Grace's Camp Obama Blog - September 27 - San Jose
8:00 - Arrived and registered at the Union Hall at 240 Market Street in San Jose. For the next half hour, the room filled up with about 100 people. Fruit and pastries and juices were served. Our name tags included a number 1 through 11. I was in group #6 and took my seat in the first row. On every seat was a handout of the slides for the day (apparently 60 slides reduced and copied front and back).
Barack has 10 offices all over California with 13 paid staff. We are the feeder group for training volunteers for neighboring states. A couple of weeks ago, Nevada asked for 100 volunteers and 500 volunteers signed up, were trained and deployed! Late today, we were told that Colorado and Missouri have asked also asked for volunteers to help.
Goals of the organization - Win on November 4th and Organize our country so we can win on November 4th and ready to do the work on January 20th (the Jan 20th goal was never discussed today).
Goals of Camp Obama (1) Develop a compelling 'Story of Self" (2) Learned to volunteer in Battleground States (3) Made calls to voters in a Battleground State (4) Learned how to build Neighborhood teams (5) Learned how to Recruit and Retain volunteers.
The "Story of Self" which must be told in 2 minutes with the following elements - Character, Challenge, Choice, Outcome. We had two guest volunteers who told their (Story of Self) stories. AWESOME!!! One was the most gorgeous African American father of two in medical school who told a fantastic story of a near death experience that changed his values and caused him to join the Obama campaign. (He's a better, more emotionally connected speaker than OBAMA!) The second speaker was a 15 year old young lady who showed up at a volunteer meeting out of curiosity and was immediately put to work. She is now so fired up about Obama that she and a girlfriend went to Nevada and knocked on doors for votes. She has started a high school group for Obama. Fantastic young lady who was SO amazing! Tall blond girl who was dressed in shorts and flip flops!
We broke into groups to work on our own stories. Turns out Group 6 is Palo Alto and Menlo Park. There were 6-7 of us. (One VC, one Apple SW engineer, one Palo Alto mom, 2 retirees, didn't know what others did). We worked on our stories for one hour. After practicing, we had to choose the best one to be told in the larger group. My story was chosen. Each group's representative shared their stories and the group cheered each of our stories WILDLY!!! Lots of inspiration and emotion at this point. One woman told the story of her daughter's suicide due to lack of ability to obtain medication because of no insurance. Many were in tears. She got a standing ovation.
GOING TO NEVADA - We had all committed to at least one weekend in Nevada. Nevada strategy: Look at the numbers - tells you why.
2004
Total Registered Voters: 854,822
Registered Democrats: 343,679
Registered Republicans: 355,116
Democratic Deficit: -11,437
George Bush: 50.47%
John Kerry: 47.88%
Difference: -2.59%
2008
Total Registered Voters: 1,059,613
Registered Democrats: 458,877
Registered Republicans: 397,172
Democratic Advantage: 61,705
(as of today, the number is closer to 80,00)
Statewide Goal - 52% of the vote for Barack (2 more congressional seats)
We broke for lunch at 12:30 or so. Pizza and Salad for lunch. During lunch we were encouraged to sign up for the Nevada trip. Our team was told that we would probably go to Carson City. It turns out that most people get together and drive to Nevada and share the gas cost. They get up at 3:30 and arrive in Nevada by the 9:00 am orientation and training. The travel assistance group does everything via the database. A bank of laptops were available for our sign ups. The technology of the Obama Campaign was impressive. Our team would like to go together and targeted the second weekend in October. I was the coordinator of the contact information.
After lunch we had a guest speaker - Kamala Harris. She was warmly welcomed. She did the cheerleading stuff for our candidate. We almost got Al Gore (he was at the San Jose Fairmont) but was dragged away by his handlers for another event.
Next - Phone CALLS to New Mexico - we were all asked to bring at least one cell phone and charger to this event. Many of us dreaded this part. Fear of getting into a debate, fear of rejection, fear of getting an angry McCain voter! That's because most of us didn't understand the role of the phone bank. The real purpose of the phone bank is to IDENTIFY the voter, NOT to CONVINCE the voter. ALWAYS be respectful, keep it brief (30 seconds) and document every call. The training included role playing which was very helpful. We were all given call sheets with 40 people and sent off for an hour with a script. Just as we were told, most people were not home. In these cases, we circled "NH". I reached 10 people out of my 40. One told me she was having a party and hung up on me. All the rest were already OBAMA voters!! I was calling the Santa Fe area code and that's obviously a BLUE area code. My entire group had the same experience. The best answer was for us to get an UNDECIDED VOTER but I didn't get any. I had one call when the answer was an abrupt Yes. I suspected the person said Yes, he was voting for Obama just to get me off the phone. All the rest were enthusiastic OBAMA voters and one thanked me for working for the campaign.
We tabulated all the statistics at the end of the hour - 2,845 calls were made, 784 actual connections and 590 Obama voters. This information will be carefuly inputted into the database. All undecided voters are put on a list for the travelers to Nevada who will go door to door and make every attempt to talk to this person in person. That's what our group will be doing the second weekend in October. We are warned this is very tiring and to wear comfortable shoes.
Our next speaker was another new volunteer. In three weeks she had created a new neighborhood organization in her tiny town in the Santa Cruz area of 70 volunteers - two phone bank events every week. Her story is SUPER inspiring. She said that everything is at stake in this election and believes she is saving America for her children. This attitude was echoed over and over throughout the day. Another amazing, inspired, motivated, passionate person.
Everyone felt this was the most important election of our time. This election is a "CAN"T LOSE". The stakes are too high. The future of our country and our children are at stake. You could almost hear the "AMENS" all around the room when the passion and urgency of this campaign is communicated.
This was my first political campaign and it was a great experience! Made some new friends and learned a lot!
October 8, 2008 - Phone Bank Event at Griffin Home - 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm. Please join if you have time and let me know.
If you want to drop in and make some phone calls yourself, the Palo Alto office on El Camino Real is open from 9 to 9 every week day. 9 to 8 on Saturday and 11-8 on Sunday. Rachi (Rocky) is the volunteer in charge. She is an beautiful Indian women who just received her MD. She was offered a position by Kaiser and told them she had to delay her start date because she has to work full time for Obama until the election.
OBAMA/BIDEN 2008!!!!
