The State We Lost

In the summer of 2008, I went to work as a volunteer for the Obama campaign in my hometown of Gainesville, Georgia. To my and everyone’s surprise, the campaign had hired a field organizer for Gainesville, a nineteen-year-old Jewish student from Northwestern, Adam Yalowitz. What made the choice of Adam surprising was that Hall County, which includes Gainesville, has even fewer Jews (under 1 percent) than it does African Americans (7 percent). Adam held his first meeting in the basement of St. John's church. There was a decent crowd considering that the number of registered Democrats in Gainesville was only 20 percent of the county's population. Adam told us about himself, about why he thought Barack Obama should be president, and then he did something that was both surprising and brilliant. He started talking about us.