Rejected at Obama's Headquarters

Rejected at Obama's Headquarters

Brent Steven White writes:
At the Obama headquarters in Davenport, Iowa, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin appeared very busy, making calls and campaigning for his friend and fellow Illinois state senator. But I didn’'t arrive to see a high-level politician. Andrew Nelles, a fellow Columbia student in the photography department, and I arrived with the intention of trailing a group of canvasing Obama supporters, everyday-type people.

We figured it would make an excellent story to document people going door to door as they try to persuade people to caucus for Obama. We planned on packaging it in a multimedia format, telling the people’'s stories by narration over a slideshow of photographs. We were excited to start working on it.

Our idea was shot down, however, by both the woman managing the Davenport headquarters and her press secretary. My attempts to explain that Andrew and I had traveled from Chicago to document the Iowa caucuses and the methods people use here to get their neighbors out to caucus weren'’t received well.

In his campaign, Obama promotes hope, change, and a “new, fresh” kind of politics. He wants to bring Americans together and close the gap that'’s been created by the Bush Administration’'s polarizing policies. At his campaign headquarters here in Davenport, however, my friend and I weren'’t welcomed into their world.

We were told we couldn't trail along because it would “distract the volunteers” and that they “wouldn't focus on their jobs of getting people to caucus.” I explained we would only ask questions to the volunteers when they were walking between houses and that we wouldn't interact with them while they were petitioning directly to support Obama. Despite my enthusiasm and pleas, the press secretary, a rude and curt man, wouldn't accept our request.

Maybe he doesn'’t realize that it’'s this kind of divisive attitude and approach toward creating communication between people that has been destroyed in the last eight years. Obama may promote hope and change, but it seems some within his campaign here aren'’t ready to be that audacious.

Brent Steven White is an undergraduate journalism student from Portland, Oregon.