Well, my friends, the bus is moving democracy. You get on a bus with a bunch of strangers, and you share a communal experience while going someplace. Every social and economic strata rides a bus together. It's one of the few remaining public places where that happens -- a refuge of sorts from the usual refuges we enclose ourselves in.
Okay, so maybe that's a bit flowery for a bus.
Or is it?
Anyhow, that's the basic premise of the Oregon Bus Project. People power. Face-to-face interaction with voters. Making politics fun. Making policts meaningful. A strategy - a destination - a plan. And they use busses.
And I rode from Twin Falls, Idaho, to Denver, Colorado on their bus.
The bus is more than symbol here. The Bus Project uses their bus to carry busloads of volunteers to knock on doors for voter registration and other nonpartisan progressive issues. Face-to-face democracy, I guess you'd call it; and they're handing out pins with "I'm on the bus" -- a pledge to spend a day on democracy.
Okay, so it was hard to sleep on the bus. I got maybe three hours of fitful rest, usually with some hard piece of metal against my spine. So I avoided drinking water, because the stops were kinda far apart. So the Bus Project people made me cut out stuff with scissors.
And, to be honest, when we rolled into Denver, and finally found our hotel...and the Montana delegation trickled in...and I was wearing my sweaty "Vote, F*ckers" tee shirt with the bar-b-que sauce spilled on it...and I shook the hands of Carol Williams...Diane Sands...Ed Tinsley...I regretted it just a little...you know, baked, soiled, and perfumed with twenty-six hours on the road and all...
Singer's Forward Montana is part of the Bus federation, which includes the Oregon Bus Project. And the Trick or Vote campaign they did last year, well, it's going to be a national effort this year, and tommorrow is going to be a mixer discussing the Trick or Vote campaign...
