… Robert exclaimed when he saw my baggie of blueberries resting on the computer table. He’s counting his calories, you see, so he has these mirages of junk food periodically. After calming his nerves and assuring him that I wasn’t snacking on the fattening cookie, we resumed working on our flyer for the July 24th event.
With the flyer finally finished, Erica and I had much bigger fish to fry. On the morning of June 17, we were scheduled to speak at a meeting for the Board of Directors of the Apartmet Association. We were trying to gain permission from the head honchos to allow us to distribute door hangers in low income housing areas with voter guides to encourage the residents to get out to vote in November. We were only given seven minutes to convince the board to give us permission.
On this morning, Robert was already flustered upon coming into the office. He had his midterm that night and his computer had died on him and he couldn’t even find his textbook. Our meeting was at 12:30 but we had errands to run before we made it to the Coca-Cola Plaza were the office building is. We had to make a run to Kinko’s to make twenty copies of an example door hanger and Democracy NC pamphlets to hand out at the meeting. One problem: Robert left the voter guides at home.
To avoid being late to the meeting, Erica and I rode with Robert to his house to pick up the voter guides which remained MIA. After driving all the way back to Charlotte, we began the dilemma of printing twenty copies of each page. The copy machine spat out extra large pieces of paper at first so we had to start over. Then the copy machine spat out pages that had the words all cut off so we had to start over. Then the copy machine spat out something we could use.. until the paper got jammed! So, we had to start over. Finally the lady at the Kinko’s had to take our papers to the back to make copies.
It felt like forever before we finally made it to the building to make our presentation. We introduced ourselves and began to describe what we were asking for. This meeting had to have been going on all day because half of the people were dazed and glancing around the room and some were just sedentary to the point that I was convinced they were sleeping with their eyes open. However there were a few who were jotting down notes and asking us questions.
At the end of the day, we walked out of the building in the Coca-Cola Plaza with five commitments to allow us to get started on door hangers.
Erica and I continue to attend the naturlization ceremonies every Wednesday at the Department of Homeland Security in order to register the new citizens to vote. With Lobby Day on the horizon, we are tied up trying to get enough vans and drivers to get us to Raleigh on time. Tomorrow is an early morning for us and call time is 6:30 am so we better be prepared for a long day!
Between myself, Erica and Robert you can expect some excellent stories to come of this excursion from Charlotte, to Raleigh, then back. Maybe our singing skills will finally come in handy!
Alannah- Charlotte
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