Javier Makes My Day

(07:01:14 PM)
I met Javier yesterday as I was registering voters at the Abbot Kinney Street Festival. Javier was one of the many I approached, fishing in a stream of people walking from booth to booth in the hot sun and the loud music of the annual neighborhood event. My Democratic Club always runs a booth there, getting volunteers for the upcoming election and selling swag to raise money for, well, the registration fee for this booth. Volunteering is never a financial success, but it's how we took America back from Cheney and Rove and their dwarf, Junior Bush.

I try not to 'profile' who might be a likely target for registration. I ask new young Yuppie parents, packs of Hispanic girls, black ladies with parasols, skatebaorders with tattoos. I'm not looking for Dems or Republicans (although I love a good face-off.) Dad always said "The more people who vote, the more Democrats get elected." Obama won his White House by more votes than all the Bushes put together, because we got the vote out, not by working to suppress the vote, like Richard Viguerie recommends to Republicans.

So when a stocky, sunburned guy came shuffling past, I asked 'Are you registered to vote?' He stopped, realizing I was talking to him, and said something in Spanish. Thick, Mexican Spanish, at least to my ever-so-Midwestern ears. I tried again, slower. 'Votar?' he asked. 'Si!' And I kept trying. 'Citizen? Are you a citizen?' 'Si!' he said, smiling. Then something about 'nuevo california' and 'Arizona no mas.'  He barely had any English, and I was becoming certain this was a losing proposition, but he'd filled out forms before, and as I pointed at the spaces, we discussed in very bad whatever what each meant. 'What state or country were you born in?' I asked in several different ways. 'California? Arizona? Mexico?' trying to get him to mistakenly admit he was from south of the border, and couldn't really vote in the election. 'California! Anaheim!' he announced.

Javier was born somewhere near Anaheim back in 1973, which makes him 37. As far as I could figure it out, when he was one year old, his family moved back to Mexico. A death in the family back there. Grandfather? He stayed there until maybe four years ago, when he came back to Arizona (friends, family there, apparently) to get work. But since the recent SB1070 passed in Arizona, he has to show his papers 'six, seven, every day' as he showed me his Arizona drivers license, Social Security card and California birth certificate. So about six months ago, he moved to California.

He's working when there's work. His English is lousy, but how many of you have tried to learn a new language in your thirties? In fact, who among you would have the balls to move to a foreign country where your foreignness, and your lack of language, leaves you excluded from day-to-day socializing, and makes your job prospects only marginally better than the place you left? Which is why most first-generation immigrants have a better work ethic than most 'I was born here' Americans. They've taken the big chance.

Which is why I was proud to register him to vote. When we got to the 'Party' checkboxes, he pointed at me. 'You?' 'No, you choose.' He pointed at me again. 'What you?' I pointed at the banner above the West LA Democratic Club's booth. Javier looked at the sign, looked back down at the choices, and checked the 'Democratic Party' box.

He finished the rest of the form, signed and dated it, and I gave him his receipt. I also gave him a Party Endorsements sheet.
'Gracias' he said.
'Muchas gracias, Javier.'
He made my day.

And that's what we get for taking people as they come, instead of profiling them.

Now I need to make sure he gets to the polls.
Welcome home, American...
(07:29:14 PM)(07:38:29 PM)