Organizing for America | Urban Mommi Speaks: Cell Phone Army Volunteer Receives Call Backs from Angry McCain Supporters

Cell Phone Army Volunteer Receives Call Backs from Angry McCain Supporters

By Ms Lovelee - Oct 29th, 2008 at 11:12 am EDT

Also listed in: Hartford for Obama

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Tags: Phone, phone banking, phonebanking

Photo from MoveOn.Org Party Photos

I received an e-mail from a MoveOn.Org member inviting us to a Cell Phone Calling Party. I told my sister and we felt compelled to volunteer for the Cell Phone Army for Barack Obama. We thought if we did not participate in some way we would feel guilty for not doing our part in order for him to be our next President of the United States.   Politics has excited our family unlike ever before, we eagerly headed to the address sent to us by e-mail the week before by a MoveOn.Org member in our area. I had helped calling before for Hillary during the primaries but my sister never did any kind of calling before for a political candidate so I dragged her along.

As we parked our car we saw about 10 people in a backyard scattered, as if they were in a city park each with a phone in ear and a script in hand. Upon entering the home of an unknown fellow Obama supporter and MoveOn.org member, we saw at least a dozen people in the living room as well.   The Host greeted us with a warm welcome, food, coffee, and lots of goodies. She continued to hand us information on what our goal was for phone calls, a script and a list of people printed out from a database that MoveOn.Org uses online to contact their own members all over the country. The goal was to call all MoveOn.Org members in swing states and have them commit to volunteering next weekend. We had times and a list to check off yes, no, do not call, wrong number, etc...
I made calls from my own cell phone but a majority of my calls were not going through or went to a voicemail and we were told not to leave messages. I successfully called 4 pages of phone numbers which was way beyond what I thought I could do so upon completion I left with my head high and happy.

Last night, two days after my day at the Calling Party I started to receive calls back from Indiana. Some people were willing to go help in their area but I received 3 phone calls back from angry McCain supporters. They each asked me who I was and I proudly told them what I was calling about. After stating I was an Obama supporter asking for them to volunteer each of them verbally attacked me. The first woman said that she was a McCain supporter and why would I have her phone number. I explained where I got the numbers and told them they were registered with MoveOn.Org and that the phone number was on the roster. She then proclaimed her Patriotism and yelled that I was a fool and un-patriotic to believe in a Muslim Socialist and that anyone who was for Obama were commi's. Thankfully she hung up. The other 2 calls were from men who one called me a welfare monger who is trying to destroy our country to the last person who crank-called me for over an hour telling me that I am stealing their information and how did I get their cell phone number? That I was a liar and corrupt and that FOX News was going to hear about my fraudulent activity. The continued went with hang up calls with the final call asking me to volunteer for McCain's Campaign. I kindly declined by saying, " Oh, I'm sorry I can not volunteer for Senator McCain because I am an Obama supporter. I do appreciate the call and may the man with the most votes win! Thanks again.." I then hung up and never heard from them again....

I still feel good about what I did, I just wish people were not so angry and wished those people believed me that I did get their names and phone numbers from this organization that they signed up to be contacted. Maybe someone signed them up as a joke.... some joke huh...

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