Posted by
New Siddhartha on Tuesday, September 30, 2008 12:00:00 AM
Dear Comrades (Just Joking),
My parents don't mind that I'm missing a semester at Brown to do what they call "God's Work". It's a family joke because my Dad hasn't been to church since his first wedding. My mother became a priest a couple of years after she retired from teaching elementary school. She thinks what I'm doing is like the "freedom riders" of the sixties when northern kids told "negroes" that they were free to date who ever they wanted. We heard some riders got lynched for that.
It's day 300. They've dropped us off in Burkettsville, Virginia. It's very southern, everyone has pick-up trucks, even the pastor of Ezmerldas Hope Baptist Church. We've been staying in church basement, it's air conditioned, but we have to shower with a garden hose outside, we do that in the dark. We go to a Hardy's and eat sausage biscuits for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I've gained a weight since I started this mission.
We've signed up over 200 people to vote, but some don't have real addresses. We go from health department to the Save-A-Lot to the Hardy's and then to the social services building. The county voter registrar is run by rednecks and they just cross out names of people who they say are eligible to vote. It's going to be hard to get these people to the polls.
Barack knocked out McCain in the debate. I'm just so glad that this will soon be over and I can go back to school. We'll write from the next town.
Dexter Haven