Still Recovering

This is a picture of the Edwards Team doing "visibility." For those of you watching the weather, there was a big snow storm in Iowa on Saturday. It was a good and a bad thing...on the one hand, some of us got a chance to be a little closer to the candidates because not as many people came out. On the other, it was--well--a snow storm. This is a group of us out in the pouring cold cheering for Edwards.



These visibilities are a funny thing, because they're often small groups of young people cheering on their candidate with clever cheers. The Obama people were across the street and when they were done doing a cheer, we would start chanting for Edwards. One of the Edwards cheers I remember was "We love Elizabeth and we love John! We want to see them on the White House lawn!"

One of the staffers actually told me about this thing called a "sign war" that took place a couple weeks before we came. Each candidates team gets a set amount of time to put up as many signs supporting the candidate as possible. There can only be one person from the team inside the hall at any given time, and the teams have to tag in and out as they come to decorate. He talked about it really enthusiastically and it made me think about how encouraging it is that so many young people are still involved in the campaign process. In a world where our generation often comes across as apathetic and jaded towards the political process, it's really neat that there are games and structures in place to keep young folks involved. Though the process of choosing the person who may lead the free world is not a game, at least those involved in the long, tedious, difficult jobs of doing much of the brunt work behind the candidate find ways to keep their spirits up.

-Briana Hansen