Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker rallied Obama supporters today in Boulder, Colorado, speaking first with faculty and students at the University of Colorado campus and then with what was referred to last election as a crowd of “chardonnay-and-brie liberal” townies at the Dairy Art Center.
Taking in the high-end ethnic mix demographic at the Dairy Center—all different faces but similar eye-ware, the crowd as one smiling hopefully, taking turns talking casually with Forest Whitaker about Obama-style change— all of it kept stirring up in my head something Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told the New York Times Sunday about Obama-mania in California: “Movements are great… but they don’t always translate.” Smart successful Boulder people and Hollywood stars do not a representative slice of America make.
Still, there were a lot of people in the small gallery space, maybe 250 people, all of them registered, all of them fired up and ready to caucus tomorrow. When Lauren Dula got up on a fashionable hunk of poured concrete to speak to the crowd, she gave very practical advice. “Get to the caucus early. If you don’t know your caucus location, there are two staffers with laptops in the corner there— Hi Tom! Hi Diane!— they’ll tell you where you have to go… This is really the first time Colorado will have a voice in the nomination process. There has been an historical average of eight people per location at all previous caucuses. You can bet it won’t be that way tomorrow. There will be lines. It will be crowded.”
Lauren asked for a show of hands. “How many people have caucused in Colorado before?” Four hands. “How many are caucusing tomorrow?” All the rest of the hands went up accompanied by hooting and laughter.
The snow was dumping again outside, which it had been doing all day. The teenagers in the hall outside the gallery stretching for ballet practice were talking about a possible day off from school tomorrow, Super Snowy Tuesday. “How awesome would that be?” said a kid with his foot over his head against the wall. “The lifts will be jammed.”
Lauren meantime was talking about caucusing like it was a mountain sport. “It’s different than a primary. We call it ‘extreme democracy’ because you have to tell people who you’re voting for. You have to stand up. They try to talk you out of it. There’s shouting. You go at one another. That’s the whole point. Don’t fight. Just have fun.”
Whitaker, maybe the only one there not in a fancy scarf and North Face gear, was all soft spoken. “Thanks for coming out. I’m just so impressed. I’m so excited by Barack. I just want to say, that, you know, I’ve had the opportunity to travel a lot. I see how excited people are about him— all kinds of different people. Abroad, I’ve had to have conversations about the Bush presidency. I talk with stars and workers and cab drivers, everybody. You know, we talk about Florida and the ’stolen election,’ then about its aftermath, the ‘red states versus blue states’… But now we talk about this, this opportunity, the fact that such a wide variety of people think he can move the country forward. Tomorrow is about you people. I’m crazy about tomorrow.”
That was pretty much it. Individuals went up to say hi and take photos. But Whitaker had to go fairly quickly because the snow was making the roads crazy and he had to get to the airport and get home tomorrow to vote.
Image: Jana Simpson
Tags: boulder, caucus, forest whitaker