North Carolina: Race And The Race

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There's something happening here.

Although we've been pretty much outside the news cycle for the last two weeks, one of our favorite recnt blog posts is this one from fivethirtyeight.com in which the author relates the story of a racist couple in Western Pennsylvania cheerfully and matter-of-factly telling a canvasser that they are "voting for the n*****."

Again our sample is smaller, but in the more than 100 interviews we've done, three people have mentioned Obama's skin color or background as a reason not to vote for him. But one of the interesting shifts from the MidWest to West to the South has been the answer to "what do you think the effect of a (insert the candidate voter supports) will be on this area.

In the MidWest and West the responses focused on the economy, but here in the South there is has been much more mention of race. There is a palable joy among African-American Obama supporters. Many mention all of his qualifications, his tax plan, his health care plan, but there is a sense of pride, relief and amazement when speaking of Obama unlike any of the supporters of of either candidate. To speak very generally, there is a reignition of belief in the American experiment.

The fascinating question will be what will happen to race relations if Obama becomes president? If he succeeds will patriotism continue to trump racism as it did for the white couple in Pennsylvania? If he fails will it make it that much more difficult for blacks and other races to hold on to their share of the American pie?

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Springfield, MO and Van Buren, MO: Show Me Something Good

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Sharon, Janet, and Shirley of Van Buren, Missouri remind me of my mother and her friends. Warm and generous; independent, thoughtful and opinionated.

They are perhaps the most welcoming and most conservative people we have met on this trip. They share a deep concern for this country and speak of this election, without the hyperbole of the campaigns, as the most critical of their lifetime. And they will vote for John McCain.

My mother discusses the election with the same vigor, she cares deeply for the nation and sees the selection of our next leader as among the most important choices she has made in her 60 some years. She will vote for Barack Obama.

As with most people who take more than a passing interest in us and our subject matter, the Van Buren ladies asked after the consensus as to who of the combatants has the most support. Our sampling of a few hundred people is small, but the only agreement we get is not on a candidate, a plan, or a party. But rather a problem.

To hear it out here, America is in trouble. People are mad as hell at the Wall Street bailout. Mad as hell at the Bush Administration. Mad as hell at NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX. There is a deep distrust of institutions.

But importantly, I think, Americans haven't given up on democracy. Although we find our fair share of "I don't care" and "it won't matter," it is counterbalanced particularly among young people of both political stripes (and to hear it from Springfield, Missouri and Sterling, Colorado, the stereotype that all informed and active young people are Obamaites is way off) by an understanding that who our leader is during these unfortunate times matters.

See the Van Buren and Springfield videos here

Thoreau, New Mexico: Got Hope?

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Is there a place for a hopeless place in an election about hope?

That's Thoreau, New Mexico, fittingly spelled like the philosopher, but spoken like the preposition. Surrounded by other worldly natural beauty, but also a place that one is far more likely to pass through, than to stay.

Thoreau has a quiet violence to it. The locals we spoke to called the town, split between a Navajo reservation and a neighborhood of Angelos and Latinos, quiet. And indeed it misses all the noise of urban live tucked miles from nowhere with no signs of industry or pollution.

But our brief stay was colored by stern warnings of afterhours muggings. Somehow gangs from LA have infiltrated Thoreau's calm rural life. With a few notable exceptions the people we meet appear 20 years older than the ages we request at the end of interview. The teens we speak to range from airy agitated and red-eyed rebels to entirely furious nihilists. Surely this is not the whole town, we found serious gentlemen, too.

And stats we saw contradict some of our observations (a median income up more than 100% since 2000.) But unmistakable signs of a very cruel poverty mark the main drag, especially on the reservation: abandoned cars, houses and people. The decay is so severe in parts, it's tough to fathom that this place is a long days drive from the seductive second homes of Frisco or the credited excesses of Vegas.

No matter how much hope and change is offered, it's depressingly tough to see a president, any president, accomplishing enough to make an impact in Thoreau. No slogan can save this place.

See the Thoreau video here

Mesquite and Las Vegas, Nevada: Still Selling Dreams, Hopes and Possibilities

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Of course, it was from Las Vegas in 1971 that Thompson looked West with the right kind of eyes and saw "the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back" on the momentum his San Francisco generation.

And if San Francisco represented the movements of the 60s, Vegas most definitely symbolizes the bawdy credit-drunk America of the 90s and now. Neon Styrofoam nothing in Nevada. The desert feels like it's the only thing that was here 20 years ago and may be the only thing that remains in another 20. Vegas, in particular appears to be a place that specialized in selling dreams, hopes and possibilities as products.

Would Thompson take any solace that the ideals of a storebought American Dream that he so fiestily railed against have met their Waterloo is this town?

Vegas, which exploded on service and sin economy now finds itself closing in on itself. Sex sells, but only if there's someone to buy it. The economic crisis that so many people identify as the issue on which they will decide this election is not on the way in Nevada. The fallout isn't in the future, it's now.

You don't need the right set of eyes to see the shift from boomtown to something else in Las Vegas. There's no subtly to the signs of depression, its all naked and exposed. Abandoned housing developments, tenantless strip malls, well-stocked tent cities. As one person remarked today, parts of the town feel like a carcas being picked over.

The question is whether Vegas, Mesquite and the other towns that expanded so rapidly across the West will survive this downturn. They don't feel like permanent places more like transient towns that will snap back to their sleepy past now that the construction has stopped. It will be interesting to see if those who moved to Nevada during the explosion will move on to the next place selling dreams, hopes and possibilities.



See The Mesquite and Las Vegas Videos Here

Frisco, Colorado: Mood Swing State

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If we stumbled into Sterling running on the potent mix of labor-driven adrenaline and sleep deprivation, we tumbled out of Frisco resuscitated with anticipatory cool.

Gracious hosts, starlit hot tubs, and homecooked chocolate cake in tiny mountain towns have a way of doing that.

Colorado has been good to us. Starting with the two towns we had no plans to shoot in.

Frisco is everything that Sterling is not.

People visit Frisco when they want to be free from the confines of their day jobs. People visit Sterling when they get sentenced to the confines of the local prison. For fun, the post-hippie kids in Frisco blaze up with locally grown pot, while the hard pick-up truck youths in Sterling mix meth in their bathtubs. Sterling's college students plan on getting into the local agribusiness, Many of Frisco's have come from somewhere else with the intention of working so that they can play in the snow.

Both run a deep streak of defiance. And as we've found everywhere, there's a mix of governmental skepticism and confident defiance as the economic news worsens.

Politically colored, Sterling is scarlet and Frisco, deep indigo. It says much about the pendulum position of the state (where our visit overlapped with that of John and Cindy McCain, Obama will be in Nevada when we pass through) that two of the more compelling stories we heard we're from people from opposite sides of the spectrum in the town not atune to their opinions.

In liberal Frisco, Josh Poland, who by all outer appearances could have been another crunchy kid bumming around a ski resort, but in fact is a deeply conservative seasonal worker who finds McCain to be too moderate. He offered an intelligent assessment of the tax system that would have made Milton Friedman's day.

And in traditional Sterling it was stay-at-home dad, Matthew Propst who believes an Obama presidency will give his daughters the chance to get the college education he for which he never had time or money. He matched Josh for his detailed evaluation of tax policy, but his would have had JK Galbraith beaming.

If these two towns are at all indicative of where Colorado and the West are moving, no state save Morman Utah can be considered "safe" for either party. Demographics may change, but independence still rules out West.

(Special thanks to Hope De La Rosa for today's photos)

See The Frisco Video Here

Sterling, Colorado: Nebraska Can't Stop The Madness

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This is madness.

18 Episodes. 18 Days. 18 Hours of Sleep.

Total.

And then there was Nebraska. Perhaps annoyed that she is the first state we passed through plans to shoot or sleep, she did everything she could to keep us at bay. What can you say about a state that we spent 18 hours in without escaping the downpours of an occluded front?

11 miles inside the border and 11 miles over the limit, flashing lights and $119 later, we made our acquaintance. No strong radio signal left me following the first World Series game played by my cherished Phillies in 15 years via text messages from my sister in California. Then the steady rain turned to tempestuous snow slowing than halting forward progress.

Flakes ran horizontal across the highway and we for the first time on the trip we indulged in a motel. But while the trip could not go on, the show must. At 6:30 am, Graham wrapped the Denison episode and at 7:30 am we were traversing I-80 again.

At 7:40 am we were on the side of I-80 with a useless right front tire.

But that was the last and best that Nebraska could challenge us with. A kindly tow truck driver, a neighborly tire center and a changed shoot location kept us on schedule

The appealing tale of urban Greeley, Colorado became the compelling story of rural Sterling, Colorado. Location, it is clear does not matter, While the stories are each unique, what remains the same is the plethora of engaging local issues, articulate characters, and spectacularly scenery to be documented in each area.

And while I've spent this entire piece self-indulgently reveling in our simple tales of woe, I'm as comfortable as I've ever been ever on a story or a shoot. This is madness. But there's a lovely intense calm to it all.

See The Sterling Video Here

Denison, Iowa: A New Population and a Drain on Economic Anxiety

Denison Video

Apprehension. Alarm. Anxiety. Dread. Disaster. Disorder.

There’s a shortage of funds, but no lack of alliterated words to capture the state of the collective psyche from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin. Even doctors in Chicago worry about the end of America as superpower.

But then there was Denison. Our choice of locales in Western Iowa, presented us with a town where the concern isn’t closed storefronts but what’s in them. Where there’s enough work to go around and no great fear that it’s will shrivel away with the collapse of the stock market. How is Denison fending off the feisty dogs of financial destruction?

Immigrants. Lots of them.

One question we ask everyone is how their town has changed in the last 8 years. And everywhere but Denison the response was related to the town’s economic situation. In this town of just under 8,000 the answer immediately turned to the town’s demographic situation and all the issues: legal status, language barriers, school expansion, racism, etc. that go along with the arrival of a new population.

Denison may indeed be our shift from East to West, each of the next few stops, Greeley and Grand Junction in Colorado and Las Vegas in Nevada are among the fastest growing communities in America. Are they fragile Jenga towers waiting for the wrong piece the be pulled out or firm structures built to withstand the tornado that is wiping out the East?

Denison Video