One of my New Year’s Resolutions this year was to get involved in politics somehow. As luck would have it, I came across a posting on Craig’s list looking for someone with computer skills who wanted to get involved in progressive politics. I thought this might be a good fit, so I emailed the group back and told them I was interested. A few days later, I spoke with the head of the organization and immediately remembered that non-profits are so dysfunctional that they take the fun out of dysfunction. (Dysction?) For those of you who have never seen yourself in a non-profit setting, there are basically two types of people who work at non-profits: people 
who want to tell every single experience they have in life and older women with cat fetishes. The head honcho at this place was clearly the latter, as he called me up 40 minutes late and took 24 minutes to tell me why he had to reschedule our conversation until later. (I know because my phone tells me exactly how long the call is.) Dude, I want to save the world, not hear about the tenuous nature of your relationship with the leader of a fellow non-profit.) An hour or so later, and 20 minutes after he was supposed to call, I spoke with him again and I introduced myself to him and told him about my background. After I had finished, he told me that if he were handing out scores, I would get 99 out of a 100. Some might take that as a complement, but I, of course immediately thought, “What the fuck would it take to get a 100? I am a liberal labor lawyer with mad computer skills. I am also willing to volunteer for no money!!!! Would I have to take off my pants and bring bags of cash with me to get a perfect score?” We eventually ended the conversation and I agreed to come to their office for the orientation for “all their volunteers.”
On orientation day, I found that the team of volunteers consisted of me and one other woman, a recent college graduate who has no shot at finding a job in this economy. I felt dejected about the size of the team, as one of the things I was secretly hoping would happen was that I would find some wacko liberal friends that would introduce me to a whole new world. I am not saying that we had to smoke hash and hang out in Jazz clubs, but it would be nice to once in a while get a call from someone who said, “Hey, we are going to go protest Dick Cheney at a local gun club. Wanna come along?” Slightly bummed, we received our marching orders and I told them that I would be unavailable during the holidays, that I would probably work on the stuff at home and maybe come in after the New Year.
Despite the 3 or 4 emails I received over the holidays asking when I could come in, I remained true to my word and headed into their office for the first time yesterday. I didn’t want to pay for parking, so I opted to park our car at Malcolm’s school after I dropped him off and took the bus to downtown Oakland. This is where the fun started. Not wanting to scrounge for coins every time I took the bus, I opted to go to the drug store and buy a ten ride pass. Upon exiting the store, the squat woman in front of me who was happily humming a tune while walking up the street, stopped, took out her phone, made a call and then yelled, “Why you talkin’ shit?” loudly into the phone. I was concerned over the rapid transformation from R. Kelly fan into ruthless enemy, but I figured sticking around to hear the juicy details would not have gone over all that well. In the next few moments, I attempted to think of the circumstances that would cause me to act in a similar way and could only come up with the following scenario: Excited by my new purchase of a roll of stamps, I exited the store, while bopping my head to the sounds of my theme music, the song, “Yoda” by Weird Al. 
Thinking about Yoda, I consider the line uttered by Brad Pitt in the movie Seven, where he says, “Just because the fucker’s got a library card doesn’t make him Yoda!”The mere mention of the library makes my blood boil because my friend Dale works at a library, and she recently said that our other friend Tunzel made a better tasting chili than I did. In a rage I call her up and yell, “Why you talkin’ shit?” but I am pretty sure that’s not what happened to the squat woman.
The bus is one of the last great hiding places of democracy. Immediately, I noticed the black female driver talking to a white woman about the Oakland police department’s recent shooting of an unarmed man who had already been subdued by officers. Neither the driver nor the passenger had anything groundbreaking to say, but the mere fact that they were talking about it with each other inspired me. I was definitely not inspired the evening before, when I encountered the mass protest against the BART police that shut down my BART station. Instead of joining, or even just watching the protests, I caught a bus to another station so that I could join my white friends at a dive bar in the City to get drunk and play poker. Community discourse I good and I was proud of my city.
The bus was a pretty good cross section of Oakland. On one side two older latina women sat next to a college aged black guy and middle aged asian guy, all looking out the windows. On the other side, 4 white people nervously scanned their reading materials, looking up occasionally to make sure they hadn’t missed their stop. In the back, a number of school aged black kids loudly cracked on each other and laughed. I wanted to say, “This is Oakland. These are my peeps,” but I hang out with white guys in the City and get drunk, so I can’t really say that.
I got off the bus and was immediately confronted with the issue of whether to cross at the crosswalk where the crazy guy was singing while his dick was hanging out of his pants, or jaywalk halfway down the block to avoid him. I am a stay at home dad, so I see a fair share of neenees during the diaper changing process, and I proceeded down the crosswalk. Unfortunately, I made a mistake and was walking the wrong way on the block, so I had to double back and walk past the crazy guy again. He was singing “Blue Moon” with the blunt force of a bowling ball being thrown against a garage door, and said, “hey snatchy guy!” to me on my way by.
I eventually made my way to the office building and realized again that non-profits all tend to buy the same office space in crappy buildings on the fringe of downtown. Here, the political website I was heading to shared floors with places like “Redefining Progress,” “Diversity Alliance For America,” and “Grassroots Fundraising Journal.” I also realized that I was lucky to be in this setting because I hadn’t showered, my socks didn’t match and I had crust in my eyes which betrayed a hangover from the night before. Wacko liberals don’t generally care about hygiene, and for that, I am eternally grateful.
I stayed at the office, working on my analysis of the most liberal members of state legislators around the country, stopping now and then to chat with the secretary, a recent college graduate who has no shot at finding a better job in this economy. The office consisted of two tiny rooms each buried under the weight of what appeared to be copies of newspapers from the 1960’s. I was fortunate that the place did not smell bad, so I counted my blessings. I was actually progressing in my task until the boss showed up in a whirlwind and mad
e the office considerably louder. Eventually, I finished my analysis of the North Carolina legislature and decided to head home.
The entry onto the bus home started with a scare, as a 4 year old pointed a handgun at me and said, “bang!” Who the fuck gives a gun to a 4 year old! If you want your 4 year old to have a weapon, why not try something more restrained, like one of those fuzzy things in the Star Trek show. 
The most daring weapon we have given Malcolm is a Nerf football. Let’s see him to some damage with that! The kids in the back were still loud and obnoxious, consumed by how long it would take to get home and “hit dat weed.” Shortly before my stop, two girls sat behind me and gossiped about a friend of theirs whose baby daddy was trying to get her to keep “this one.” Evidently, the baby daddy had asked her to not have an abortion this time so that the daughter that they do have will have a cute li’l youngin’” to play with. If I understood them correctly, this means that the couple had sex and got pregnant, kept the first baby, had sex, got pregnant, and aborted the second, and had sex, got pregnant, and were on the fence about the third. I was shocked! This meant that the couple had sex THREE TIMES in high school, besting my record by nearly 200%. Fascinated, I continued to listen as the two girls professed their love (which I share) of Chinese food, and that they ate so much of it that one of them could be a “Chinaman” for Halloween. And who says all the good costumes are taken? I eventually made it back to my car, picked up Malcolm and headed back home, glad to back amongst the people and doing something I consider worthwhile.
Tags: paul in public
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your blog is very good……
whew!