President Barack Obama’s “Organizing for America” campaign has come to the Mission for the first time, and in the true style of the neighborhood, the field office that opened October 1 is in local mural artist Sirron Norris’s gallery at 1406 Valencia Street.
“This is the most fun-looking campaign office I’ve ever worked in,” said field organizer Wendy Aragon. The fan blew as 30 people stuffed into the gallery Monday to watch Obama’s live address to voters across the country.
Nearby stood a life-size cut-out of Obama as a superhero.
Aragon, a San Francisco native who has lived most of her life in the Mission, looked hard for a place to set up shop in the area. The Mission was ideal, she said, because it offers the opportunity to reach out to two key demographics — Latinos and voters under 30.
A number of factors -– including a small budget and the need for a short lease -– worked against her in her search for retail space.
“It was nightmare after nightmare,” Aragon said. “I was telling my boss, ‘I don’t know if we’re going to get an office in.’”
Then she found Norris, a popular local artist, who was looking to lease out his gallery while he focused on teaching cartooning, animation and art classes in a rented space next door. The artist, who has painted in the Mission for 15 years, was quick to say he was in.
“I felt like it was time for me to take a stand and say I’m a Democrat,” Norris said, adding he thought it was odd a year ago when people felt it was bold for him to put an Obama sign in the window.
“People are pulling away from the ideology of the president,” he said. “People don’t realize how hard of a job it is and how he’s managing to pull it off with grace.”
Monday’s event was a watch party for both the president’s speech and California’s final gubernatorial debate. In between, attendees reached out to first-time voters via telephone.
Midterm turnout is historically low — 40 percent voted in the 2006 midterm elections, compared to 62 percent in 2008 — and Obama supporters want to get people who came to the polls for Obama in 2008 to vote again this year. Ideally, after participating in a few elections, people become lifetime voters, Aragon said.
Those gathered at the new headquarters talked about the high stakes of the midterm elections on November 2.
Chris Winn of the Excelsior district spends five days a week knocking on doors and making calls after he gets off work driving a truck at 3 p.m. His nephew is fighting in Afghanistan.
“If he has to run up and down hills shooting at people, the least I can do is get people out to vote,” Winn said.
Most of the people he talks to are concerned with education and the many initiatives on the ballot. Overall, he’s found, voters like what the Democrats are doing on the national level.
The election is personal for Aragon, too. The Latina is the first college graduate in her family, and when she lost her job last year, she worried about how to pay her bills and keep a roof over her head — the very concerns her parents had hoped she would never experience.
Aragon believes that elected officials like Barbara Boxer, currently in a close re-election campaign, are making the right decisions on jobs and immigration.
“Losing Barbara Boxer not only loses my voice, but it crushes my parents’ dream.”
buen trabajo presidente!! BARACK OBAMA.. “FUTURO DE AMERICA”