No one was safe from Salud Salinda during the Proposition 38 campaign. Not parents, her doctors, school district staff, family members or even fellow Dodger fans.
Everyone Salinda encountered during the month leading up to the Nov. 7 election received buttons, lawn signs, flyers and a polite urging to vote No on Prop. 38, the Draper voucher initiative.
"I was even having a epidural steroid shot and was upside-down on the table telling the doctors and nurses why they should vote no on 38," says Salinda, a home-hospital teacher and a member of the Inglewood Teachers Association.
"I believed that if everyone talked to a few people each day, we could really defeat this thing. So that's what I did. I enjoyed the grassroots effort."
Salinda wasn't alone in her belief that grassroots efforts make an impact at the polls. Throughout the campaign, CTA members and friends learned that pressing the flesh, engaging people in conversation, writing postcards, phone banking and going out door-to-door helped secure victory. Aside from the million phone calls CTA pledged to make to voters, many folks went over and above the call of duty on this campaign.
Mignon Jackson, a CTA Board member, talked to people about vouchers everywhere she went.
"I talked to my manicurist and clerks in department stores," she says. "I went into a barbershop and reminded all the patrons to vote No on 38. When I brought my dry cleaning in, I helped the lady behind the counter fill out her absentee ballot. It was a 24-hour job. But it paid off."
Jose Solache covered himself in No on Vouchers signs and handed out flyers on the campus of California State University at Dominguez Hills. The self-described "human billboard" and southern vice president of Student CTA organized debates and campaign activities on campus.
He and fellow student Elizabeth Lopez, an ethnic minority representative on Student CTA's board, say they feel like they made a difference.
"By winning, we give children the opportunity to get the education they deserve."
VirginiaAnn Shadwick, CTA Board member for higher education, mailed out just under 2,500 postcards to members of the California Faculty Association as well as to retirees.
"I sent them out to CSU retirees who we know vote," says Shadwick. She was aided by having her handwritten message pre-printed on the postcards, but she did have to hand-address each one. Shadwick found time to do her postcards during some of her many meetings and while at airports waiting for connections. In addition, she put in regular evenings phone banking at the CTA Regional Resource Center in Burlingame.
Community College Association President Dian Hasson took her anti-38 crusade to church, college and convalescent homes in an effort to convince voters.
Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of Hasson's campaign season was being able to work alongside her daughter, Rachel Oakes, a student teacher in the credential program at California State University, Chico. Working with other volunteers
Oakes, of course, grew up in a politically active family, but she herself is now a veteran of two anti-voucher campaigns, having worked on her first one while in high school.
"It makes me feel as if I am doing something. So many people complain about our country, but they don't vote. Politics are for the people. You can't justify complaining unless you do your best," she says. "That's what I plan to teach my students as well."
Dale Martin
