After two days off for Emerge, I had a slow start on Monday. I stood at the park and ride near the outlet malls for around two or three hours and wound up with 17 signatures--just enough to reach my daily goal, but not a single signature more. I had a mix of responses, though nobody too obnoxious. One guy yelled twice loudly from his van window for me to put my sign down (shook my head and hollered "Nope!" while wishing I'd had time to yell "You'll pry it from my cold dead fingers!"), one woman yelled the word "jerk" out her window (it was unclear if she meant me or Walker), and there was a car of three young men coming back from hunting, two of whom wanted to sign, one who didn't want to but only made minimum fuss because his buddies outnumbered him.
Today things went a little better for me numbers-wise. I managed 39 signatures in front of the public library this afternoon/early evening. When I started, I had a continuous flow of signers. Most people were very positive at the library, with a couple exceptions. One pretty woman in a skirt was there with her daughter and said that she supported Scott Walker and planned to come back with a card for people to sign for him. I said that was perfectly fine, as did the librarian who had poked her head out. Pretty Lady was happy that he'd balanced the budget and supported abstinence--she listed something else but I don't remember it. She harrassed one of my signers afterward and then said to her, "Aren't you happy that Scott Walker balanced the budget?" I interrupted then and told Pretty Lady that Walker's balancing the budget wasn't special due to the balanced budget act and that he could have balanced it in other ways. She was just a little too bright and shiny in her responses, and you could see that underneath the gentle church lady demeanor, she seemed to be someone who thrives on adversity to the point of going out and making it. She said she'd come back out with her sign and card and I told her with a smile that I hope that she does. I did not tell her that I hope that it's on a day when I'm there so that I can see just how many people would recall Scott Walker versus how many people would thank him. I don't think that she realizes the factors that make library patrons more likely to visit me than her.
I had a couple of young men take a verbal snipe at me, saying that it didn't matter if we recalled Walker because he'd get elected again. I told him he was entitled to think that. Apparently his friend expected me to tell him something else and thanked me. Of course, why other people they may have taunted in other places may have responded unfavorably seems to have escaped them. Either that, or they just assumed that's what would happen.
There was also one rude woman who yelled at me that if anyone should be recalled, it should be Obama. I tried to tell her you can't recall at the federal level. She went on to say that people have to do something wrong, that you can't recall someone just because you don't like him. "Wrong. That's exactly what recall is for. There are other means to remove politicians who break laws." I doubt she used her time in the library to look up her state constitution or to investigate what a recall is.
I also had another woman tonight who didn't understand what 'recall' meant in the legal sense and almost signed my petition when she actually supports Walker. While many may laugh and say it would serve her right, I don't want anyone to sign my petitions erroneously. (Someone else pointed out that if the GAB had called to see if she'd signed to recall Walker, that she'd answer 'yes' since she didn't understand what it meant. Still, I wouldn't want that.) She thought of recall more in the sense of remember, and therefore she thought it was an honor for Walker. As she was getting ready to sign she mentioned that she and her sister were generally on opposite sides of things, and that her sister was a state employee who didn't like Walker but that she was happy with what Walker was doing. I stopped her before she put pen to paper and told her that if she supported Walker, she didn't want to sign this petition. She thanked me and was friendly with me on the way out, recommending TV shows. I think she was embarrassed at the mix-up and wanted to make up for it in her own way.
Someone let me know about optimal times to revisit the library, including the upcoming book sale. I started getting cold but only needed two more signatures to complete another sheet, so I told myself that I would stay just until I filled it. When I snagged the last signature, I gathered my things to head to the car when another library patron flagged me down, and I added two more signatures to my collection before heading over to the warmth of HQ to check things over and transfer some of the info from the Walker sheets to the Kleefisch sheets. Since a circulator can fill in anything but the signature, I frequently have signers fill in the Walker sheet and simply sign the Kleefisch sheet because it saves them time and gets them out of the cold faster. It also offers me an opportunity to carefully look over their information while I'm copying it over. It costs me more time, but it's worth it.
With 17 signatures Monday and 39 today, I'm up to 252 total so far toward my goal. Bob B. came in as I was finishing, and he's up to a blistering 612 signatures after this evening. He's agreed to join the challenge, and I expect I'll come back after going up north to find that he's past 1,000. I didn't get all of the details, but Bob actually had to stop in at the police station this evening because someone was harassing the people signing his petitions. I've only had the one guy at Fleet Farm who harassed people, and all it took was for him to think that I was gay for him to leave. Other people have been having harassment issues as well: you can read about another instance here.
I'll be up north for a few days hunting to put meat in the freezer for myself and my extended family, but I'm hoping to still go out and try to pick up a few signatures. I'm not sure how well it will go over in Holcombe and Cornell, but I'm not letting that keep me from trying after hunting. I'm also going to try to head over to Eau Claire for a bit on Black Friday. Since BF activities start so early these days, I should be able to both hit the sales to hunt signatures and go hunting whitetail without conflict.
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