Susan and her friend Annie met during the Primary season. After hosting a voter registration drive at their local high school, they decided to continue the tradition and host a Unite for Change event. Residents of Riverside, Connecticut, they have never been involved in a political campaign before, but that has all changed…
Annie and I had never done anything like this before but I must say we were a great team and we had about 10 other people who showed up early to volunteer to help us and that was wonderful. Between posting the event on the Obama site, putting a notice in our local paper, getting flyers out around town and my son’s friends spreading the word through Facebook, we had at least 150 in total. The whole evening was amazing. We had several tables set up as people arrived. One table had sign up forms for people to volunteer for different activities – Voter Registration Drives, Canvasing, House Parties, Phonebanking, Visibility, etc. Another table had t-shirts, buttons, signs, bumper stickers, mugs and posters for sale – to help them be more visible. We also had a table with pre-made packets of 25 voter registration forms and instructions for people who wanted to get out and register voters right away. At the door we had a sign in sheet for everyone to fill out when they came in and we gave them each a “tips sheet” to take home with them. It listed all the amazing things on the Obama website and we also included other websites to help them get the information they need when talking to people such as fightthesmears, snopes, factcheck, etc.The presentation was great! After welcoming and introducing ourselves and a few of the local delegates who arrived to share the evening with us, we then showed the DVD. One woman who recently retired told me that she wanted to use her time to do activities to help the campaign but had felt a little intimidated until she saw the DVD and heard us describe doing each of these activities and realized that she could do this! We shared anecdotal stories and the crowd loved hearing them.Because we were such a large group we really couldn’t have everyone introduce themselves so instead we asked the group some questions such as: “Raise your hand if this your first time at an Obama Event”. Three-quarters of the room raised their hand! It felt so great that we had brought so many people into the process by hosting this event.As we talked about each activity we asked people to hold up their hands if they had done voter drives, phone calling, canvassing, etc. – so that people in the room could look around and see who they might want to ask questions of later. At the end we suggested that people go up and meet at least 4 people before they leave so they can start to network. It was such a great group of friendly, enthusiastic, appreciative people and we felt that the night was a great success. As most of the older people filtered out and most of the younger people filtered in, my son’s band provided an hour of great music for us to dance and celebrate to while a Yes We Can sign hung over their heads!We’re now planning to do one of these per month until the General Election!
Susan and Annie's event raised over $2,000 for the campaign last night. Here are some pictures from the event...
If you attended or hosted a Unite For Change event, let us know how it went in the comments below. If you have photos from the event that you'd like to share, you can email them to photos@barackobama.com.
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