Obama in Cleveland

On Saturday, Emily asks me to volunteer to help out during Obama’s rally on Sunday. I sign up, imagining that at least I’d get to shake the senator’s hand; possibly even get to tell him my seven-point program for improving the economy, ending the war and providing medical care for all.
The rally is out of doors in downtown Cleveland at a wide grassy area called the Mall. I take the RTA train with Sara, a woman from NYC who’s a Volunteer Coordinator for the campaign.

The Obama rally, scheduled for 3:45 PM, is preceded by a Cleveland Browns – Baltimore Ravens game at the stadium a short walk from the mall, so we have lots of fans in orange and brown on the train.
It’s sunny and rather warm for November. Global warming or the weather god’s blessing on the rally? You decide.
Fifty or so volunteers gather and mill about at the adjoining grassy area. Stacey, from the Obama advance team, gives instructions:

• Not everyone who shows up is going to get in, and there will be many sad stories about why someone MUST be allowed in. Volunteers are to be polite but firm.
• People in wheelchairs and those with VIP badges go to the head of the line.
• Volunteers may not run or yell.
• No signs or banners.
• We get to wear little paper badges that say “Volunteer.” Later I wish for a brass badge and a weapon.
• We must join a team before we know what job we have.

I am on Team Seven, along with about twenty other folks. Tito, our team leader (you get to be a team leader if you’d been to a meeting the night before), tells us we are on line control. At noon, the line to get into the mall is already two blocks long. And we are at the end of it.

This means we are far away from the rally area. Rats! I might not get to deliver my seven point plan.

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Herding cats

It’s 12:30. The line ends at 9th and St. Clair. The organizers decide to have newcomers begin another line across the street, a continuation of the original line, stretching south on 9th, instead of continuing round the corner.
That means that for the next three hours we stand at the end of the line telling arrivals that yes, this looks like the end of the line it, but it isn’t. Over and over and over.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports 80,000 people at the rally. By the end of our shift we have told approximately 40,000 people that no, this isn’t the end of the line, it’s down 9th street.
By 3:30 the actual end of the line is a mile or two south of us.
People are pissed. They try to cut in line, tell us they’re joining friends, tell us we are rude and insensitive and the reason they’re changing their vote.
I yell for help, and instantly regret it, although no panic ensues. At least I don’t run.
When the line finally starts moving, the folks in the line across the street get to join in bunches. Now line cutting begins in earnest. People who’ve been waiting for hours complain to me that so and so cut in front of them.
Tito and I almost get into a fight with a jerk who refuses to leave. “My line is right here,” he says.
We ask for help from a motorcycle cop, who points out the obvious: “Sorry, guys, but there is no law against cutting in line.”
I realize that the police and sheriffs and Secret Service and private security have more important things to do.
To quiet the complainers, I repeat the motor officer’s line, and add one of my own: “The people in line need to stop letting others cut in.”
Translation from Freddie Prinze in Chico & The Man: “Ees-not my job.”
Now we get word: The area is filled. We are to cut off the line and lead the remaining folks around the block to Mall C, where they can watch the event on giant screens.
Yeah, sure. No problem. “I’ll get right on that,” I tell Team Leader Kathryn.
The few hundred people just walk around us, cross the street and cross back, wait till we look the other way.
By 5 PM, many hopefuls have given up. There are maybe two hundred people left. We volunteers are bunched up at the TSA/Secret Service/Cleveland Police security gate, where the diehards press up against us trying to get in. I face off with a guy in a Cleveland Browns jersey whose chest is at my eye level. We exchange barbed pleasantries on the topic of why I can’t let him in.
Then, the organizers decide to let some more folks in.
Maybe a hundred more get in, then the Secret Service calls it quits. They manage it with more authority than the volunteers. They have guns.
But now, guess what? We volunteers get to go in!
I don’t get to deliver my seven point plan, but I can listen to Bruce Springsteen at eardrum-blasting levels, and find a spot about twenty-five feet from the Illinois senator as he delivers his speech.
If I weren’t such a cynic, I’d say the hassle was worth it.

I’ll have more about Obama’s speech later, along with some sound bites.