Obama's people
I stopped by the Center Square in York, at the intersection of Market and George streets, at about 1 p.m. today. On each corner was a woman holding a sign for Barack Obama.
I spoke to one of them. Her name was Dana Gadsden. Drivers would occasionally honk their horns when they drove by. She'd smile and hoist her sign triumphantly in response.
"We have a lot of people yelling, honking," Gadsden said. "It feels good."
Gadsden said she'd been out there since 7:15 a.m., and anticipated staying until after 7 p.m. That morning, she'd gone to Shiloh Baptist Church to vote for Obama.
She noticed that each corner of the Center Square had someone holding a sign for Hillary Clinton, and she figured someone should be out there for Obama as well.
So she stopped by the local Obama campaign headquarters and volunteered to do it. It was her first time doing any kind of volunteer work, Gadsden said. She was taking a vacation day from work anyway, so she figured, why not?
"I'm supporting Obama because of change," Gadsden said. "The Clintons were in the White House for a while. They didn't do as well as expected."
At first, she was the only Obama supporter out there, surrounded by people campaigning for Hillary Clinton.
"As you can see, one became many," Gadsden said.
For a while, the Clinton and Obama supporters were hanging out side-by-side. Gradually, the Clinton people took off. There was no sense of hostility between the two groups, Gadsden said.
"We were all here for the same purpose," she said. "To get a Republican out of the White House and a Democrat in."
