ABSTRACT
“Gus Hall.” My mother stood in front of a single line of aging men in ill-fitting suits. She had been summoned to the small, wood-paneled conference room that sat above the town’s single jail cell in Boro Hall, summoned to explain herself to the local school board. It all started with a sixth-grade civics experiment. My brother’s civics teacher wanted to conduct a mock presidential election in class. But instead of letting the kids vote their conscience, the instructions were to go home, find out how your parents were going to vote, and come in and vote the same way.
