I was having a conversation today with a co-worker, who has some very conservative relatives, and got to wondering about the "softer" things that we don't talk about very much in public - not in the context of politics or education or our communities. How do we talk to those who buy into the fear? What is the bridge that could allow meaningful conversation to occur?
As odd as it is to articulate, some of it has to flow from love - we have to be open and exposed and speak from a place of love and hope. Parker Palmer speaks of this process in the context of teaching- of the strengths love can bring and .....talking about heart and hope and love really is not so easy. Not in public and not in relation to strangers, politics......but I think we have to start - or perhaps more effectively, I have to start and draw my support from others who do so as well.
I helped canvas in PA this Saturday, the last weekend of canvassing. It was quite the adventure. Five of us packed up in compact car to drive out to our turf. By this time it was raining pretty heavily. I set off with two others; not having brought an umbrella or raincoat splitting up was somewhat impractical. We trooped through the rain, flipping through our soggy list. Despite the terrible weather, the experience was still pretty rewarding. Almost all of our contacts were really receptive and positive and pro-Obama. Most volunteered this right off the bat, which made our job easy and brightened the day up a bit. Many people had already been canvassed several times, and we suspect that was due to labor union activity, which for some reason is not coordinated with the main campaign. I didn't see a lot of McCain campaign activity, although at one house I did encounter McCain campaign materials stuffed in a mailbox/slot, which we have been told is illegal (owned by the federal government). That annoyed me somewhat, they should get their act together.
All in all, despite (because of?) the weather, and being dead of exhaustion (this election is wearing on me; I've become addicted to politico.com and CNN) it was a very positive experience; you get to meet some great people, both fellow canvassers and fellow citizens out there. I plan to attend final GOTV events next weekend (and maybe Monday or Tuesday), and then it will finally be over and we'll hopefully see that our hard work has paid off.
Next time however I'll come with a better canvassing/GOTV kit:
* raincoat
* flashlight
* umbrella
* backback or messenger bag of some sort
* pre-determined walk route
* pre-grouped campaign material packets
After hearing Sarah Palin struggle to explain what the role of the v.p. is and get it wrong each time I think we're in need of a new program of civics education. In truth how many random people can actually, clearly, say what the duties of any given memember of our government are? What can we expect from oursleves, our fellow citizens, if all we are exposed to is the mis-representations and convienient half-truths of television and politicians?
Still ruminating on this....
Wow! Central New Yorkers sure are hearty! 27 volunteers traelled from Utica, Oswego, Cortland, Big Flats and Ithaca to canvass in Scranton on Saturday- no huricane could hold them back.It seems like almost every car had 3 or 4 passengers, so the carpooling worked out well and I know that it's always fun to meet people who share the same ideals. I must say that Obama supporters are really a great crowd! It's what got me so drawn into this campaign.
Bill, the Scranton Field Director, said that this was one of the best days they've had and was incredibly impressed with the good sporots that everyone maitained. I can take no credit. THANK YOU to all who made this trip and for braving the weather. Though rain is not ideal for comfort, it actually makes for a better canvass in that everyone is at home, perhaps watching the news and thinking that low-road attack politics policy is not a substitue for an actual platform with solutions.
This trip was not well publicized and came right after Labor Day. I am hopeful that for the next two trips our numbers will be at least doubled. If our numbers are suffieceint , then we may get a bus (buses). It about 90% that we're heading to Scranton Wilkes-Barre, but that also depends on the size of our group and what is happening on the ground in PA. I am working on supporter housing and will try to update the evnt page as the details get solidified
September 20th and 21st
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gplddd
October 4th and 5th
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gpl4k3
The voter registration deadline for PA is 10/6.
ANdrea
Yesterday, I traveled with fellow Barackians in CNY down to Scranton. We knocked on 185 doors and not one single McCain voter! Scranton is looking very very blue.
Syracuse for Barack is organizing canvassing trips to the Scranton area each weekend until the elecion. I want to help get SUNY Cortland students involved. We can get you rides, get housing for you with other college students in the area, and get you involved.
We need to take PA and now is the time to do it. Contact me if you're interested and in the Cortland area.
I have been watching the convention on television and absolutely loved Hillary Clinton's speech as well as Michelle Obama's speech.
I am a very proud supporter of Barack Obama and hope that I hear from others on this blog that they are proud supporters.
I am disabled so I don't have much money to donate to the campaign but I have done what I could to help.
I think that Barack Obama will make a great President and I am pleased with his choice of Joe Biden as well.
Kudos to Jeannie Burns and the Jukebox Raiders for an awesome benefit performance Friday night!! The band performed a combination of rock, soul and bluesy tunes that got fans out of their seats and onto the dance floor. Though some of the audience came just to enjoy Jeannie’s performance, the Obama esprit de corp was unmistakable and hopefully generated new interest in the Obama Campaign. It should be noted that a surprise guest appearance by our very own Josh Bornstein playing the flute was particularly well received. Thanks to every one who came out. And a big thank you to Jeannie and the Jukebox Raiders!!!
Thanks to all that attended our mobilizing meeting on Monday. I left the meeting convinced that together we are going to put Barack Obama into the White House! Unfortunately in our enthusiasm, we ended our meeting with several things left uncompleted. First, we did not set a next meeting date. Since the Platform Meeting (this Sunday, July 27, 7-9pm Ithaca Town Hall) may generate some new priorities/activities and I do not want have too many meetings too often, we will meet Monday August 4th in the Tompkins County Library's Borg Warner room from 6:30 to 8:00pm. Look for more details to follow. Second, we did not adequately give people the opportunity to indicate what campaign activities they are interested in. Here are the broad groups that I envision us organizing around.
Remember this is an evolving list and we may find that some areas do not really work for us while others work better. What you can do now is think what areas you have interest in and let us via email so we can start getting people with similar interests together. Again if a grouping is missing please suggest it because others may have the same thought. Of course, we won't be able to do everything but I think we will be as strong as the options we have before us. That's it for now. The minutes of the meeting will be going up soon. Please tell friends that are interested in helping the Obama campaign of our activities and encourage them to sign up on www.barackobama.com and register. Once registered, go to Groups and join Ithaca for Obama (and any other groups that may interest you). That's it. I hope you are as excited as I am!!See you soon,
Brian Hunt
Ithaca for Obama
In PA most of the news coverage focuses on Hillary, and is somewhat biased against Obama, not unsurprising given that HRC is spending so much time in the state. In response to this, many PA Obama groups are taking advantage of every public poll to voice support. So I'm asking everyone, even if you can't locate PA on a map, to visit the following news station site and vote in the poll for Obama:
http://wicu12.com/
Spread the word as widely as possible.
Every little bit of publicity helps! Momentum is key!
For the person in second place to (graciously) suggest that should would allow Obama to be her VP only further underlines her arrogance and sense of entitlement of this nomination. The only reason he is not winning the big states is simply because the voters there know her better. If this were between Barack and McCain, the big O would win these states handily. Record turnouts, people fired up from all walks of life. He is making good on his promise to bring this nation together already, and he's not even the nominee yet!
A few words for Hillary supporters: don't you know when you've been beat and it's time to leave the tea party?
I stayed up til 1:30 watching CNN, growing more stony by the minute until I couldn't deprive my eyes of the sleep they needed. While I had a feeling Clinton would take Ohio, just seeing her preening her pantsuit feathers after the win in Texas turned my heart to ice. Her arrogance, her dirty politics, her sense of entitlement, all of it was so hard to swallow. I know how hard the thousands of people who have volunteered for this campaign have worked, especially over the last few weeks, which makes the losses so hard to bear.
But this is how Hillary plays the game. She will stop at nothing to tear Barack down, to belittle him, to make him seem as if he is nothing more than a public speaker, which is exactly why she does not deserve the nomination. Barack, much to his credit, has taken her hits in stride but now needs to ask himself "Do I go after her the same way she goes after me?" Tough question indeed.
There's been a lot of talk of this whole race tearing the Democratic party apart. I can honestly say, simply and truly, that yes, it is. Because up until this point, I saw Hillary as a subtle, dull thorn in my side. I didn't think she was anything of substance; just another polished political person in a Washington sea littered with them. After seeing her act like a petulant child who is being denied entry to the little tea party she wants to attend, I have come to terms with the fact that everything she does and says has left an extremely bitter taste in my mouth. What's more, I will never, ever vote for her.
If she does indeed clinch the nomination (and good lord, let's keep our fingers crossed that she doesn't), for the first time in five years or so, I will have no desire to vote. Correct me if I'm wrong but I have a feeling that so many of Barack's young supporters will simply fade into the distance, and Hillary will call upon her big, fat, powerful buddies to churn her machine until she can finally land a spot in the White House. In other words, politics as usual.
I don’t know why I didn’t hear about it from David Plouffe first, but it is great.
http://factcheck.barackobama.com/
Enjoy,
Michael Rupp
aka:WNYmathGuy
The documents subsequently linked below should be redistributed to any Obama Supporter you know. The documents are the official rules for delegate selection and petitioning in New York State. This is vital to getting our favorite on the ticket for the primary race.
“The Guide to Becoming a Delegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention is at
http://www.geocities.com/wnymathguy/GuideToDelegate08DNC.pdf
“Overview of Becoming a Delegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention is at
and “A Fact Sheet about the 2008 Delegate Selection Plan” is at
http://www.geocities.com/wnymathguy/2008delegateFactSheet.pdf
I noticed this final version of the rules isn’t so long and lawyerly as the proposal was.
Enjoy and good luck to you.
Sincerely,
a.k.a. WNYmathGuy
If you are not a New York Group, or a group with New York residents, I sent this to you in error.
At the end of this past Spring I made a Yahoo!Group for New York Obama supporters.http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NYforObama/
Perhaps you ask, "WHY ANOTHER GROUP!"
If you did ask that... The reason is because we have no place on any Obama group or page to store files for redistribution. I have created a PDF of the Delegate rules for New York State and stored it in the files section. Also their is no semi-static place to store important links to outside resources. This group has a links section that is very organize-able. When we post a link in a blog, it gets lost over time as new blogs post. It also has a database, and polls section which could be used to store the name and number of the senior organizer in your district, or the named and accepted delegate for each district.
All these features will make us more effective. The rest of the many features on that group will not. If you are a serious volunteer I urge you to try the group. I tried to make as many features available as I could without you needing a Yahoo! ID, but some may require you to sign in on Yahoo. If you do not have a Yahoo! account, they will let you have one for free, but you don't need to make a new email address to do that. You can just tell them during account creation that you already have an email account.
That's all for now
Ooh-Rah! for Barack!
Michael Ruppa.k.a WNYmathGuy
P.S. also see http://www.geocities.com/wnymathguy/DelegateSelection/DelegateSelection.htmfor a web version of the Delegate rules.
Breaking news from the conference call with Campaign Manager David Plouffe: A new online fundraising contest is being launched that will grant the members of the My.BarackObama.com groups that have the most donors at the end of the day on September 30th, the opportunity to participate in a personal conference call with Senator Barack Obama and Campaign Manager David Plouffe. Click here for more information on the Group Fundraising Challenge.
State of the Campaign
Barack Obama's Schedule: On Monday, Barack Obama received the endorsement of the New York City Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association. Tuesday, he’s speaking at Change to Win in Chicago. Wednesday, he can be seen live on the NBC/NECN/New Hampshire Public Radio/New Hampshire Democratic Party debate, which will be broadcast live on MSNBC at 9pm EST. Following the debate he’ll head to New York, where he’ll participate in a live interview on ABC’s The View at 11am EST on Thursday before leading a major rally in Washington Square Park. On Friday, he speaks at Howard University’s Convocation and participates in the CBC Issues Forum in Washington, DC.
Hello to all,
Quite some time ago I thought I would be a better Obama volunteer if I knew how Barack's position on the issues compared to the other candidates. I was swimming in information trying to do an objective comparison of our position compared to other candidates. They name their positions different so you can't line them up easily for side by side comparisons. I realized after reading some of the posts before the "Walk For Change" that I wasn't the only one with the desire to study the issues.
I completed this website about 1 day before the walk for change, but chose not to mention it because I felt the sense of urgency was leaving us. I feel the timing is right now to announce the "Issue Browser" that I made. It is a free Geocities page, I built it with information from each candidates website, but mistakes may have accidentially been introduced. Please, please feel free to tell me about any improvements or repairs that I should make to it.
I organized the issues by comparing the US Constitution as it relates to powers of the President and then SUBJECTIVELY slotted each candidates individual issue into one or more of the constitutional powers. Any input from Political Science type people would be really appreciated; I'm a math, finance, mechanical type of thinker, and I am aware their is a LOT that I don't know. I invite help from Communications type people too, as I sometimes don't get my message across clearly.
Please note that free Geocities pages are not allowed to link to anything else on the internet; links only point to files in the pages own directory. I forced in text strings of web sites so you could read them and type them in an address bar if intrested, but I can't make them linkable. I did before and Yahoo! closed down my site and deleted all the files.
Michael E. Ruppa.k.a WNYmathGuy
