signing up

We are spending the week doing outreach, helping register homeless folks to vote. There are a lot of incorrect myths about voting rights, some folks think you need a home or can't have a record but the truth is you don't need a home as long as you've got an address for mail and we simply let everyone use ours. The folks who've tangled with the law have rights too. They don't always realize that, they think one offense taints them forever. Clever propaganda maybe, but just not true so education about the law has been half of our efforts so far.

I've been working the table for two days now and I've seen the range of politically astute folks who no matter their housing situation proudly vote every single year to ones who have never voted in their lives and are signing up for the first time because we are asking them to. Because this is being conducted through work we are unable to participate in any partisan activities, which means I'm simply registering folks and not talking politics but politics are being talked all the same by the folks signing up, folks for the most part seem to be voting Democratic but there are a few fans of the GOP, die hard conservatives sleeping on the streets.

Only one heated argument broke out, we had to ask the two dudes to take it outside, one was carrying on about moose killing (he was a fan) and the other was trying not to lose his mind. But my favorite moment was when I approached an elderly African American man who when asked if he's registered smiled as broadly as you could imagine. Oh yes, child, yes. I'm already registered. You see, I've been waiting for this moment my entire life.

I've talked to over 100 people these last two days and what I've learned is what I already know, these folks deserve much more credit than America gives them, as we push them to the side of the street and chase them out of our parks we forget that they have a voice and a right to use it.

When you are inside the voting booth no one knows if you have a home or not. It's that one moment in time where everyone is equal and everyone gets to have their say and that's what I like best about this, encouraging folks to seize that no matter their circumstances because this is their right, their freedom, and while poverty takes away almost everything that matters it doesn't get to take away that.