Monday, 03 November 2008
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1st November Durham NC
This entry was originally published at Billy Bragg's Blog
Considering how many miles we’ve driven in the past three weeks, opportunities for roadside recreation have been far and few between. Early on, we diverted off of I-80 near Jenny Jump Mountain after seeing a sign inviting us to The Land of Make Believe. Our wise-cracks about it being full of Obama supporters were intensified when we drove through a little town called Hope, but when we finally got there, we found to our disappointment that it had been closed since Labor Day. Nothing looks sadder than a funfair out of season, so we headed back to the highway and our engagement in West Long Branch.
So imagine our delight at seeing a signpost inviting us to The Dismal Swamp on the road out of Norfolk, Virginia. Having no show to do that night, it provided us with a classic day-off detour. Of course, in the beautiful autumn sunshine that has blessed our tour, the swamp was far from dismal, but we still had a lovely time, like a bunch of schoolkids, climbing on rotten logs to cross ditches of brackish water. While huge buzzards soared overhead, Andy saw a snake, Grant tore his shirt on the brambles and Vaughn nearly fell off the log into the water. Meanwhile, Billy was busily recording all this on his blog.
Saturday afternoon we drove from Durham to nearby Chapel Hill to take part in an early voting drive. Concerned that their right to vote may be challenged on election day, millions of people across the USA have been taking advantage of the opportunity to cast their votes early, thereby giving themselves a chance to overcome any problems they might face at the polling booth. There have been reports of both Republican and Democratic party officials looking to exclude people who have moved house, have lost their homes due to repossession or simply do not have the relevant document to prove their identity. African American supporters of Obama have been particularly concerned, recalling what happened in Florida in 2000, when thousands of African Americans were denied the right to vote having been illegally removed from voting rolls by Republican officials.
At the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, student activists have registered over 5000 new voters and are making a concerted effort to get them to vote early. Members of the band Superchunk organised a midday concert to get people down to the polling station and, as they heard I was in town, they invited me over to play a few songs. Looking at the assembled crowd, some of whom had brought their young children along, it seemed fitting to sing Laura Nyro’s ‘Change The Country’, with it’s line about ‘babies in the blinking sun/Singing we shall overcome’. The red and blue graphic designed by Shepherd Fairley, of Obama above the word HOPE is everywhere to be seen on this campaign and that audience waiting to cast their vote seemed to me to be the embodiment of that hope.
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