Time to go make Change!

Civic Engagement

For my civic engagement I decided to help out with the Obama campaign by volunteering for a day. They had me go canvass on Friday October 31st and Saturday November 1st to get the people out to vote that coming Tuesday, instead of just getting people to vote I decided to spend a little extra time talking to them about why they liked the different candidates and what they knew about the local election. I ended up in the Historic Baker district of Denver which is located just west of Broadway around 4th. What I discovered while canvassing was that many people did not want to talk to me about the election so close because they were so frustrated with the constant bombardment of election talk and information or they would just say I am going to vote, I’ve already early voted, and I’m filling out my mail in ballot tonight. But I did get lucky and got to speak to two individuals in great depth about the local election, and encouraged about 10 other people to go out and vote so I felt like I made a little bit of a difference. In total I spent around 3 hours on Friday and 3 hours on Saturday walking around canvassing.
Through out this experience I observed that many people were starting to get tense with the election getting so close, they also were extremely tired of talking about the election and how it would affect them. I think the mobilizing that Obama did to get people out to vote was really amazing; in the end I don’t think people were prepared to have a candidate spend that much time and attention on them.
In the end the best part of this experience was when I got to talk to one lady about amendment 46. At first she was really excited to vote yes on this amendment because she thought it would finally bring some sort of equality to Colorado. I was really hurt when I had to tell her the truth about how amendment 46 was really going to take away many opportunities for communities of color and for many women. She appeared really heartbroken and almost to the point of tears, that was until I talked to her about how she could tell everyone she knew to vote no on 46 and that would give us a fighting chance for equality. After we talked for about 30 minutes she seem really excited again, this time to educate her friends about the truth with amendment 46. After that conversation I felt really proud because I feel like I happened to change one vote in the favor for equality when it was almost lost to lack of knowledge. I just hope that the other people canvassing had some similar experiences and that was the reason 46 and 48 did not pass. In my heart I’m really glad that we had this opportunity to go out and make a difference and it appeared to of really paid off.