Well,On Tuesday, my sister and I drove to Union, MO's Democratic HQ (where I used to volunteer day in/day out for years). We waited for 2 hours in sweltering heat to get a ticket to see Barack Obama. It was worth every moment! On Wednesday, July 30, 2008, the rain poured, but it was temperate and beautiful. My sister and I packed our umbrellas. We headed down to the park, while feeling excitement the entire way. I wore my Obama-Clinton t-shirt in hopes that he'd get the message I've been sending to as many people as would listen (day in/day out for months). The security measures were tight. Security Guards even stowed away everyone's umbrella's in safekeeping, just until the event was over. I didn't notice, until later, that the rain stopped just before Barack appeared. Anyway, I met Barack Obama. I hand delivered my personal letter to him. I told him that all the teachers were backing him. I persuaded him to sign my shirt, which he said, "Sure! I'll sign your shirt. He signed my right shoulder, and as he did that, I told him, "I want you to know that I still believe in hope." Finally, I said, "And, this is my sister!" He reached through the heavy crowd to shake her hand and say, "Well, how are you?!"If you can access youtube.com, here's the link to the video I made of the event...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOhWT_7X2O4
Peace,
Daniel :)
I am tired of listening to John McCain's lies and campaign ads... The truth is we need "CHANGE" and this is why Senator Obama must, and will win in November.. But it is up to us to get this word out and explain how very important it is to elect Senator Obama.. It is frightening to even think what the consequences would be if McCain/Paelin were running this country... We have had enough with the last eight years, economy is as low as it's been in quite awhile. Gas prices continue to increase and the cost of living for middle class people, such as myself is sky rocketing.. This is why we need to get the word out how very important it is Obama/Biden are our next president and vice president... I think we have heard enough from John McCain and all his lies and business as usual like it's been for the last eight years. I don't know about you, but I can't stand anymore of what's occuring at this time with the present administration... Their change is not what this country needs, we need Senator Obama to get us back on the right track. Please help spread the word about how important it is to elect Senator Obama to begin a new and brighter future for us and our children and grandchildren in 2009!
I can't believe how long it is since I've had time to blog, or that it is the end of August already. Since Stan arrived, time has flown by so fast that it's hard to know what day it is, and we're loving it.
To think, we started with a big, empty open room and a handful of Democratic stalwarts and now our HQ is a hive of activity, buzzing with phone banks, canvassing, planning and everything else that goes into a successful campaign. Neighborhood Team Leaders have been selected for much of the county, many of us have been down to Rolla to complete our training, with another group set to go next week, volunteers have been and continue to be recruited and we are looking like a fully fledged campaign HQ.
My area, which covers Union and Villa Ridge, has almost completed its first pass on voter contact with an excellent success rate that I don't want to post here because we don't want to make the other side jealous, and other teams are catching up. A bit of inter-team friendly rivalry will spur us on, in a good-natured way, but for now, we can boast that we are the best. We are still recruiting volunteers for the whole county though, so please, if you can spare a couple of hours a week or a couple of days a week, join us in this exciting campaign to make history.
Another exciting thing for us was the arrival of our second paid Field Organizer last week. Megan drove all the way from California after doing a few months of service in Nepal. We are proud of our two young Field Organizers and love them to bits for their personalities, their dedication and their sheer hard work, although to look at them in the photo below, you'd think they just stood around drinking. In fairness, this was at the end of the Convention Watch Party when they took a very, very short break.
With the arrival of our Field Organizer, Stan Williams, on Wednesday, seen here on the left, with Regional Organizer Brad Komar, we have really hit the ground running in Franklin County, Missouri. Stan comes to us all the way from Arizona and drove the whole distance with just one hour's sleep, so he looked a bit like a deer caught in headlights when he arrived, but is now in full swing, getting northern Franklin organized into teams, arranging meetings across his part of the county and putting in well over twelve hours a day.
I feel very privileged to have been asked to be a team leader - or something like that - and tonight completed the 84 calls that I started last night, and this after a four-hour stint at the Washington Fair, registering new voters and signing up volunteers. This is beginning to feel like a real campaign and I am very excited about what we are doing, right here in Franklin, a fairly red area of MO.
Tomorrow, we will be canvassing to register new voters, then will continue the recruitment effort, and then on Monday evening, will have an organizing meeting with team volunteers.
We are hitting the ground running, folks, and enjoying every minute of it!
If you live in Frankling County, Missouri, please don't forget to join us for canvassing tomorrow. It is easy and fun, especially when there are a lot of us working together to bring change.
Where: HQ in Union - 208 S. Church St. We will then go to St. Claire to canvass.
When: Please be at the HQ at 10.30 am for training.
Why: We need all hands on deck to turn Missouri blue in November.
Who: Anyone and everyone. Bring your friends and make this a canvass to remember.
See you tomorrow!
All the years we've lived here, we had never been to the Washington Town & Country Fair, but we signed up to do a stint at the Democratic Party booth yesterday, on the first day of the fair and will be back again tomorrow.
Even in the afternoon there was a good crowd. We made our way to the booth, situated in the Merchants' Building and settled down for an interesting evening. When we got there, we found Kris, leader of the Franklin County Young Democrats, who has signed up for a marathon stint at the fair. She spent a lot of her time painting Obama signs. That girl deserves a medal for the work she does.
We had a steady stream of people coming to our booth, many of them asking for buttons and bumper stickers, as well as tee-shirts and other Obama gear, but we are running short of stuff to give and stuff to sell. I have some buttons on order from MoveOn.org, but they are delayed too. Obama gear has to be the hottest thing around at the moment.
Talking about Obama gear, George had to have had the coolest shirt I've seen so far. He bought it when Obama came to Union. He was just one of the many people who wanted to express their excitment over this election. Franklin County is really beginning to rock.
If you are in Franklin County - or even if you're not, come on over and see us at the Fair, tell us your story and sign up to volunteer. We want to grow this county into one of the bluest in Missouri, but we can only do that if we all work together.
We decided we were mad. Yesterday was hot and humid, with a heat index well into triple digits and an atmosphere you could slice with a knife, yet my husband and I had volunteered to do a stint of exit-polling in the Missouri primaries, to try and identify Democratic voters.
When we arrived at our assigned polling place, there was one lone Republican woman reading a book, a stack of literature on a chair next to her and a couple of signs propped up against her chair. We thought we would be nice and say hello. She muttered something back grumpily, then went back to her book.
Polling was slow and, because of the heat and threatening thunder storms, many voters hurried into the polls and back to their cars as fast as they could, but there were a good number of Democrats who shared how on fire they were for Obama and who gladly gave their contact information. Some of them wanted to share their stories. One man had been laid off from a lucrative job and was now doing menial work, just to make ends meet. One woman was worried how she was going to pay her bills. But the common, uniting factor everyone shared was hope. Hope that Obama will be elected, and hope of a brighter future for themselves, their families and the nation. One man was so fired up by meeting some fellow Obama supporters that he immediately went to round up family members and neighbours to vote.
The storms held off until after the polls had closed and we were back home. It had been a hard three hours in temperatures that don't suit this English nature, but the thought of all those people whose enthusiasm could not be contained and whose stories just had to be told to someone who would listen made it all worthwhile. Today, we will be at the Washington Fair, hoping to meet more Missourians who have caught this infectious sense of optimism and hope after a long, long drought.
This afternoon, we went to a brief meeting to talk about tomorrow's exit polling, which will hopefully identify some new supporters and/or volunteers, then we went to a Monday night auction where I've had a couple of minor verbal run-ins with anti-Obama people.
Tonight though, a nice surprise. Someone grabbed my arm and asked where I got my Obama button as she needed one for her husband. As usual when this happens, I took mine off and gave it to her, but that's not the point of my writing. The point is that I signed up a couple of new volunteers, not for our county but from a nearby one, and will be able to pass the information on to their organizers, as well as met some supporters who were over visiting from Indiana.
Not only that, but people who were borderline antagonistic just a few short weeks ago wanted to talk about Obama's visit to Union last week.
It all shows the value of wearing our Obama gear, getting known as Obama supporters, and being prepared at all times to register voters (I have a couple of cards in my bag) or sign up volunteers. This word of mouth community campaigning depends on it.
Until today, even I didn't believe the Republicans could sink any lower, but with their latest and very offensive web ad, they have become lower than low in a way that I, quite frankly, find blasphemous.
Watch for yourself
We all know Obama to have been blessed. Those who know him (I met a couple of them early this year) and those who have met him see in him strength, depth and kindness, as well as intellect. Those who know his family cannot deny that Michelle and the girls are a real blessing. We also know him to be a leader who can rally people to take upon themselves the responsibility for meeting the challenges of our time. But we all know that he is a human being.
There is nothing wrong with being a leader who can mobilize people to take action on behalf of themselves and their neighbors. Winston Churchill, in his time, was one such leader. Without his great statesmanship and soaring speeches, England might well have crumbled instead of standing up through the Blitz, through danger of invasion and through great deprivation.
There is nothing wrong with telling the people that there is no point in waiting for others to do what needs to be done, that they themselves are the ones who can bring change.
And there is nothing wrong with the American people, or indeed the people of the world, from recognizing a great leader who speaks truth.
But there is something very wrong with attaching a religious connotation to all this in such a highly offensive way. As a Catholic, as a Christian, I am profoundly hurt by this and can only imagine that those connected to this ad and those who approve it have no fear of God. I hope - I really hope - that my fellow Catholics, my fellow Christians will stand up and condemn this abuse of our "waiting in joyful hope" for the Second Coming of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And I hope some religious leaders will step up to the plate and roundly condemn these tactics.
For all of us in this part of Missouri, there is a real treat on the Washington Missourian's site. Lots of good pictures from the Union event on Wednesday.
http://www.emissourian.com/site/news.cfm?brd=1409&dept_id=614630&nr=1&nostat=1
Just scroll down for two sets of pictures. And what's more, you can order reprints.
Yesterday began with me waking up thinking about the Obama BBQ in Union, Missouri, just as I had gone to sleep the night before thinking about it. We were down at the Union HQ at around 1.30, then about an hour later, made our way to the City Park in torrential rain, where we stood under the shelter of the pavilion until Secret Service wanted to move us out so they could officially check us through.
Everyone was in high spirits. Lots of laughter and nervous excitement kept us going through the inevitable wait for the security men to let us through the checkpoint. This picture is of my husband with one of the local Democrats.
Representatives of the UAW were standing outside chanting for Obama and people had begun to gether along the streets just outside the park, hoping to catch a glimpse of him as he arrived. One man had brought a huge banner that read "Rednecks For Obama". So nice is our future President that he actually walked over and signed the banner before coming into the pavilion, as well as strolling over to shake hands with some pro-McCain protesters, but I am ahead of myself.
In streamed the lucky 200, who had waited all day yesterday in the hope of gettinga ticket, while those who had not been fortunate stood in line behind them, hoping to be able to get in. Fortunately, they did allow most of those people in to stand around the edge of the pavilion out of the rain, along with the union representatives. Pretty soon, everyone was seated and munching away on their hamburgers and hotdogs, exchanging stories of why they are supporting Obama and generally having a good time, while CNN and a host of other news agencies set up shop and waited for Obama to arrive.
As a volunteer, I didn't get to sit and listen to him for long. We had not been allowed to eat with the others and had been asked to line up at the food counter as soon as Barack Obama begun to speak. Most of us gave it a couple of minutes before dragging himself away, and a friend of mine sitting next to me, for whom this was the first time seeing him was repeating over and over, "He's just GORgeous, he's just gorgeous..." I thought I might need to throw a bucket of cold water over her, but in truth, his immense charisma does have a strange effect on people!
Anyway, there we were, all lined up for food, nerves beginning to get the better of us as we had been told that Obama would be serving us. And he did. We shuffled along, now cordoned off from the rest, secret service people all around, each to have a word with Obama, shake his hand and be served our meal.
What really struck me though was that once each of us got close, all nerves would disappear. Obama has this way of putting everyone around him at ease. When it was my turn, I asked him to sign one of my buttons. He was unsure whether it would show, so I told him to write on anything, but we settled on the button as he commented on what he called my "fine Missouri accent" - which is in fact a British one - and I joked that I had been working hard to hang onto it these last fifteen years. We laughed about something. I can't remember what but I have it on a photo, then I floated off, sporting a signed badge and a hamburger.
I'd already managed to eat about three quarters of the burger before I realised what I had in my hand and that my mouth was so dry that the food was having a hard time going down. I wrapped the rest and pocketed it, then went to share experiences with other volunteers and friends. Everyone was floating, even while the men tried to pretend they were not.
By the time we all parted last night, we were exhausted. The reality of the day was just sinking in and we were all left with the impression of a genuinely nice guy who is never happier than when surrounded by regular folk. A man not only relaxed himself, but able to put everyone else at ease. He said something appropriate to each and every one of us, something specific to us, and for a brief moment, we each felt as if we were the only ones there because this candidate of ours is a man who is giving full attention to those he is with from moment to moment.
Altogether a wonderful day that we will all cherish.
Yesterday was a hectic, exciting day for us in Franklin County, Missouri. On Saturday, we had a hint that Barack Obama might be coming to Union. It was confirmed on Monday night, at a Democratic meeting, that he would be here in the evening, for a barbeque. Yesterday, we were down at the office all afternoon, getting ready to hand out the 200 tickets.
We arrived at around 12.45. The doors were to open at four, but already there was a short line of expectant, excited people sitting on the sidewalk in the stifling heat. I talked to Lisa and Maggie (photos soon) who had been sitting there since eight in the morning, determined to be first. They were ecstatic at the thought of seeing Barack Obama in person, and I caught them on the way out, grinning from ear to ear as they held up their tickets for all to see.
We were not short of volunteers and the office was buzzing all day. The Press arrived while the line grew, snaking around the block. People of all ages sat under the shade of umbrellas, playing cards, playing music, chatting amiably and waiting patiently, while inside we greeted newcomers, sold buttons and just tried to stay cool.
It took only about 45 minutes to get everyone signed in and moved out, tickets in hand, and I have to say that I have seldom seen such happy faces as those who emerged, blinking into the still-hot sunlight at the end of the day.
I will get pictures up as soon as I can fathom how to get them into a blog. Until then, we are overwhelmingly excited at the prospect of seeing Obama this afternoon. We will be volunteers at the event, and soooooo looking forward to it.
More later.
