Park Hyun

A hot plate has no future

My brother-in-law is a recent college graduate with a degree from a high-ranking school in South Korea. He speaks excellent German and decent English. He found a job relatively soon out of college, making him one of the lucky ones, working for a major bank in Seoul.

He works roughly 15 hours a day, not counting his commute. Even though he has nothing to do for several hours before he leaves, he is not allowed to leave early. His bosses are also cruel: new employees, himself included, were forced to remain in a standing/squatting position for hours once, as a form of hazing. He must endure. The only option is unemployment, or emigration. The latter is increasingly attractive.

"This country has no future," is a common refrain in Korea these days. I hear it all the time, particularly from the older generation, but increasingly from younger Koreans, as well. It's a pretty startling thing to say, if taken literally. But what's particularly odd is who it's coming from: these were the people, remember, who endured over 40 years of Japanese colonialism. Are things really so bad now that circumstances pose a greater threat to the future than Ito Hirobumi did?

Korea's problems are more about the country punching below its weight than indicative of total weakness. South Korea should be doing very well, and it still could. The problem is not what the country has or where it is, but how its people use what they have, and they have been using it very poorly.

Everyone agrees that things now are bad. The economy is stagnant, while inflation is off the hook. Korea's trading power has been eclipsed by Chinese firms on the low end and blocked by a resurgent Japan on the high end. Jobs are hard to come by, and those that exist are increasingly tough to put up with: new employees can expect to undergo physical hazing rituals. The population has endorsed anti-American madness sponsored and exploited by deeply irresponsible and dishonest civic groups. The media doesn't know how to deal with any issues unrelated to anti-American or anti-Japanese feeling .The next president of the United States will likely be a Democrat, uninterested in keeping US troops in the country and angered by the uneven balance of trade.

Add to that a sense of helplessness against the system: there is no Korean version of the PTA or school boards to change an education system that is so bad, families split up so that mothers and children can go live abroad for schooling. University presidents who strive to bring their colleges up in the rankings find themselves replaced by angry professors. Shareholders'-rights groups are stymied by judges who let guilty heads of corporations go free in light of their "economic service to their country." The police seem unwilling and incapable of deterring, or even investigating, crimes as serious as mass rape. Meanwhile, every year thicker clouds of yellow dust descend on the country, blanketing it in toxic sand.

Each on its own is a serious problem, but cumulatively they draw a very ugly picture for the future. What will poor little South Korea do once the U.S. has gone, a frighteningly nationalistic China is making the rules, the skies are orange, and the population, plagued by problems of its own making, is so haywire and paranoid that it is effectively leaderless? If everyone who is sick of how things are in Korea can just emigrate, who will bother staying to fight for change?

Pessimists take note: Korea's problems are solvable, and many are improving at this moment. The despair might be all for nothing. Even a short list shows the potential for progress:

• The introduction of a jury system, making for fairer trials
• The passage of laws making it easier to run private schools
• Electoral victories by pro-American, anti-protectionist politicians (though with questionable records, and partially negated by later by-elections)
• The resumption of imports of American beef, significantly bringing down food costs
• Political disengagement from North Korea, though not total, at least has greatly reduced the amount by which the South props up its own worst enemy

Then consider the opportunities Korea has for growth and diplomacy:

• South Korea has huge geographical, linguistic and cultural advantages in the Chinese market
• Rising interest in Korean food and culture in the U.S. provides real opportunities; one jjimjjilbang in New York City is now so popular it nearly doubled its prices in only a few months
• Despite their poor business practices, Korean companies have risen to domination in several high-tech fields
• Korea's infrastructure is one of the best in Asia
• Greater fiscal control by a new U.S. administration would raise the dollar, boosting Korean exports
• Korea's population remains one of the best educated in Asia, if not the world

This begs the question: why is Korea so bad at taking advantage of its strong points? Why can't it use its population's brains, talent and energy more effectively? The answer is largely ideological - Korea's anti-Americanism and Japan-hatred drive it insane.

All the major anti-American and anti-Japanese movements over the last decade or so have been preceded by situations that forced the country to look at China or North Korea negatively. Each time, South Koreans appeared confused, hesitant, and frightened, and each time, they responded by latching on to much smaller issues involving the U.S. or Japan, blowing them out of proportion, and using them for the sake of domestic politics.

The 2002 West Sea battle; the riot of Chinese students in Seoul; the shooting of a South Korean tourist by North Koreans. Each was followed by major protests over insignificant issues involving the U.S. or Japan. Each blow-up over a non-issue became opportunities for exploitation by domestic politicians. None resulted in serious repercussions from Americans or Japanese.

But most importantly, each diverted crucial time and attention away from the serious quality-of-life issues that affect most Koreans. Keep in mind that even after the country's largest political protest since 1919, over the safety of food, there have been no calls for increased regulation of the domestic market, akin to the FDA.

It's hard to imagine a Korea where people stay focused on local issues, ignore Japan, feel grateful toward America, fear China and take a hard line against their northern compatriots. In short, it's hard to imagine a peninsular version of Singapore, Dubai or Denmark, where the governments focus on building consensus and improving quality of life. This creates a cycle of malaise, rage, distraction, and more malaise.

Koreans like to say that they have quick tempers; the phrase in Korean is naembi gumsung (hot plate). The more they say that about themselves, the more they believe it about themselves. It becomes a condition for Korean-ness.That Korea, at least, surely doesn't have a future.

Sometimes, entire nations just don't like you

True story: I once stumped Joe Nye in public.

In 2004, he was on the lecture circuit and speaking in Seattle, and I heard him talk about the virtues of "soft power," his pet idea about the value of a nation's international popularity. I could see what he meant; Bush by then had shown pretty clearly that being viewed around the world as a nation of contemptuous assholes didn't help America promote its causes around the world. Whatever their reputation, the French, for instance, actually could have a strong military that could do a lot to help the West if they were so inclined.

But I had just left Korea after its largest anti-American protest in history, and the hypocrisy and double-standards of Koreans had made it hard for me to look them in the face. So, to set the scene: Here were tens of thousands of Koreans out in the streets protesting against America because of a traffic accident, in a country in which traffic accidents kill dozens of people every day, and where pregnant mothers have the option of package tours that will help them give birth on American soil, and which despite its anger over an "unfair" SOFA had far worse SOFA agreements with East Timor and Kyrgyzstan, and these protesters were likening the U.S. to the Japanese Empire while desperately trying to get into Harvard, all the while spreading and believing lies over the Internet about the evil behavior of American soldiers, all the while handing over their unwanted children for adoption by Americans.

Then there on stage was poor Joseph Nye, lecturing me about how "soft power" through educational, charitable, and "legitimate" actions could bring people around the world to our side.

At the end, I raised my hand, approached the mike, and asked Nye why despite all these things, Koreans engaged in such strenuous America-bashing. He didn't have an answer.

One of the things I admire about the American left is that it's continually self-critical: "If only we changed our policies, helped the environment more, and were less racist, people around the world wouldn't hate us."

The parallel: "If people are mad at our troops, it must be because of something our troops did wrong."

Sometimes, they're right. Other times... not so much.

Many other peoples are not nearly so self-critical when it comes to international relations. East Asia and the Middle East, to name just two regions, do not seem to have a lot of people eager to take another country's side. No surprise, considering they have a few important things in common:

• A history of colonialism
• A lack of critical thinking in education
• "Low-trust" societies, in the Fukuyama mold
• Religious belief in their own centrality to world affairs

That is to say, if you've been abused by foreign governments before, you're not good at questioning your own, you learn early in life that you gotta play hardball to get what you want, and you have an unshakeable belief in your own superiority, you're not exactly going to care how much America does for you. After all, when it's helping you out, it's demonstrating your superiority, and when it's not, you're going to have to play hardball.

There are a lot more complicated reasons for Korea's and the Middle East's behavior, and little room in a blog to flesh them out. Kids in Korea seem to have to rebel against their parents' pro-Americanism, and guys across the Middle East just looked bored and restless to me, to give two examples. Yet the fundamentals are unchanged: these people aren't interested in your "soft power."

I think that's a rather unfortunate fact, because I'd like to see the U.S. doing more to be respected around the world. I also think it'd pay off, giving us greater influence in a lot of countries.

But not all countries.

Patriotic, as long as we're excluding the South

So Obama's going to go with a "50-state strategy," a novel approach to Democratic presidential campaigns. The name is a bit of a euphemism, though. All it means is that the Democrats are actually going to campaign in the South this year.

With July 4th coming up tomorrow, Wesley Clark on everyone's TV and patriotism on everyone's mind, I've been thinking a lot about patriotism and nationalism, conservatism and liberalism, and like a Rorschach test, every time I wind up thinking about the South. There are conservatives and liberals everywhere in America, patriots and nationalists, racists and open-minded people, but I find it's almost impossible to talk about America without factoring in the South. There's no other region that influences our domestic policies, and our international image, so much as the states of the Confederacy (I consider Texas to be Southern, for historical and cultural reasons).

Okay, you say, so it's influential. What's problematic is that the South is the bastion of almost everything that's embarrassing, wrong and backwards about America, and the vast majority of non-Southern Americans would probably be happy to have it break off into its own North American rogue state. Southerners as a group appear to despise the rest of the country equally, want to "make lesser states squirm," and revel in the conservative nationalism that annoys and embarrasses the rest of the country.

Hence the bind of the progressive patriot: do I have to love all of my country? Even the South?

Besides for Faulkner, mint juleps and bar-b-que, there's painfully little to praise about the South, and that's even taking into consideration how overrated Faulker is. In the meantime, there's plenty to dislike about the South, such as institutionalized racism, premeditated historical revisionism, Jesse Helms, the evangelical movement, Bush the Younger, hurricanes and disaster insurance scams, its obsession with dominating Cuba, anti-intellectualism, Stone Mountain, etcetera, etcetera.

Or think of it this way: every time a liberal, coastal American goes abroad, 99 percent of the complaints or criticisms he or she will hear about the U.S. will have to do with the South. Americans are dumb. Americans want to bully the rest of the world. Americans are racist. Americans are fat. Americans are gun-crazy. Americans don't know crap about history. After a few weeks, you wind up ranting in your sleep about the evils of the South, and you make a pretty good case of it.

You'd love to get rid of the South, but you can't, for two reasons: if they were suddenly their own country, they'd annex everything from the Rio Grand to the Panama Canal, and if they pulled out of the union, the rest of us would have to join the army to make up for the sudden lack of soldiers. So we can't get rid of them. Can we change them?

That's the big test of the 50-state strategy. The disaster of the Bush presidency has given liberal America its best opportunity to make inroads into the South since 1964. The South is richer, younger, better educated and more open-minded than any other time in its history, while looking more fed-up with its politicians and community leaders than ever. As Howard Dean put it four years ago, "You've been voting Republican for decades. What do you have to show for it?"

Actually, they have a lot to show for it, in terms of government pork. That's probably why things look pretty bad for Obama. While his aggressive strategy is probably going to pay off, it will more likely do so by forcing Republicans to defend their turf, rather than taking it from them. My prediction is that Obama will win, and liberal Americans will still be paying for roads and signs in the South while Southern politicians continue to call them queer commie terrorist hippies.

I love my country's queer commie terrorist hippies. Just as I won't let Southerners bully me into accepting America as portrayed by Fox News, so will I not let snooty non-Americans bully me into being ashamed of my country merely for the behavior of its most intransigent half. Stereotyping Americans based on one region of this huge country is no better than stereotying all Southerners based on the loudest and most hypocritical part of their population.

No strategy will change the South, or any part of the country, in a few months, or a few years. To let our impatience drag down our patriotism all for the sake of one region would be no better than turning our backs on our family to spite one irascible sibling.

A few notes on South Korea's anti-American conspiracies...

What drives Koreans so mad as to bring 50,000 of them out on the streets to protest importing US beef, which is safer and cheaper than Korean beef?

The term "conspiracy theorist" is now so attached to Kennedy-assassin myths, UFOs, Jew-bashers and so on that it's hard to imagine that there are still real conspiracies. Conspiracy, closely defined, still operates in the legal sense: the American legal definition is "Where two or more persons agree to carry out a criminal purpose," which leaves lots of stuff out in between Elvis living and the US government inventing AIDS. Financial deals, mainly.

South Korea's schizophrenic relations with the United States, its outdated National Security Law, its culture of parentalism, its lack of critical thinking in education, and even its dating/mating rituals leave it particularly vulnerable to conspirators wishing to break its ties to its only ally. What's more, it has an active conspirator in the form of North Korea, which is constantly trying to do just that.

The subject of North Korean conspiracy or agents in South Korea is so tightly wound up in SK's dictatorial past and paleo-conservative politicians that it's easy to dismiss any charges of NK conspiracy as political fodder. That's a logical fallacy. Just because SK's dictators and conservatives have used the claims of NK conspirators in the South as a club to bludgeon democracy activists and social workers does not mean that those conspirators do not exist.

In fact, they do. The public evidence is pretty strong (look up Ilshimhoe, Hanchongyeon, et al), but there is a underground sea of evidence that's much harder to cite in a newspaper or, say, a blog. I've met more than one person in Korea whose job involved military intelligence, domestic monitoring or plain spying, and each has spoken of the existence of NK agents as a given. You're welcome to believe or disbelieve me here - I can't introduce you to them.

Over the last decade or so, these agents may or may not have been behind some of the biggest eruptions of anti-Americanism in Korea. Their job has certainly been made easier for them by the social terrain of SK. Looking at the Apollo Ohno controversy, the two schoolgirls run over by the US armored personnel carrier, and now the Killer Mad Cow Beef episode, there's a common theme that suggests anti-American conspiracy: in all three cases, the protesters' charges were totally false. Not just totally false, but easily, provably false.

Apollo Ohno was fouled in speedskating and was given the gold medal instead of his fouler. The soldiers who ran over the girls did not do so intentionally, and the SOFA clearly allows for US soldiers to be tried in Korea courts. Finally, Americans do eat beef from over 30-month cows, and no American cow has had mad cow disease (the one recorded case was from a Canadian cow).

It's pretty easy to turn even demonstratively false assertations into anti-American fodder, though, because SK has no idea what to make of its alliance. That could explain why criticizing America was illegal for decades: the country's rulers don't seem to know how to explain alliances, diplomacy, free trade or the like to their people. Hence the Korean two-step - officially declare America to be your savior and protector, then ignore any discussion of why it is so.

This jives with the Confucian parentalism of Korean values, in which elders are always more knowledgeable and do not need to explain themselves to their juniors. Anyone with Korean parents has probably experienced this throughout their life. "But why?" is consistently met with a "because I said so." Answers are never presented to Korean protesters: they never get a "you're wrong because," but merely a "you made your point, so you can stop now." Each episode then builds on its past, unresolved episodes. Fool me once, twice, thrice, whatever.

That same parentalism goes into education, where students are not encouraged to ask questions, to debate, to cast doubt on assumptions. Hence, students who often show up at protests can't explain their actions on their own grounds. "An upperclassman told me this is true, and that I should protest it," is a common refrain among SK protesters.

Not that students need much prodding to go to protests. Rallies function as one of the best ways to find a mate in South Korea. That seems ridiculous to a lot of Westerners, but Koreans find it very hard to find partners on their own. They need "meetings," "introductions," "bookings," or something else. Something like very large groups of young people coming together...

There is a conspiracy of anti-Americanism in Korea. It's just a very tiring, lame conspiracy. My hope is that someday soon, Americans will realize this and leave. No US troops, no more Hyundai imports, no more FTAs. Then I can go live in Korea in peace.

A few notes on pride politics...

I've been following the saga of the Chinese students' riot in Seoul, in which 6,000 or so Chinese kids went nuts in downtown Seoul and beat up a bunch of protesters for Tibetan and North Korean human rights. The Chinese government issued a semi-apology, in which it defended the students as "protectors of China" and lauded their "pride," while Korea responded by booting a bunch of Chinese students out of their country, on the grounds that Korea's "pride" was hurt.

Pride politics is nothing new in Asia, and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. Nor are China and Korea alone in this - the Japanese have long been tinkering with their history textbooks, to eliminate uncomfortable references to WWII on the grounds that it hurts students' pride in their country.

Most of the truly ridiculous acts of pride politics I saw in Korea were ignored by the Western media, but now that China's big enough and assertive enough to get their attention, I have the pleasure of sitting back safe in New York and watching the world fret about pride politics again.

A few more notes about Chinese rioters...

The riot by Chinese students in downtown Seoul is over, and now the consequences are coming out: the students will, indeed, be deported (hat tip to the Marmot).

As many, many Chinese (including a commenter on this site) has pointed out, the tactics of the kids might have been overboard, but they do love their country. I sympathize. Mass deportations are hard to swallow.

You can love your country like you love your wife, but if she talks you into killing her rival at work, you gotta go to jail. And if you riot in another country's capital freakin' city, you gotta get your butt sent home.

Unfortunately, this looks like it's playing itself out across the world. Patriotic Chinese, the sons and daughters of an elite who can send them abroad, who have been educated strictly according to the party line, who have never seen examples of peaceful civil disobedience, are finding out the hard way what the world really thinks about the Chinese government, and now about the Chinese people.

Trying not to look down my nose on a 1.3 billion people, I will say that this is about political maturity, and it's something most countries have to go through. The US went through it during the civil rights era. India went through it during colonialism. Korea went through it before the 1988 Olympics, and is probably still working through it (they do play rough over there). Maturity comes as protesters are shown the consequences of their actions.

And given that South Korea is a much smaller country very uncomfortably close to China, and far away from its only ally, a firm response is probably necessary to keep them from opening themselves to more abuse from angry Chinese kids.

The kids will learn, eventually. But only if they're punished.

A few notes on all those Korean Ivy-League suicides...

A few days ago I posted a short mention of the statistic that Koreans comprise 10% of Ivy League students, bu 60% of Ivy League suicides. This immediately struck me as something akin to the "big men" of Easter Island, who according to Jared Diamond killed their societies by cutting down all the trees on order to erect massive monuments to their own greatness. I suppose the common thread is a country's elites being so unwilling to settle for less that they will kill themselves competing for a few top slots, which in Korea's case means wiping out the smartest and most talented people it has.

On further thought, that's not it. Retract that.

The genius of George W. Bush

In college, I took four separate semester-long courses on the Vietnam War. For nearly two years, I bogged myself down in the minutia of administrations from Eisenhower to Ford, in an effort to understand how such a tragedy could occur. If I had only waited another four years, I would have simply been able to watch it happen in real-time.

There are very few defenders now of the Bush Administration, the war in Iraq, or the state of the nation in America now. So much has been written about how bad the president is at his job that it might now actually be counter-productive: today I went the the site of the New York Times and saw at the top of the page that the Pentagon had been telling "military analysts" what to say on the nightly news. At this point, who could be surprised? It's hardly as shocking as using the Attorney General to clean Democrats out of the Justice Department.

But the damage Bush has done is not just tragic. It's deeply impressive. It takes real effort and a solid plan to trash a country as blessed as the United States. Other countries literally kill to have what we do: the world's largest economy, strongest military, widest cultural impact, best universities,  effective diplomacy, highest technology. The list of superlatives is itself inexhaustible.  Even more important, these qualities come from the stunningly effective democratic system we almost single-handedly invented, oiled by intellectual capital no other country can match. We don't just have think-tanks that obsessively focus on how to save gas, we have think tanks that obsessively focus on how to better obsessively focus on saving gas.

The result is that while politics inevitably trips up good policy, it takes a concerted effort to turn all of the gears on the nation toward self-destruction. Yet this is precisely what the Bush Administration has done, and for that, they are reviled as imbeciles and morons. Hardly. What they did took something near genius to do, and willpower to do it. Here's how they did it:

1. They made knowledge irrelevant. At the beginning of the Bush years, the White House ordered a study of global warming, a phenomenon the president had already said he did not believe. Even after the WH hand-picked the scientists to do the study, however, the group came back declaring that global warming was real and was caused by human activity. Bush nevertheless said he would do nothing.
Why? As with most Bush statements, the goal was not to enlighten the public to his frame of mind, but to make a statement: Facts will not matter. Bush will do what he wants to do. Tax cuts will come, whether the economy is up or down.
As the message sank in over the years, people simply stopped arguing. As in the most effective dictatorships, talking politics is now boring as hell, because it is so irrelevant.

2. All policies became politics. Most politicians use issues to help them with voters (hell, all politicians do), but most believe the underlying message that a politician must do a good job and actually solve a problem in order to be re-elected.

Bush saw through this. In his administration, no problem is solved, except re-election. He effectively put the card behind the horse; if re-election is your goal, focus on that, and not doing a good job. Hence progress in the Iraq War is not as important as spin on the war, anti-terrorism legislation is only worthwhile if it is used to shovel money into loyal voting areas, environmental legislation is tailored to silence critics while enriching campaign donors, and so on. Under the new rules, only parody can grasp the flow of the system.

3. They turned history against itself. Bush is fond of pointing out that only history can judge whether he is a good or bad president. Sure enough, examples abound of leaders who were thought incompetent in their day and judged far more kindly by later generations.

But what Bush has really done is to use a few episodes in history to render all historical lessons moot. If only history can judge us, we can never learn from history. And, in fact, we never do: Dick Cheney, who dodged the draft in Vietnam, pushed for war in Iraq partly in order to "kick the Vietnam syndrome." Apparently, in the vice president's eyes, the problem with the Vietnam War was the Americans learned from it. He is joined in this belief by a large portion of the Republican Party establishment.

People like to say that history is full of firsts. To Bush, however, history is irrelevant  (see point #1), because it is not consistent. Unfortunately, it is.

4. They created and sharpened boundaries among the population.  Bush has consistently spoken of himself as a "uniter," and in his first presidential campaign, he often referenced his bipartisan record in Texas. Yet Bush has benefited enormously from the GOP message machine, extending from Rush Limbaugh to Fox News and the rantings of Ann Coulter.

The Karl Rove base-building tactic is hard to separate from points #1 and #2. What makes point #4 different, however, is that by creating strict us-vs.-them barriers, all dissent is made partisan.

Consider the case of former Treasury Secretary Paul O' Neill: When he found that Bush was totally uninterested in economics and obsessed with invading Iraq, he fought back, only to be fired. His book, which now looks prophetic, was panned as partisan hackery by the right-wing press.

There are no legitimate opinions or disagreements any more; there is only politics.

5. They failed even low expectations.  Many recovering former Bush supporters say they favored the war in Iraq because they never expected the war would be waged with so little foresight and planning. It's surprising how often this refrain echoes across other fields: in virtually every area of governance, Bush has gotten away with absurdities because so many people expected a minimum of competence.

Paul Krugman is a good example of this. His resume is above and beyond the vast majority of journalists and commentators, and he started his column in the New York Times by  mildly investigating the economic policies of the Bush Administration, only to quickly become one of its harshest critics when he realized its policies were all politically motivated with no possible economic benefit. He simply could not believe the administration was pushing its policies, and when it dawned on him what was happening, it has too late: he had become a partisan democrat, unworthy of debate (point #4).

Or look at poor Colin Powell, whose testimony to the United Nations was the "nail in the coffin" for Iraq War dissenters. Powell's reputation was so great many took him on his word. Only later did we learn that not even he believed what he was saying.

From the start, nobody called Bush a genius. As an administrator, however, he has failed to surmount even his lowest expectations. Yet he has achieved far more, legislatively, than Bill Clinton did. If no one called him a genius then, perhaps they should now.

A genius is someone who overturns an order by seeing beyond its rules. Mozart did what he did in music because he saw beyond the form; Einstein shrugged off the rules of Newton; van Gogh's insanity made him look at art in an entirely new way, as did Picasso; Hemingway stripped literary convention bare to reveal its essence.

Bush has done the same. Faced with the carefully calibrated balance of American democracy intended to preserve and enrich the system, he completely sidestepped it. That alone makes him the world's most successful looter.

A few notes on diversity...

I recently finished Jack Weatherford's best-selling book, "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World," a volume as slim as the empire it chronicles. Weatherford's interest is explicitly in recasting Khan as a model leader and general whose reputation was hurt mainly because Tamerlane, the Mongol-Uzbek psychopath, kept claiming to be the return of the Khan. In reality, the book argues, Khan was a deeply pragmatic leader whose empire flourished because of its acceptance of diversity. Genghis, and later his grandson Kublai, achieved what they did because they accepted the best man for the job, whatever his background, and had a vast empire of cultures in which to find best men.

In striking a blow for Genghis Khan, Weatherford is also hitting back for the pro-diversity crowd, an admittedly vastly larger crowd in the US than the openly pro-homogeneity one. Despite its numbers, the proponents of diversity in the United States are more than a little reluctant to put forward reasons why multiculturalism is beneficial, as opposed to politically necessary. Those pundits willing to openly question diversity policies, such as George Will, call this the "better restaurants" defense.   

I work the Apollo Theater for Obama...

I've had too much time on my hands recently, so I started volunteering with the Obama campaign in the city. They were setting up a fundraising event at the Apollo Theater and needed volunteers to distribute posters around Harlem and help out with ticket sales, phone banking and staffing.