(I wrote this lengthy, un-organized post as a comment on Zorro’s great diary below; I’m reproducing it here, even longer and possibly less organized, but cleaned up a little.)

What does it say that Obama - out of necessity, some would argue - has put the most work into registering new voters? Some thoughts:

I’d signed up to register people to vote on Easter Sunday. When I walked into the office, the twenty-ish volunteer coordinator immediately said: "How do you feel about doing public housing?" I wanted to say, "Well, I feel like a white, overeducated neophyte with no credibility whatsoever," but instead I said "um, sure." I was paired with a tall, friendly, patient African-American guy who actually owned a car and we drove up to the area directly northeast of the main Temple Campus.

We went around to most of the single-family low-rise projects, and knocked on doors; most folks had already registered either before the election season or more recently at one of the transit-stop or Center City locations, and probably half the people were asking for buttons or signs. The sign-up page on my.barackobama.com had said "Rittenhouse Voter Registration," so I'd shaved and tucked in my collared shirt and put on a nice coat; I'm guessing people mistook me for a Mormon missionary (at best), and I could see their suspicion fading into bemusement when they realized that I was the messenger the Obama campaign had decided to send into their community. We gave away all of our signs in the first fifteen minutes, and kids followed us around yelling "Happy Easter!" and "Barack Obama!" and other exciting things.

After about an hour, we made a hesitant decision to go knock on doors in the high-rise apartments on 11th between Norris and Diamond. Most of the guys hanging around outside the front door waved us off, and we went in to check with the security guard on the front desk. She seemed uneasy, and said "you know, I love Obama, but I'm not sure what you should do." After mulling it over, she decided it couldn't hurt, and told us that a) there was only one working elevator and b) we should forget about taking the stairs.

Now, I'm a total idiot about urban poverty. I work for a theatre company, for god's sake, and at some level I know that my engagement with these communities has mostly involved sadly shaking my head as I drive by in my Philly Car Share. This acknowledgement isn't necessarily born out of guilt; it's just a coming to terms with the fact that I, like tons of comparatively recent Philly transplants my age (27), have spent my time soaking in the fun and excitement of a vital and energized Center City while almost willfully ignoring what's happening out in the neighborhoods.

I think, however, that I can make this judgment: people shouldn't be living in places like the high-rise projects at 11th and Norris.

It's appalling that we consign some of our most disenfranchised citizens to hallways filled with trash and blunt smoke; it's appalling that the ceilings are only slightly above my head and that the temperature on the heaters seems to be broken (it was at least 85 degrees in the lower stories); it's appalling that only one elevator works in the place and that you can't take the stairs 'cause it's not safe. It's appalling to live in a city and a country that allows this to exist.

So we went and knocked on every apartment - shouting "I'm a volunteer for Barack Obama" through a closed door usually got it open at least a crack. After spending a little while on each floor, people got the sense that something weird was happening outside; empty halls started to bustle a little and people periodically shouted questions to us or asked us for buttons. My partner gave everyone he saw a well-practiced spiel about the importance of the primary while I stammered at people and told them not to forget to put their drivers' license number on the registration cards.

More than a few people seemed either genuinely excited that someone volunteering with the campaign was around, or at least there was a tacit recognition that the election WAS important, not so much because of a set of policies, but because of a chance of voting for someone that the kids in the apartments honestly seemed to like and look up to. Someone whose campaign they owned a little.

That brings me to my point. I've been confused sometimes in this election - how do I feel about the fact that Obama's racking up huge victories in black communities while often losing the white votes, sometimes by a significant margin in the same state? Isn't the oft-repeated and much-derided term "post-racial" what we should aspire to?

I'm realizing now that I just. Didn't. Get it. With all of his flaws and imperfections as a candidate, and despite all of the things I sometimes wish he'd be stronger about, Obama DOES represent the possibility of something different. It's not just about race, either, although that is a huge part of it for a lot of people. People KNOW that he was a community organizer; they KNOW that Hillary's campaign is a classic top-down campaign, crafted more from political connections than from volunteer armies; and they want to believe that the Obama campaign constitutes a "movement" more than a "campaign" - and they've definitely seen enough to know the difference.

Electoral politics is a miniscule and highly-compromised part of enacting social change, which is why we definitely ran into more than a few folks who told us they weren't voting for any of those crooks. I'm hopeful, though, that the Obama campaign - in a somewhat roundabout way - might help a few people in the projects on 11th and Norris realize that they absolutely deserve something better, and that they're entitled to start raising a ruckus about it. After getting Obama elected, I feel like I need to figure out what I can do to help with the next phase.

(One more reflection: more than anything, this is what gets me about the blatantly-manufactured Jeremiah Wright controversy. Asserting over and over again that Wright’s sermons are “controversial” or “anti-American” or – ugh – “racist” is a way of forcing black anger and mobilization out of the American political discussion. It’s a way of telling people that they’re not entitled to be pissed off, and that any expression of outrage will fall on deaf ears. Up until now, certain aspects of Obama’s campaign (its relentless optimism, its even-handedness) have almost reinforced this paradigm. The last couple of weeks have redrawn the lines, though, and given us the opportunity to vote for Obama as a way of flipping the bird to this line of thought.)