A year ago if anyone had told 53 year-old Deborah Lian of Shoreline, WA that she would be walking the streets of Austin today in support of Barack Obama, she would have laughed.

“I thought I’d vote for Hillary at first, but when I went to the Obama rally at Key Arena, and saw all the young people and people of color there, it was the first time I thought that maybe Obama could win this thing.”

 After Obama’s decisive wins in the Washington primaries and caucuses in February, Lian was convinced Obama had a good shot, so she jumped at the opportunity to support him.

 Lian knew that Texas was the next big contest, and after scraping up enough money for a plane ticket to Austin, Lian and her longtime friend, Leslie Belt, have been helping out the old fashioned way; by knocking on doors and talking to people.

The pair, both 53, spent the day driving through North Austin in Belt’

s blue Honda, stopping every few blocks to locate the addresses of Democrats off of a list given to them by the Obama campaign office.

Belt has bright purple hair and wears an Obama button on her sweatshirt. At one point Belt thought she would likely vote for Clinton too.

“I thought I would support her because I’m a feminist and a lesbian, and she is the girl,”

but after seeing Obama in person, Belt changed her mind.  

“I can’t help but notice how young people have gotten involved in the campaign and I’m afraid if they don’t stay involved there won’t ever be real change.”

Lian wears jeans and a hooded sweatshirt and takes puffs of her cigarette as she walks from house to house. “It’s interesting, because we are the demographic that Clinton is counting on,” said Lian, “we’re older and certainly not affluent, but we’re switching to Obama.”

As Lian climbed the stairs of a rough-looking apartment complex with iron bars on the windows and cracked pavement, I asked her if it ever made her nervous to knock on people’

s doors.

“Yes, all the time,” she said. Lian has what she calls a happy, non-threatening knock, which she learned while taking census information in Washington. “It also helps to stand a few steps away from the door, or carry keys in your hand so people think you drove there especially to see them.”

Lian explained that some people just feel threatened, especially if they aren’

t citizens.

Several people admitted they were unable to vote when she asked them if they planned to. “I never ask why though,” she said, “first of all because it’s none of my business and second because they could be here illegally or could have felonies.”

And though Lian claims it’s not comfortable for her to knock on doors, it doesn’t show. Lian is confident as she talks to people, offering information in a strait-forward way, but says it’s always been hard for her, “especially when I rattle the doorknobs putting the hangers on, I remind myself, this is Texas!”

she joked.

And though most of the homes were empty in the working-class neighborhoods north of Austin today, Belt and Lian found some people at home and were able to answer questions about the caucus and the primary.

Dan Shackelford, a self-described Republican and avid Obama supporter said he was glad to see them because he had no idea how to caucus. Shackelford said though he considers himself a conservative Republican, he is planning to vote for Obama on Tuesday.

“You know, I voted for Bush,” he said, “but I’m very unhappy about the direction this country has taken. There’s too much old blood in our government and we need to kick them all out and start over.”

Shackelford said he believes Obama can truly affect the change people need in this country, and even though he knows he won’

t agree with all the social programs Obama proposes, he thinks the current Congress and House can provide balance to any overly-liberal Obama leanings.

The next door Lian knocked on was answered by an Obama Precinct Captain, who thanked her for her help in getting out the vote.

As she walked away from the row of houses, the sun started to come out for the first time all day. Liam smiled and said, “It gives you a little tingle doesn’t it?”

A short time later on Joy St., Belt had the first door of the day slammed in her face, ironically, by an Obama supporter.  

“Well at least he’s our jerk!” laughed Belt as she shrugged off the spurn. “You never know, sometimes people can just be having a really bad day.”

Lian and Belt plan to get out knocking on doors again tomorrow to remind people to go to the polls. The women are also prepared to work all the way through November if necessary.

“I’ll work as hard as I can to elect a Democrat this year,”

said Lian. Both women said they would vote for Clinton if she were the nominee, but that it will be difficult.

“It would be an enormous personal challenge for me,” said Lian, who looked sad for the first time all day at the thought of it. “I would do it though, because it’s better than any alternative.”

And as the two women took a brief break at a local coffee shop to organize their lists and recharge for more canvassing, I watched them work.

Lian tried hard to keep the stacks of papers organized while writing down addresses and keeping track of the doors they had already knocked on.

“It’s not a very well-oiled machine as far as volunteering,”

admitted Lian as she shuffled through paperwork and wrote down a list of addresses to visit next.

But as I watched the pair volunteer their day despite minor problems with directions, and organization, I realized that the true organization of the grassroots initially does look much like chaos.

And while Belt calls it organized chaos, it strikes me as much more. Rather than organizing amid chaos, it’

s the taking of responsibility despite the chaos and the unknown that is the power of the grassroots.

The power is in people like Belt and Lian knocking on the doors of strangers, on their own time, in the cold, despite the unknown.