Tears of joy soak the cotton fields of Kinston NC

The little city of Kinston, wrapped in fields of cotton,  is county seat for Lenoir county NC.  
The county had not voted Democratic since FDR.    Some of the older volunteers spent their childhoods picking that cotton with calloused hands.  This is a place where racial distrust and cynicism for the body politic still runs deep.  This is a place were the wounds of racial intolerance are still raw.  There was no better place to see the power of this election, of this candidate, than in trenches with the Democratic activists of Kinston who helped turn NC blue by breaking down those racial barriers where they held strongest.  To do it with a team of dedicated canvassers from NYC you pilled in my rickety van, and drove with me 10 hours to front lines, made it all the more special.