Volunteers for Change is a national group to assist the Obama Presidency with issues that need our grassroots support.
Our first campaign is for the collection of food, time line November 20, 2008 until December 31, 2008. With unemployment rising, and more and more of our food bank pantries empty we want to answer Obama's call to be our brother's keeper and fill our food banks for the winter ahead.
Summary of Plans from meeting of November 19, 2008: Volunteers for Change Action:
1. Tomorrow, Thursday, November 20, 2008, Rosemary Hart, Pam Warren and Rob Price will go to Hoosier Hills Food Bank at 9:30am to talk with Julio and determine the best way for our volunteers to work with them.
a. Report will be sent to all our volunteers with a plan of action
b. Pam and Rosemary will go to the city and get information on the letter that they sent which needs follow up calls made. We will request a sign up table for Volunteers for Change at the event this Saturday at Showers.
2. Attend Saturday, November 22, 2008 event on hunger at Showers Plaza
3. Weekly Meeting at 1329 South High Street, Rob and Mary’s house.
Organization:
1. Jeff Thomas will activate the Team Leaders
a. Jeanette Heidewald will work on scripts for phone banking
2. David Pace will do Publicity
3. Mary Runnell took our minuets this week, but we need a formal secretary
4. Set Up Group on mybo, post actions and blogs
Materials:
1. Product for the Volunteers
a. Rob will make a sheet of button prints and work on the design tonight, intended to say "Volunteers For Change"
b. Button Teams Kelley Latshaw and Terri Bleuel will begin making Buttons
c. Bumper Stickers for change “Volunteers for Change”
2. Sign up Sheets for Volunteers with our logo, Rob Price
Monroe County Indiana carried the day this election for Obama and was responsible in large measure for Indiana turning Blue! While we patiently wait for January 20th 2009 we are planning what we can do for our community at this time! In Monroe County IN we are planning to work together gathering food for our local food bank. I think this is a good suggestion for a current project for Obama Volunteers Nationally. With unemployment raising and many of our food banks empty or running low we need to help our communities stock our food banks for the winter,
In Bloomington, IN Hoosier Hills Food Bank collects food that is then distributed to 99 agency programs in six counties. Forty two percent of Monroe Counties total population wages are below the poverty guidelines. If you exclude every person who COULD be an Indiana University Student; 15%, going to school and working part time, it still leaves 26 percent of Monroe County Residents living in poverty. Even at 26 percent Monroe County’s poverty level is well above the national poverty rate of 12.5 percent and the Indiana rate of 12.3 percent.
Source: US Census 2006, 2007 American Community Survey
We are submitting this as a suggested volunteer effort for November – December 2008 for our Obama Volunteers. Meeting announcement to follow.
Greetings all Bloomington, and Monroe County and the surrounding area of Obama Supporters:
I don’t want to distract you from the most important work of the moment; which is joining the Obama National Phone Bank (Look at the Action Center on the home page) and help out with calling with the campaigns across the country in the Feb 5 Super Tuesday States.
However, Super Tuesday is 6 days away so while you Call, Call, Call: if you have a moment to think about Our Indiana Primary these are a few things I would like you to consider.
1) We will need to know each other and know what each of us can contribute to this effort.
a) We will need volunteers for Tabling, and for GOTV (Get Out The Vote), which will include Canvassing (Going door to door), and Phone Banking. We will need volunteers to put out yard signs and to SIGN WAVE! And most importantly! Precinct Captains for Obama and we have volunteers in Iowa who were precinct Captains standing by to adopted you and work with you!
b) We will need volunteers for events, I am sure Obama will come here; probably to IU and the students will be the events volunteers, But you never know we might get to work the event too!
There will only be 6 weeks from February 23 until our primary May 6. Get on Board the Obama train we are leaving the station and we are Fired Up and Ready to Go!
This morning I have printed out John Kerry's letter to us and placed it on the front counter at our office. Next to it are copies of the rebutels to the smear campaign against Senator Obama as out lined by Senator Kerry. This is just a first step, but it is a step, next come the emails, the letters to the editor and calls to radio stations. Please join this effort!
As Kerry says, The fight is just heating up -- we won't let them steal this election with lies and distortions.
A message from John Kerry:
With your help, we can turn the page on an era of small, divisive politics -- but only if next time you hear these attacks on Barack, you take action immediately: go to factcheckaction and send it, print it, email it, repeat it!
The fight is just heating up -- we won't let them steal this election with lies and distortions.
If you encounter an attack on Barack's church: Take Action
If you encounter an attack on Barack's faith: Take Action
If you encounter an attack on Barack's patriotism:
The first Bloomington Winter Farmers' Market of the season is this Saturday, January 26th, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 at the Harmony School, east of the corner of 2nd and Woodlawn, 909 East 2nd Street. It will be a wonderful market and a lot of fun!
I tried to get permission for us to table in doors and be a part of the market, but they don't have room for new information booths and we were not in the market last winter. As a result I am planning on going to the market but remaining out doors with Obama Signs and ballot petitions to sign and free bumper stickers to pass out.
The weather report for Saturday is H 36 degrees L 19 degrees and Sunny! I plan on starting about 9:00 and staying until I get too cold or about noon when it closes, which ever comes first. Won't you join me?
I think we will have fun! And we will gather all of the 9th district signatures we need to finish the petition drive to put Obama on the primary ballot. Then we can focus on spending a few minutes each day working on the national phone bank for the last 8 days before Super Tuesday!
Although blogs are live and you can’t really go back and insert a day or two you’ve missed it has been bothering me not to add our experiences in New Hampshire so out of place with where it should have been here is New Hampshire.
Everyone volunteering in NH received an email from the campaign instructing them not to blog while they were in NH working on the campaign. I understood why; and actually without having been ask in Iowa I never reveled anything quantitative regarding our activities; just this is what happens, this is how it feels observations. So when we were asked to remain mum, I remained mum. I had however; intended to write all the way home and post it when I arrived at our hotel at night, but; pleasure and fatigue stood in my way. Pleasure in the form of books: I haven’t mentioned this but on the drive to Iowa we listened to 1776 the story of the American Revolution and General George Washington. On the way to New Hampshire from Iowa we listened to FDR and on the way to Indiana from New Hampshire we listened to Abraham Lincoln Team of Rivals. If you haven’t read them, do. They are the perfect back drop to our campaign and put you in the right frame of mind to explore the Audacity of Hope and not just sleep walk through another campaign.
The first thing we noticed that was different in NH was the yard signs. I didn’t say anything about it before, but it bothered me terrible that our yard signs in Iowa were white with the word HOPE on them. Picture miles of snow banks, with HOPE on white plastic stretched over little wire frames scattered in blowing snow drifts. Thank God I am a member of Democracy for America and one of the things they taught me, and I repeated daily as my mantra; “Yard signs don’t vote”. Still, I was worried, so when we arrived in NH I happily pointed out to John that Obama had blue signs, with Obama printed on them. I forgot for a moment that yard signs don’t vote.
The Iowa Caucus was on January 3rd, we left early on the 4th, we arrived in NH late on the 5th and worked the 6th, 7th, and primary day the 8th. In Iowa when the alarm went off at 6:00 AM we would go and work out as we do at home; but by the time we reached NH both because of fatigue and “Sign Wars” we did not. Yes, “Sign Wars”. The Clinton and the Obama headquarters were next to each other and every morning at drive time to get the troops ready for the day both camps would send out their volunteers with signs and yell and wave to the drivers and try with great vigor to out yell one another. So, in the darkness of our hotel room when the alarm would signal us that it was time to get up I would yell into the darkness “Sign Wars!” We would jump up, put on our 4 layers of ski clothes and head into Rochester NH, to engage in Sign Wars. I liked the Clinton totems, 10’x1”x 2” sticks with 5 to 6 Rally signs proclaiming Clinton, Clinton, Clinton, Clinton, Clinton stacked on top of each other. It was a lot easier for me to see the signs on the other side of the street than to see our signs, but I am sure that ours looked great too! We would then go out and canvas about 40 homes each and then break for lunch and do it again with fresh lists. In the evening there would be phone banking until 9:00 PM and then they would work on the lists and we would go to the hotel to recoup from the day.
The day of the election John and I canvassed in the morning and then he was on the phones all day while I drove seniors to the polls. His job was ear numbing and mine was light hearted, endearing and fun. That night we went back to the hotel and packed our bags and packed the car for an early exit home. About 8:30 PM after I was already in bed for the night I realized that Senator Obama would probably loose NH. I told John that we had to get dressed and go back to head quarters that the kids would need us and we would need to discus the results with David who would help us make sense of it all.
We arrived to find the young people stunned, being too young to have ever invested that much of themselves in a campaign or candidate before and weeping as they held one another, besides how could anything this beautiful not be appreciated. We sat with David and watched online as the precincts came in and a break down of age, sex, income, education etc attempted to explain the vote. About midnight we went back to the hotel.
The next day instead of leaving early for Indiana we knew that the young staffers needed us and so once again we headed down to headquarters and began to clear out the office. All of the Obama Field Office’s close down within 24 hours at the end of a primary and move the teams to their new state campaigns. So, the staffers lost the primary, closed their office, moved out of their apartments and said good bye to one another all within 24 hours. It did not help that they were hung-over and had slept on the floor. We had returned all the borrowed table and chairs, bagged all the garbage and recycling and cleaned up the bulk of the office by 11:00 AM. We were allowed to keep all the Obama literature and signs with NH on them and so I filled our van with Obama stuff for Bloomington. We hugged everyone and felt like we had been there much longer than we had.
John and I got in the van and drove up the coast to Maine and sat in an ocean side restaurant and had wonderful clam chowder and scallop sandwiches for lunch. The sun was shinning, there were sea gulls flying over head and bobbing on the ocean waves. There was a light house just in view down the coast and we were happy. We turned to walk to the van and head back home to Indiana when we saw the ominous black storm clouds over head that had been right behind us. We laughed as we ran to the van jumping in just as the rain started. It is easier to snap back when you're sixty. Forty eight more states to go! Sign Wars!
Obama wants to build a new future, but where are the architects? Many of Obama’s initiatives laid out by the campaign interlace innovative solutions for improved housing, stronger neighborhoods, public infrastructure, and sustainability. (Actually, the built environment contributes more to global warming than any other source, including coal!). Obama’s views are refreshing, tackling multiple issues simultaneously, and encompassing sprawl, segregated development, and wastefully larger and larger roads that only serve to separate Americans. We don’t get much of this from the campaign stump-speech or the sound bites on the nightly news, but its important to many of America’s “creative class.” And we need their votes!
Yesterday I wrote to other group administrators around the United States:
This is beginning to appear to be a national trend; in states with caucuses the right of the voter to leave work and go and cast their vote in the caucus is not guarantied the way our right to vote is guarantied in states where we have elections.
In Iowa second shift employees; union workers who had endorsed Senator Obama, were told they would not be given time off to go to their caucus sites and vote. The Des Moines Register even requested that employers rethink their position to not allow time off to go vote.
Now in Nevada the caucus locations have been planned to be in the casinos on Saturday so that workers could caucus while at work. Now with a couple of unions of employees of the casinos has endorsed Senator Obama a law suit has been filed to move the caucuses once again restricting the right of union members to caucus. Oddly the teachers union which supports Senator Clinton is not helping the Culinary Union members which support Senator Obama…
Yvette in Nevada responded with:
The decision was made long ago with the support of the DNC, Nat'l Party, all campaigns, as submitted by the Nevada Democratic Party. It's important to note that the State party leadership, Clark County Central Committee, etc. Everyone was on board and there was never a discussion of an issue with the plan everyone "raved" about to the media.Apparently the issue is the "potential" delegates the "at large" precincts could deliver a candidate and since Obama received the endorsement the concern is him receiving major delegates from them. It's suspect that this became an issue only after the announcement and the realization that Hillary won't get them. Our bylaws were modified earlier this year that required any delegate nominated MUST attend the caucus. In the past party leaders nominated individuals that weren't present (since it was such a poor turnout) and I beleive they thought they would do the same appointing those earned from the "at large" precincts. When they realized that wouldn't be the case and the delegates would be selected from those precincts all he-- broke loose resulting in this lawsuit. The unfortunate story is this is tearing apart the Democratic party nationally and locally. It's sad especially after all the hard work of building the party in Nevada and turning many districts "blue".Please keep this situation in your prayers for a positive outcome. It will be heard on Wednesday in court.YvetteNevadans 4 Obama
Good morning, I woke up at 4:30; too excited to sleep. John's alarm went off at 5:00am and we were on the road by 6:00. I packed and John loaded the car yesterday so that we could get a fast start today. The New Hampshire Primary is only 5 days away!
I wanted to dash off a quick note to acknowledge all our congrats from family and friends and to let you know we are on the road for a couple of days so email is the only way to reach me until we arrive in New Hampshire. We are looking at two 700 mile days to get to the area of New Hampshire we are headed for.
I will be working while we travel and be on line later today. John just walked by laughing and told me he just read a sign "In dog years I'm already dead." Now he is bringing me little tiny die cast tractors, I think it is time to leave the world's largest truck stop.
We are basking in the glow of Iowa and are gidy as we head for New Hampshire.
The Iowa Caucus is an interesting ordeal for everyone involved.
For the candidate you must be in every community in the state not just the large population centers. That means your message must play as well to the farmer as the city dweller and the union worker. As Obama supporters we are fortunate. Our candidate has a clear message that is printed in booklet form and covers ever issue on the table in this campaign. It is an overwhelming amount of work to go to everyone’s community and sit down with them and talk about what you have to offer and what their concerns are, but that is what Barack Obama has done this year.
It was a challenge and a wonderful opportunity for all the field directors and interns who have made Iowa their homes this year. There were 36 Obama field offices in Iowa in preparation for the caucus. No other candidate has ever put that many offices in Iowa. The office where we worked was the Fayette County office located in Oelwein Iowa. Our field director lived in this little town of 6,000 people for 5 months and everyone in town knew him and liked him. He was on message everyday, bringing the message of our candidate home to them.
For the local volunteers, they became Obama precinct captains, canvassers, phone bank callers and caucus goers; and as we saw in the two precincts where we worked on caucus night better prepared than any of the other candidates volunteers.
On the same night both the Republican and Democratic Iowa Caucus occur but at different locations and have different rules. The Republican Caucus is more like a primary; there is one round and the attendees put a paper ballot in a box, the votes are counted and reported and that is it.
For the Democrats it is a very different story. The Democratic Party has unbiased precinct captains who are instructed to arrive early; 5:45 pm, and set up. The Obama campaign also has precinct captains for ever precinct in the state. If there are any problems when they arrive there is a hot line to call for assistance. They chose the corner that the Obama supporters will stand in for that precinct and put up Obama sign’s; as many as possible! Not only in the Obama corner but outside, down the hall wherever there is a place to put a sign there should be a sign.
By 6:30 the site should be set up and greeters should welcome supporters as they arrive. At the Democratic Caucus greeters put a sticker on each Obama supporter that says “Standing with Obama”. Other Obama Volunteers start gathering supporters into their precincts in a multiple precinct venue and then into their Obama corner; they then circulate the room and talk with undecided voters and discuss the Obama talking points. The Clinton supporters at the site I worked also had stickers, but they arrived with them on and they had their names on them. None of the other candidates had greeters or stickers. The other candidates did have precinct captains and signs.
At 7:00 the doors close. Anyone in line attempting to get in must still be allowed in. The first count is taken and viability is determined. This is a count of all the participants at the precinct divided by the total number of delegates to be awarded. At this point caucus math begins. It is a very simple formula: Number of people in your candidates group multiplied by the number of delegates divided by the total number of caucus participants at this precinct equals the raw number of delegates awarded to the candidate. That is the first round. After everyone in the room sees which candidates are viable and which ones are not voters start to realign and the number of delegates for each viable candidate can shift. It is interesting to watch and even more fun to participate in.
The day of the Iowa Caucus I woke up with a sense of peace; packed all of our suitcases and put them in the way back so that if we were needed to give rides to a caucus location the van would be clean and empty, as it turned out we had other jobs at the caucus.
We went to the local diner; the Country Cottage for the last time to have a hearty breakfast knowing that it could well is our only meal of the day. As we were telling the entire staff good bye and thanking them for the great food and great service we had enjoyed some of the patrons got up and came over and thanked us and said good bye with “Obama all the way!”
We headed into town and went to pick up the 8 dozen cookies I had ordered for the caucus; we had also asked volunteers in each precinct to bake cookies. I mistakenly thought that most people would rather drink hot cocoa or mint tea than coffee at night. I was wrong, everyone wanted coffee!
We drove down to the headquarters to get our assignments for the day; took our paper work and headed for the rural farms in southern Fayette County Iowa to canvas for Obama. After spending two hours driving down gravel roads in blowing snow only to get to the farm we were looking for and finding their driveway impassable we decided to go to town to pick up our supplies for tonight and drive to the caucus site. We made it to a few farms but our unintended mission was more of a beautiful winter drive in the country than actual canvassing for a candidate; with the added excitement of trying not to get blown off the road into a snow drift.
We went to Waterloo the night before the Iowa Caucus to see Barack Obama. It was fun to take the night off and go to an Obama Event and to our delight Michelle introduced Barack. Michelle’s speech was one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard; she isn’t as good as Barack, but she is better than any of the other candidates. It has been my experience that most times when someone is introducing the featured speaker the audience becomes restless waiting for the real deal. That is not the case with Michelle Obama. Here is a link to her speech.
We got there an hour early and were among the first 10 people to walk in the door and so we were on the rail directly in front of the stage. We were able to see his face through out his speech and make eye contact many times. It was fun!
Today is our seventh day on the job in the Barack Obama Campaign Headquarters in Oelwein, Iowa. It is Wednesday, January2, 2008 day tomorrow is the Iowa Caucus and the first round of the Presidential campaign of 2008.
Again the day dawns with bright blue skies but the temperatures are the news today. It is -2 with a wind chill of -16. The challenge will be to keep going in the cold but the race is too important not to keep going. We will be on the road to small rural towns again today to go door to door.
We plan on ending our walking early today in time to drive to Waterloo and see Senator Obama speak on this last night of the campaign. While I have enjoyed seeing him repeatedly this year; John has not seen him since last spring in Louisville KY.
I will start packing for our trip to New Hampshire this morning. We will be leaving early in the morning the day after the caucus.
I will tell you about the day a little later, work hard, keep to the race and have fun; we are, fired up and ready to go!
Today was our sixth day on the job in the Barack Obama Campaign Headquarters in Oelwein, Iowa. It is Tuesday, January1, 2008 2 days until the Iowa Caucus and the first round of the Presidential campaign of 2008.
The day dawned with bright blue skies and temperatures so cold it startled us when we went out to get in the car. We made our morning pilgrimage to the Country Cottage for our breakfast. It is the local diner with great breakfast. It has a small dinning room about 30 feet square and usually only has a few empty tables. The room is crowded with mostly seniors; smoking is still legal in Oelwein and so one side of the room has a row of tables that are the smoking section and the rest of the room is nonsmoking. The first few mornings we went there a hush fell over the room for about 10 seconds while everyone looked up and then went back to their conversations. After a few days no one seemed interested in our arrival except our usual waitress; who greets us with a cheery “Good Morning.” Sitting next to our booth was a table with 3 people discussing global warming, sitting in the booth behind John were two men discussing the positions of two candidates and behind me were a couple we know from the Obama headquarters who were discussing the new polls showing Obama leading.
We headed into the office where we enjoyed a conference call from Barack Obama it was a thank you call and encouragement not to let up; challenged to work even harder the last 70 hours. It was good to hear his voice and good to know we are of help in this effort to elect Barack Obama as President of the United States.
The local volunteers walked all of Oelwein again today. Personally we started our day with a sudden slide off the road into a ditch, but after a few minutes of phone calls to AAA a Good Samaritan stopped and circled the van with John determining their strategy for extracting us; I couldn’t participate, my door was down in the ditch and I couldn’t get out. I can honestly say I was happy just to sit and not to be out in the cold. Our rescuer pulled a big strap out of the back of his truck and handed it to John who lay down in the snow and crawled under the back of the van and tied the strap on. One long tug and we were out and on our way. Thank You Stranger! You made our day.
The television news just announced that the Obama volunteers knocked on 90,000 doors in Iowa this weekend! We finished at 7:30 tonight, others worked until midnight. It was a great way to start our New Year. We are, fired up and ready to go!
Today was our fifth day on the job in the Barack Obama Campaign Headquarters in Oelwein, Iowa. It is Monday, December 31, 2007 3 days until the Iowa Caucus and the first round of the Presidential campaign of 2008.
New Year’s Eve in Iowa, awoke to a winter wonderland. The fog we drove home in last night had frozen on every branch of every bush and tree. There are some little oak trees in the front yard that looked like ginger bread that had been dusted with powdered sugar on every edge. The cat tails in the ditches were frosted. Everything was beautiful. We spent another day, about 8 hours, canvassing for Obama. We went to Arlington a little town just north of Oelwein in Fayette County.
We finished early today and went home and prepared to go out for the evening. We had a great time and celebrated a joyful New Year. We are, fired up and ready to go!
