Worlds Apart, Living Right Next Door

Chapter Twelve. The Canvasser.

You can learn a lot about a person when you spend some time canvassing with them, door to door, on a hot August afternoon in North Carolina. That was me, and Rhonda. She is a team captain, and canvasser for Down Home North Carolina, a rural, working class driven organization which has focused on rural issues and mobilizing the rural vote for the past eight years. We spent an afternoon together in the August heat, where she was canvassing a largely Hispanic and unaffiliated community in Cabarrus County, just east of Charlotte.

I learned that Rhonda wrestles with anxiety, that she doesn’t do bugs, except for butterflies and ladybirds, (“When it comes to little critters, that are moving faster than me,” she says, “we have a problem”), that she grew up in Barbados, that she’s allergic to mushrooms. I learned that she’s a student, that she’s married, and that, one time she got pulled over by the cops because there was a spider on her dashboard. It was 11:30 at night, the streets were empty, “I was swerving all over the road,” trying to get it off the dashboard, she said, and a cop pulled her over. She had jumped out of the car, “so it kind of looked like, what am I about to do?” and he asked if she had been drinking. She hadn’t. “He said, ‘Ma'am, get back in the car, get back in the car.’ So I'm, like, crying, like ‘officer, there is a huge spider in my car. I can't get back in the car. Like, I can’t!’” The officer had to kill the spider.

She clearly loves the color pink. Her steering wheel is covered in pink and diamante studs. Her nails are pink too. She also worries for my wellbeing. The a/c in her car is not working - it’s literally blowing hot air. “Are you sure you don’t want to take your own car?” she asks. I am quite sure.

She has canvassing down to a fine art. No walking on people’s lawns. They don’t like that. No parking on people’s drives. They don’t like that either. If there’s a sign that says, “No Trespassing,” take it seriously: ‘No Trespassing’ means ‘I could shoot you.’ She has perfected the art of knocking on a stranger’s door. “I don’t want to knock too loud,” she says, “I don’t want them to think I’m the police.”

And, she gets why people sometimes don’t come to the door, or do come to the door and can be quite forceful. As we are driving out to that afternoon’s “turf,” she tells me about one guy who yelled at her to stay out of his yard. “That stuff doesn’t bother me at all,” she says. “Some people don’t want to talk, some people don’t want to be bothered, some people are just getting off work and the last thing they want to hear about is politics, so I get it. But, even when they say that, I try to leave something at the door so they know why I came, and you know, there’s more information because,” and she adds, with a little bit of humor in her voice, “I feel like more information is needed.”

She knows too that if a house on her list turns out to be one that is clearly supporting Trump she doesn’t need to canvass that house. “People are hostile,” she says, “especially his people.”

Rhonda is canvassing in a bedroom community, and, at most of the homes on her list no-one comes to the door. They are probably at work. We do pass one house though where a lot of people appear to be home. It’s not on Rhonda’s list and the reason is clear. Hanging from the front of the house is a flag which is an amalgam of the American flag and the Confederate flag. Trucks and cars are parked outside and the porch light is on. Rhonda slows down as we drive by so that we can get a closer look. “I’ve never seen a flag like that before,” she says.

“When you see stuff like that, what do you think?” I say, “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Honestly, I feel like…” and she pauses for a beat. “I'm trying to put it in a way that's professional.” And then she starts: “I personally feel attacked. I feel as if that person is like, off the bat, even without meeting them, talking to them, I feel that they're racist. I feel as though they have malicious intent, as far as like, [in their decision to fly this flag] ‘you know what these people stand for, you know what these people have said, you know what these people have done.’ And it's kind of like a smack in the face.”

She says that when Obama was in office, “the world just felt more at peace.” With Trump back on the scene, “it just feels very on edge - and I’m just speaking for me, for my culture - I feel on edge. I feel like I have to watch my back. I can’t be my authentic self.”

She tells me about an afternoon when she was out canvassing a neighborhood. She passed a house where “a lady, her daughter and her sons were standing in their yard, and they were white, and looked like Trump supporters.” They weren’t on her list, but the house next door was, so she canvassed that house, and as she was walking back, “I heard the daughter say, ‘she better not bring her monkey a-word over here.’ Honestly, in that moment,” and she pauses again, “I felt angry because, one, I didn't come over there, I didn't mess with you, you know, you're not on my list to canvas. And I feel like without hearing that comment, I would have passed by the house and been like, ‘hey, how y'all doing?’ I’m that type of person.” She is wishful. “Don't let one person's thought process, or, how they think, how they speak, how they feel, reflect on you. You still are your own person. So I feel like, if this wasn't you eight years ago, if that wasn't how you were acting, don't act like that now. You know what I'm saying?”

Rhonda heard about Down Home North Carolina through her wife. She likes the way the organization works. They focus on small towns and rural communities, and use a “deep canvassing” approach, honing in on the issues, and trying for conversations on the door step. They are nonpartisan, “so people don't feel like we're coming pushing everything on them,” Rhonda says. “It's like, I’m truly interested in seeing how you guys are feeling about the race, about, you know, Mark Robinson, even if that's who you want to vote for, like, what is it about him that you're standing by him?”

Throughout the afternoon, we are either in Rhonda’s car, a/c blasting hot air, or we are walking through neighborhoods and she is knocking on doors. We welcome any breeze, and Rhonda stops to admire a water fountain in someone’s yard. She loves the sound of falling water. And she appreciates homes that are bedecked with plants. She thinks of the people who live there as “plant mamas.” She does have a real fear of bugs. As we approach one house, the porch laden down with beautiful flowers she goes, “ooooh, there’s a cicada right here.” I don’t see it and so she points it out.

“That's why it took me a second to knock,” she says. “I had to make sure it’s not gonna fly up and get me.”

We talk some more about Trump’s four years.

“Think about it,” she says. “I'm a black woman, a gay woman.” She describes her nervousness walking through some neighborhoods. “It shouldn't be like that,” she says, “because they walk past us and it just is what it is. But, they don't treat us the same.” Rhonda knocks on a door. “I feel like that's because of Trump - his malicious ways.” Again, she talks about how everything felt more peaceful when Obama was in office. “It wasn't all this cops killing black people, all these Karens, so they call them, harassing us. It felt like you could just live your life. Now, it feels like you're looking over your shoulder every second, or trying to record your daily life just to have proof of, you know - it’s crazy - It's not a good feeling at all.” She knocks on the door again. “But even after say Harris and them win this one, he still can run again, you know. He hasn't had two full terms, so,” and she lowers her voice and lets out a deep breath, “I don't know, it’s stressful.” But, she adds, “I feel like with us coming out here and doing the work and talking to people and seeing how people are feeling, it's more reassuring.”

On the drive back to Down Home’s field office, Rhonda tells me that she has met some Trump people, “that say how they feel and are still respectful. They’ll still talk to me and stuff. They'll still, ‘well how's your day going,’ you know? I’m like, that's how it should be. You have your beliefs, but you don't treat me any different because I don't believe what you believe.

“At the end of the day, we're still human. This is not a cult,” she says. “I can't speak for all Trump people, but those that are civil, you know, and respectful, I appreciate that.”