoire.

We're not in Kansas anymore

A drama was unfolding on one of the college campuses that AFT Washington represents as I arrived in Seattle. Faculty members had set up a table on campus with campaign literature and information. They were soon told by the administration that they had to disband or would be removed. The concept of college as a place where ideas compete appears to be unheard of at this particular campus. 

We've lost so much during the Bush administration; the right to engage in public discourse about critical issues is a terrible loss. 

Kurt Cobain and Obama

On Wednesday, our team will be going to Aberdeen, WA to meet with AFT members at Grays Harbor Community College. 

Aberdeen is known as the Birthplace of Grunge because the band Nirvana was started there by homeboys Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic. It is also the hometown of software developer Peter Norton (Norton Utilities, anyone?), abstract artist Robert Motherwell, and many more luminaries. I wonder if all this creative energy (and Cobain's depression) are the result of the weather. I'll find out soon enough.

I can't wait to meet our members at the college and to see the city, which is located on Grays Harbor, formed by the confluence of the Chehalis and Wishkah Rivers.

Three...two...one: countdown to departure

Getting ready to leave California on Tuesday for Tukwila, Washington to work with AFT-Washington mobilizing its members for the Obama for Prez and Gregoire for Guv campaigns. The gubernatorial race in Washington is a dead heat, so, clichéd as it sounds, every vote counts.

I'm betting that many of us want to do something, anything we can, to ensure that the nightmare of the Bush years is followed by an administration that will work for international peace, cooperation, and respect and for economic and social justice at home. So, we're giving the members of AFT-Washington a chance to be involved in bringing about change.

I was reminded to pack for rain and drizzle. Hard to imagine in the 80° plus Monterey Bay Indian summer. Hope a neighbor harvests my persimmons and tomatoes while I'm gone.