Frances says No on 1!

One thing I’ve noticed about New Englanders: they like their pizza.

Everywhere we’ve been, even in smaller towns, pizza shops have been ubiquitous. On Mandy’s recommendation, today we sampled Portland, Maine’s pizza at the Flatbread Company.

Maybe you think you know pepperoni. I thought I knew pepperoni. But the homemade (!), nitrite-free pepperoni at Flatbread was specatcular enough to forgive them some serious pizza faux pas. Like cutting it in rectangles, and serving it with a knife and fork.

Then, after stopping for coffee–guess where–at Dunkin’ Donuts, we went to the No on 1 campaign office. It was in the same building as the Social Security office, the nice man on the phone told us when we called to ask about volunteering. Which turned out to be a very important piece of information, since my iPhone steered me to a whole different town when given the address. When I searched for the Social Security office, I found what I was looking for.

I worked at a campaign for an initiative before, so nothing I saw when I arrived surprised me–except for the scale. There were computers and tables and chairs cobbled together into a makeshift set–function over fashion. There was food, sandwiches to Twizzlers. But there were probably twenty people, which is about 15 more than ever were seen at the initiative I worked for. I later found out there was a whole second room of volunteers.

On the wall were handmade and professional signs expressing Maine’s love for equality. The mood was cheerful, determined, and busy.

After some diaper duty, we got to work calling town clerks all over Maine to ask about voting hours. And if there would be a chair at the polling place, should No on 1 send out an observer.

Many of the places I called were hand-counting their ballots. Most of the people who answered the phone had a sense of humor. When I asked if they were counting by machine, one town clerk employee said, “This is Fayette.” She laughed. “We’re counting by hand.” Another corrected me when I asked if she was the Town Clerk. “I am the City Clerk.”

Frances was popular at the campaign office. One volunteer even babysat her while we called people. We ran out of clerks to call just as we realized we had to get back to home sweet travel trailer. We were out of diapers, it seemed.

We packed up and chatted with some of the other volunteers. We were not the only out-of-towners. In fact, we weren’t even the ones from farthest away. We met volunteers from California, North Carolina, and Eugene–and those were only the ones we spoke to. A couple of them were emissaries from Equality California. It felt a little like a family reunion, only made up completely by people we’d never met. It made me happy to see evidence that people are mobilizing–quite literally–to get this work done.

We felt a like slacker volunteers, leaving so soon after we began our day, midway through the afternoon. But we’ll be back tomorrow.

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