Bill Roth Blog

I have recently taken a job in the Philadelphia suburbs, in King of Prussia. I have moved out now, my family will move out in the summer. My first reaction is that this feels more like Wisconsin(where I grew up) than Northern California (where I have lived for 15 years). And its not only the weather that is similar, but also the people. As for the weather, I am a committed indoorsman, so not a big deal there. As for the people, they are largely friendly and largely white. I was at Mass this morning and it was pretty traditional for a Catholic mass, very similar to what I grew up with. I am not sure if this was because of the visiting Bishop, or if this was how it was normally. I did notice one of the alter servers was a girl, so that shows some progressivism.

I have also found the perfect Coffee House, Grphyon Coffee in Wayne PA. It has an upstairs with comfy couches, and wireless, which are about all I need in life these days. And the Coffee is outstanding.

The landscape reminds me of Darien CT, where I lived for a summer. In San Jose, you get almost everywhere by massive interstate like highways. In Eastern PA, its all turnpikes (which are similar to El Camino Real) and country roads. It is very arboreal here, lots of trees. Hopefully the culture around here is not as stilted as I observed in Darien, though there are a lot of stunning large houses around this area.

Now I am going to work on email, do some reading, and hopefully get in touch with my family back in San Jose.

I had the privileged of spending Election Day 2008 in Ohio, and canvassing in the Pleasant Ridge and Norwood parts of Cincinnati. Here is a brief diary of the time I spent there.

8:00a 11/4 ET

I came in late last evening, and slept on the couch of a friend, Lisa, who is one of the chief Democratic organizers in this area. She had to be at the staging office at 5:30am. She is a teacher, and ended getting up at 3am to make sure she got her grades in on time for their midterms. She had to do this in order to take the day off. I had to be at the office by 9, but I was up by 6:30a. Lisa has 3 cats, and 2 of them starter wrestling in the early morning.

Since it was early, I was in desperate need of coffee. If found a Starbucks in a Meijers grocery just past I-75, close by. I was also listening to a great radio station, WNKU out of northern Kentucky. I heard a John Prine song called: "Your flag decal don't get you into heaven any more", and "If a song could be President". Great stuff. And who knew Ohio shared a border with Kentucky?


After getting coffee, I headed to the Staging Area building. You have to hand it to the Obama campaign. They did two things right. First of all, they learned from Kerry's big mistake of 2004, and co-opted the entire Democratic Party organization. Kerry tried to build his own. As a result, we had a unfied party structure, and everyone appeared to work well for the most part. To give you an idea of just how well staffed the Obama field force was, there were 3(!) fully staffed offices in Hamilton County (Cincy) alone. I have no doubt that every Democrat and independent voter got touched by someone at least 3 times within the last 4 days of the campaign. This was waht I was looking forward to. I love retail politics.


I drove to the office using the GPS app on my BlackBerry. How did we live life before Google Maps? I was able to navigate Cincinnati as well as I could navigate San Jose. Which admittedly is not saying much.


The campaign office was in an old fabric warehouse in the industrial side of town between Norwood and Pleasant Ridge. My first job for the campaign was to clear out the toilet in the building. How apt.
Dr. Maria is running the office; she is 5 months pregnant and beatific in that way that only pregnant women can be. The weather is good. Turnout looks to be fantastic. After fixing the plumbing, I grabbed a packet and headed out into the field.

9:00am

Canvassed in a largely afluent area. Most people not home, talked to 3 people, left door hangers on the rest.

12:30pm: back to office

Most of the packets are in the field about 10 have come back.
A group of college/grad school age folks have come in. Lisa gives them the last of the pass 1 packets. The food table is well stocked.

54 volunteers have come in today.

AP Voice of America reports long lines for voting. We are seeing 1.5 hr waits at a few precincts.

5pm

Ohio reporting a lot of provisional ballots. We're worried about what this could mean.

6pm: I had to drop off 2 cases water to the Korean Methodist church in Norwood. The wait was more than an hour, and we think that there was a problem with the poll workers.
We also have way too much food, so we're passing out stuffed grape leaves.


Later in the evening

We were at a large sports bar after 10 with the collective Obama campaign in Hamilton county. This is my kind of place. 20 TVs and all of them on politics. There were people from the area, but people from all over the country who had come to Hamilton County to make sure the Democrats won. Some as far away as England.

At 10:30p, MSNBC called Ohio for Obama, and the place erupted. Hamilton County went for the democrats for the first time in 44 years! The Mayor of Cincinnati said a few words.

Then, at 11:00:00p on the dot, MSNBC called the election for Obama, and mass hysteria broke out. I have never seen anything like this. Cincinnati is evenly racially mixed. Many of the black women in the crowd were weeping. One woman was so overcome she could barely breath, and was almost taken to the hospital. Lisa and I stayed a little bit more, and then went home. I tried to get about 4 hrs sleep before I had to drive to Dayton and catch my cheap flight back.

As far as politics goes, I am not sure anything could ever top this.

I have been doing a lot of organizing for the Democratic Party this season, owing to being out of work and having nothing else better to do. Really. Most of my work has been with the Catholic Democrats movement. I call it a movement since there is no one clear organization. There are a number of sites and groups working in this area. Groups like the Catholic Democrats PAC (which I run), CatholicDemocrats.org, Catholics For Obama United and 10,000 Catholics for Obama.

One thing I have learned is that when you put your opinion out in public, you better be ready for the response. And in politics, the response can be harsh. What was unique was the level of hatred coming from the Religious Right. In many ways I expected this, since I am actively engaged in trying to counter the claims of the likes of Deal Hudson and Bill Donohue.

As a Catholic, the first issue we have to deal with is Abortion. First, foremost, and it seems "Only". My views on the subject can be found here.. The initial posting was on CatholicDemocrats.org, and it received a lot of traffic, and it received lot of comments, which I expected. This is a very powerful issue for my community. I have seen rational people I respect turn into invective-spewing monsters when the issue comes up. But, again, this is expected.

The purpose of this post is to document some of the hate mail I have received.

For starters, Catholic Democrats of California tried to have a Mass for the attendees of the California Democratic State Convention. If anyone needs Mass and prayers, it is us. What I was unprepared for was the violent reaction that came from "down south", in the conservative San Diego area. Check out the following article from a right-wing web site. Some of the comments are very harsh.

Posted Monday, March 24, 2008 6:52 AM By sfcatholic


Who is surprised here. Those in the Church have serious ties to the
Nazi (oops I mean Demoncratic ) party. Yes, it is wrong, but we have
seen little in any kind of "oversite" from Church leadership and we
Catholics are "on our own". It is disgusting.

and:

Posted Monday, March 24, 2008 7:36 AM By BobM


I need to find another Church (after 68 years in this one)! From
pedophilia now to advocacy of baby-killers and Marxism! What a deal!
Pelosi ... perfect!!!

and....

Posted Monday, March 24, 2008 3:22 PM By Elizabeth


These people are not 'REAL CATHOLICS'.

I don't mean to be unacharitable.......

But, if I were the Holy Father they would be EX-COMMUNICATED in a NEW YORK MINUTE!!!!!

End of STORY............

But my favorite, and most evocative of the Church Lady is:

Posted Monday, March 24, 2008 1:37 PM By Carlos M


They ought to call themselves the Demon-crats! They are certainly following satan's way!

It is not just the Mass, but as former spokesperson for CatholicDemocrats.org, and now as Treasurer of the Catholic Democrats Communications PAC I get emails all the time which show what I imagine to be less than Christian behavior. For example I have had an interaction with "Steve" from New York. The tenor of his first letter was:

Personally I believe abortion will end when there is either a
conversion of hearts or the wrath of  Christ himself will end it.  I am
not involved politically because I believe the system is inherently
corrupt and I honestly  believe that this country will  soon find
itself in midst of a civil war between secular liberal types who have
declared war on every tradition and institution that made this a great
republic, and traditionalist like me.  I have no desire to make peace
with the likes of the college professors who praised Marx but never
once answered my questions on how many souls were wiped out by his
followers in Russia and China. Sorry but thats how I see liberals
anti-everything that I believe and I guess that why I detest them,
especially those who think that they have the right to kill children in
the name of "choice"

At this point, I did not respond, since there was no possibility of a real dialog. A week later I received the following email:

Since you could not answer of my charges against Obama and liberal
Catholics, if you do not believe that this character Obama will not open
the flood gates for unrestricted abortion please read the following
speech made by the Obama himself.

http://lauraetch.googlepages.com/barackobamabeforeplannedparenthoodaction

I believe the time for violence against the Left is approaching, the
same violence that you and your ilk support that is done to unborn
children, like it or not. Of course I am sure you find ways to appease
your conscience by going to Mass on Sunday and then have the gall to
receive the Blessed Sacrament. My anger against you and your kind makes
my blood boil, and this little cretan (sic) Obama will turn this once great
republic into a Secular/Marxist country where ANY public displays of
faith will be outlawed and people faith to be put in camps, I really
believe that. Want to know what I hope for an America where every
Planned Parenthood Abortury is reduced to ashes and replaced with a
chapel in memory of babies murdered there. Where terms like tolerance
and diversity are replaced with the word TRUTH, and the Social Kingship
Christ Reigns throughout this country,, and liberal Catholics are
exposed for the frauds they are.

(Emphasis Added)

Now, I am not accustomed to threats of violence against, so turned over this email to the FBI (since "Steve" is in NY). I sent him a note saying I did not appreciate the threat of violence, and mentioned the FBI. I got the following email in return.

As a person who has had guns put in his face the FBI scares me about as much as toothache. I am sure it disappoints you that they cant put us traditionalist in jail just for what we think, but I am sure that little leftist Obama will do his best to make that happen, and I am sure false Catholics like you will cheer him on. Only a worm of man like you would be so concerned about the welfare of bunch a fucking murderers like Planned Parenthood. . I have attached some photos you might want to send them to your Furher Obama,,,,

I have not looked at the photos. So much for Christian charity.

But this is not all. Most people send email along the following lines:

Bill Roth,
I am a Catholic and I am NOT a Democrat. You should be ashamed of yourself to be a Barack Obama supporter. By supporting that man, you have the blood of millions of innocent children on your hands. There are just wars and the lives of millions of innocent babies should come before a few criminals. If you are claiming to be a Catholic, you are disillusioned to what that truly means. You are not "Living Our Values In The Public Square" if the values you are speaking of are of the Catholic faith. By supporting gay marriage, abortion, and everything else immoral that Democrats as a whole support you make a fool of the Church you claim to represent! I will pray for you that you see the error in your ways!

At least all she is doing is praying.

Just for completeness, this is another one of the 1-2 liners I get:

Your entire program is a farce. Theire is no such thing as a Catholic Democrat. If you are atrue Catholic, you cannot be a Democrat. because Democrats believe in Abortion, Euthanasia, Embrolic Stem Cell Research, etc.

All of these quotes are pasted directly from email, with no editing, except emphasis.

I am not the only one in the movement to get these kind of emails. A friend of mine who is organizing Catholics a southern state recently had the following interchange with someone he knew and described as a "nice Christian rock musician".

Z replied:
Sorry if i was a jerk i really shouldn't have said those things but i do feel strongly against obama and hope and pray that he doesn't get elected. Sorry for everything man. I hope you will forgive me.


Mark Replied:
The Catholic Church is the original and first Christian Church. Founded by Peter. That's just basic christian theology. Now that you have moved from Politics to Religion once again... I ask what is the basis of your statement?Although I guess this assertion blows your theory that Obama is the Anti-Christ. Because you think he is a Muslim. Right? Obama is not Catholic? So today you argue that the Anti-Christ comes from the Catholic Church. Well perhaps it is Rick Santorum Republican Senator from Penn. and a Roman Catholic.It could be him; Right? Maybe he is a the Anti-Christ? Rudy Giuliani...Maybe ?


Enough religion and Politics.


Z replied:
ur catholic.......what do you know about God. The anti-christ will come out of the catholic religion. OOOOHHHH Hail Mary!!! ur a moron


Mark Replied:
Z,
Peace be with you,
Mark


Z replied:
Are you kidding me??? All that nigger muslim does is talk trash about Bush and the republicans. I can't believe that you are going to help this man ruin the United States. The first thing he is gonna do is pull the troops out of Iraq and then they're gonna come over here and start bombing us. I pray to God every day that he does not get elected.


Mark Replied:
Good to hear from you.
Do you honestly believe that? How do you back up this claim? Better yet how did you come to this conclusion? I would love to talk to you about real issues and your reasoning etc... But you will have to elevate the conversation beyond such SIMPLE terms as IDIOT...Crap....and Go to hell. When you are ready to have a mature conversation about your concerns and about the issues I am here and listening?


Z wrote:
ur an idiot. period. Obama is the anti-Christ. Obama SUCKS!!!! He will be the fall of all freedom in the United States. Go to hell.

None of this deters me and others in the movement from doing what our consciences tell is right.It seems like an odd response from those who claim to be responding based on deeply held elements of their faith.

The LA Times has an interesting electoral map widget. I thought it would be useful to do a draft of where we are today. So, here is my current thinking:

I have recently had one of my photos published. I received the following email about a picture I took in Almaden Quicksilver County Park:

Hi Bill,

I am delighted to let you know that your submitted photo has been selected for inclusion in the newly released second edition of our Schmap California Guide:

Almaden Quicksilver County Park
www.schmap.com/california/parks/p=167388/i=167388_5.jpg

If you like the guide and have a website, blog or personal page, then please also check out the customizable widgetized versions of our Schmap California Guide, complete with your published photo:

www.schmap.com/guidewidgets/p=7577171N07/c=SG33023019

Thanks so much for letting us include your photo - please enjoy the guide!

Best regards,

Emma Williams,
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides

You can see the picture via this Widget: