This is it!
We're coming down to the final stretch and Barack Obama needs your help now, more than ever before!
Please bring your cell phone, a charger and a few fun friends who care about change and join with thousands of your neighbors in the largest ever-attempted phone bank effort in New York state history. The Obama campaign is hosting several of these "mega call centers" all over New York, so invite your friends and family to make calls to voters in key battleground states and change America for years to come.
Visit http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/nylastcall to find a location near you.
Dispatch from Florida Volunteer Kristen "Greetings from the sunniest battleground state!After doing hometown duty in NYC and border state canvassing in PA, I headed down to Tampa, Florida last week to help win the Sunshine State once and for all (and hopefully, by more than a few hanging chads). The Early Voting push is in full swing at my post in Hillsborough County, which is THE swing county to watch this election. Here in the field, we are doing our darndest to get Obama supporters to the polls and counted before November 4th, and we are super busy rounding up our Obama army for the massive GOTV push starting this weekend. That means hitting the streets – and the phones – hard, and not taking “I’m busy” for an answer. Speaking of early voting, turnout has been awesome so far, and we got a sweet break yesterday when Governor Crist extended early voting hours to 12 hours a day (long lines are a VERY good thing!). We were also downright giddy to find out that Jimmy Buffett would be doing a Parrotheads for Change rally at Tampa’s Ford Amphitheater this Sunday. As for my personal experience, it has been nothing short of thrilling to be right in the thick of things, and it’s hard not to feel energized and encouraged by all of the passionate people I’ve had the pleasure to work with and chat up. Here in this Swing State, the Yes We Can spirit is alive and well, and we plan to ride it all the way to victory. Oh, and to any New Yorkers thinking about heading down to Florida to help Get Out the Vote for Obama: The weather is absolutely beautiful. And we need you something fierce."
Report from Volunteer Andrea Scoppetta on the photo sets she posted: "The first set was at The Moxie Spot in Brooklyn Heights. Daphne, a St. Ann's teacher, where my son, Luca goes to school, makes these original, fantastic, glittery, colorful Obama pins which children and their families decorate to send to canvassers in swing states to help GOTV. Daphne does not believe in selling the pins- her motto-"Obama can't be bought!"
She has made thousands of individually decorated pins for over a year now and gives them all away. We've given them to hundreds of volunteers and voters in the field, our children and our friends, as well as to the Biden and Obama family. I've also heard that they were featured in Teen Vogue recently, and people comment on them constantly. I gave one to Obama, at the Alfred E Smith dinner, and he said it was "the prettiest pin" he's seen. It was moving-a real connection between grassroots activity and our candidate. Michelle Obama mentioned "grassroots glitter" in her speech at The Women's Leadership Forum in Chicago, and that is what these pins provide. They truly make people hopeful and happy. They help weary people smile and hold themselves upright. The first set of photos are of children and their parents, grandparents, teachers and neighbors gathering together to decorate Daphne's pins on Friday evening from 5-9. Daphne shies away from recognition and sees her pins as a community effort. She's the pretty, petite, brunette with short hair and glasses in the photos. The second group of photos is the Kids Rally For Hope, held this Sunday Oct. 26th in Madison Square Park from 3-5pm. Our children wrote a collective manifesto, sharing their hopes and dreams for the next President of The United States. We also helped the USO suport our troops overseas with children's notes and drawings. We asked our children to create signs that spoke to their hopes and dreams for their future. We decorated a "Wish Tree" with hopes for Obama and our world. We formed an inspiring children's marching band that sang, honked on their kazoos, played their tambourines and marched around Madison Park waving their handmade Obama signs and their American flags. Both of these grassroots events embody the heart of the campaign. As Obama eloquently says: " Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change we seek." What better way to pass on his message of grassroots empowerment than through our children."
Over the weekend, Latino Obama supporters gathered to make hundreds of calls to Latino voters in Florida and Pennsylvania. To kick off the phone bank, several Latino elected officials, union leaders and community leader motivated the crowd by talking about why Senator Obama is the only candidate that will bring the change we need for Latino families and all Americans during these tough economic times. In attendance were Assemblymember Félix Ortiz, Assemblymember Jose Rivera, Council member Joel Rivera, Sonia Ivany, of NYS AFL-CIO, Pete Gutierrez, of Teamsters, Agueda Arias of Local 888 UFCW, District Leader Maria Morillo and more.
Joe Parenteau in Ohio
I took the initiative to contact the Ohio Volunteer Coordinator, Rosie Goldensohn, myself in Columbus, Ohio by email. She was on the phone with me within 15 minutes after I sent my email. She arranged to send me to a county in Ohio, a very Red county, about 30 miles east of Columbus.
Driving up the quarter-mile driveway, I saw my hosts had cut up a couple of trees that had fallen down following the damage from Hurricane Ike. Turning the bend, I saw that they had had a backup generator cranking away—it is the only house with power in the area. This guy was a software programmer and an expert car mechanic. Talk about self-reliant Midwesterners! This was exactly the guy you want to be with if you were marooned on a desert island.
The newscasts said that power would be out for seven to eight days since Ohio had sent its repair crews down south to deal with hurricane damage down there. I figured there would be no campaign work going on for a few days—wrong, wrong, wrong! The next day, the Obama crew met at a local coffee house that still had power and wireless Internet access. All operations were moved to the coffee house for a couple of days. They didn’t miss a beat.
There were three Field Organizers, one Volunteer Coordinator and a Regional Manager who also managed three similar Obama offices in other counties. They had all gone through six weeks of training in Chicago. Their so-called ‘salaries’ were about enough to buy bread crusts. The rent on the office was $300 a month. The Obama Campaign provided the office with four laptop computers, one desktop computer, one laser printer, one top-notch copy machine and wireless internet access.
That was it. The staff had to live off the land like Roman Legionaires for the rest: they had to scrounge up tables and office furniture, office supplies, cars, housing, etc. Cars loaned by local Dem supporters; spare bedrooms supplied by local Obama supporters.
Luckily, I was assigned to one of the FO’s who was probably in his late 20’s, reflective, politically knowledgeable and smart as the dickens. The power in his guest accommodations was out for six days. Six days without a shower. Not one complaint. I didn’t even know his power had been out until he mentioned how great it felt to take a shower.
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So my advice is this: Go to a swing state. The volunteers are everything. Without them, the entire organization grinds to a halt. For a lot of blue collar whites, all they need is the chance to talk to a middle-aged person similar to themselves, to convince themselves that it is probably OK to vote for a black guy. I had many elderly people tell me that they couldn’t vote for a black man. My standard response to them was something along the lines of:
“If you are not in love with Obama, then look at the issues. I’m pretty conservative, but I have two issues that cancel everything else out: medical coverage and jobs. And if you can’t vote Democrat for yourself, you still owe it to your kids and grandkids. The Republicans have ruled the U.S. for 32 of the last 40 years, and look where we are. They seduce people like you and me, because they can’t win without us. They get our votes and then they screw us. Ever wonder why we are the last industrialized country in the world without a national health care system? Even South Korea has it. Why not us? The answer: ‘Republicans only look after the business interests that get rich on our inefficient health care system, and as long as Republicans rule, we’ll get screwed.’”
It was a pretty effective pitch. I meant every word of it.
Lynn Lieberman in PennsylvaniaI spent ten days in the West Chester, PA office. When you come in the door, this very creative pumpkin greets you:
Working in a battleground State was tough. By the end of a phone bank—or even registering students to vote—I sometimes felt defeated, having had an earful of negativity and misinformation. But interestingly enough, when I did my tally sheet, we were running neck-and-neck for Obama. Best Regards to my fellow Campers!
Elissa Paskin in New MexicoElissa here in the Land of Enchantment New Mexico in the town of Taos. Check out our video encouraging people to vote:
http://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/11cca5c71462da7d
Everyone here is very energized. Early voting begins October 7th. We want to win the vote before November 4th!
Abby Pariser and Peter Gollon in PennsylvaniaPeter and I arrived at the Obama office in Northeast Philadelphia on Frankford Avenue and were sent out with voter registration clipboards to the Walmart Plaza on Roosevelt Parkway. What a busy place. We worked it for about an hour until some security guard came out and shooed us away because we were "partisan.” So we walked to the Home Depot and continued until it was dark and headed to our host family around 8:30PM—such lovely, warm, welcoming people.The next day, we canvassed three blocks of attached row homes on North 9th Street near Wyoming. We met extremely nice folks and even registered a handful of voters. Only met one man who "is voting for our opposition because Obama is too radical." We said "Thank you for your time"—just as we'd been trained.Friday night we (and the neighborhood and the campaign staff) were invited to a Debate Watch Party hosted by PA State Representative Dwight Evan. It was cool—we met lots of people and saw some whom we had met at the Obama office. We ate, watched half the debate and listened to it on NPR on the way to our second hosts' home in Wynnewood: another lovely Obama family.
The next day, we returned to the Oak Lanes office, got our VR clipboards again and returned to the Driver License office to register voters. It was good, lots of people to talk with. There was also a laundromat, which was a great in-and-out type location that allowed us to ask: "Are you registered to vote?"
Our DFO experience was both fun and interesting. We felt welcomed and appreciated.
Franklin D. Carson, Ph.D. in Philly
While serving as DFO in Fishtown, the highpoint in voter registration for me came the day two kids bicycled past me at the Girard Street station on the Blue Line as I called out “Are you registered to vote?” From half a block away, I saw one of them swerve, call to his buddy, turn around, and come back to me. It turns out that his 18th birthday will be November 2nd, 2 days before the election, and he asked me if he’d really be able to vote. Talking him through the completion of his first Voter Registration Form, I felt like I was in the presence of a coming-of-age ritual—his naiveté and eagerness touched something deep in me.
It was 50 degrees and people could barely see their call sheets, but they kept going!
Join Last Call for Change events every weekend and the last four days before the election!
