from Cleveland with hope

I intended to get a post up about Puerto Rico but as soon as we got back into town, I plunged myself into local and national campaigning.

At the moment, I write from the Holiday Inn in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Sean and I are here to do “voter protection” tomorrow and will head out to the doors as soon as he finishes up some work.

Yesterday we attended our observer training at a big ol’ church on Euclid Avenue. About 200 lawyers, law students, and politicos (that’d be me I guess) sat through a couple hours of anecdotes and instructions from Mark Griffin, the Democratic counsel for Cuyahoga County. As out-of-state and outside-the-polls observers, our job is to look for voter intimidation/suppression, calm the folks waiting in long lines, warn against wearing any Obama/McCain into the booth, educate voters about the “double bubble,” and otherwise look out for any trouble.

After the training we were lucky enough to catch the Obama/Bruce Springsteen rally downtown. We knew nothing about it until we arrived in Cleveland and kept pinching ourselves all throughout the event. Like really? He’s a couple blocks from our hotel? Sweeeet. After I texted my brother to brag about our good fortune, he wrote back “there is no god.” He’ll be 18 in a few months and is bummed he can’t vote.

Anyway, I’m rambling here and have things to do (like visit my polling place tomorrow and see how far it is from hotel). More later and, as I did yesterday, I’ll be tweeting from my post on the ground.