The Road to the Convention, By Bus, With Activists

Young and Excited, This Crew Converges on Denver

By Robert Struckman, 8-24-08

	"I never thought this job existed," said Toby Crittenden, 26, who organizes bands and other entertainment for the Bus Project in Seattle. He's tired. The bus is going about 55 mph across Wyoming.

A journey by bus to a political convention with activists becomes a world in itself.

I’m tired. It’s been a long journey from Missoula to Denver with Missoula bloggers and the Oregon Bus Project, a studiously bipartisan crew of progressives who have a slow, slow bus.

Shortly after midnight on Saturday night, Denver-bound bus nabbed five of us from Missoula from an International House of Pancakes in Twin Falls. Those who knew each other hugged. Everyone was friendly and shook hands. Then we piled onto the bus. Moments later, somebody from the back jokingly accused someone else of stealing his biscuits. Then the loud, laughing reply: “I swear on my mother’s grave, I did not touch your biscuits.”

Sometime in the night the bus ceased a mere method of transportation and became a mission to get to Denver to the Democratic National Convention. Like most of the riders, I had two seats to myself but still found it nearly impossible to sleep. My head kept falling from one side to the other. At one point, I think I even tried to sleep facing the backrest of my chair. I came fully awake with the rising sun turning the chalky cliffs golden at Green River in Wyoming at about 7:30 a.m. I was desperately trying to get comfortable. That’s about when we all started talking, getting to know each other.

The bus is part of the six-year-old nonprofit Oregon Bus Project, which has get-out-the-vote projects like Trick-or-Vote, a Halloween mass canvass to encourage registered voters to make their voices heard. The overall organization has a million dollar budget this year and significant programs, such as an intensive grassroots organizing boot camp called Politicorps. But each of its projects operates on a shoestring, said spokesman Ian Greenfield. The goal is to make political involvement engaging and a natural fit for young people.

Zoe Vrabel, a 21-year-old senior at Reed College in Portland, just completed Politicorps. The once-shy sociology major has decided she wants to run for office someday.

“I want to work for better solutions. What do we need to do differently? What do we need to do better? How can we agree more?” she asked. “It was a crash course in facing my fears.”

Like the many of the westerners on the bus, she wants change, and she wants to chronicle the movement she’s a part of.

“I’m planning on writing on Barack’s grassroots campaigners, those who identify themselves as activists,” she said.

Meanwhile, 44-year-old Hans Vermeersch pulled his guitar from its case and, almost inaudibly, picked at its strings and sang. He’s on the bus to support Barack Obama and to join in the anti-war protests.

As the morning passed into late morning, then noon and early afternoon, the riders stopped napping and started talking. Then the bus met up with a French documentary film crew.

Bonnie Hemphill of Seattle, a Bus Project volunteer, said she has been an activist since she was a kid. With a big grin, she said she wants to roam the country, making it better.

“Something cheesy like that,” she added.

At about 3:30 p.m. in Denver, the riders piled into the street for a BBQ with other young activists from around the country. Many of them arm-in-arm, they filed into the brick building and vanished like old friends, although many of them only met each other early on Saturday.

“When you’re on a bus for about 30 hours together, you make friends fast,” said Arlene Fetizanan.

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