SF Weekly: Change for the Worse

Change for the Worse

Some local Obama supporters hit hard times after the election.

By Herman Wong

published: March 11, 2009

Noelle Lewis is a poster child for Barack Obama volunteers. Politically motivated for the first time in her life, the 28-year-old San Francisco resident paid her own way to Las Vegas during the campaign to knock on doors on his behalf. On Election Day, she took the day off work to join other volunteers at the Oakland Marriott Convention Center to call voters in other states to rally last-minute support.”I’ve never really been involved with anything that was part of history while it was happening,” Lewis says. “I felt lucky that I was.”

But the problem with making history is the hangover. About 1.5 million people actively volunteered to help elect Obama as the 44th U.S. president. But from November to January, the country lost more than 1.6 million jobs. For some Obama volunteers, the deteriorating job market has made the inevitable return to reality a steep fall.

SFWeekly.com: Against the Odds, One Man Campaigns for McCain in San Francisco

Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 09:40:22 AM

By Herman Wong

San Francisco—long a center of counterculture and tolerance—seems the perfect home for Gus Armstrong, a man with a small and wayward cause. A security guard by trade, Armstrong has for the last month taken up the banner for a minority among minorities. Just last Wednesday, Armstrong paced along the concrete island divider separating traffic on Van Ness Avenue off Market Street. He looked like an aging lounge singer version of Pete Seeger: a man with a mission in an oversized white tuxedo jacket worn over a white t-shirt, baggy black slacks, and white Adidas sneakers, topped with a pair of aviator sunglasses. In a way Armstrong was a protester, walking the island divider, in the middle of the swirl of cars and buses and pedestrians, in the heart of Obama country, holding a blue sign with the bold white words “McCain/Palin.”