Organizing for America | Pamela Hayes's Blog: My Day as an Obama Volunteer 3: Learning to do my job

My Day as an Obama Volunteer 3: Learning to do my job

By Pam Hayes - Nov 15th, 2008 at 11:53 am EST

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This story follows “My Day as an Obama Volunteer: A sinking feeling”. Donald, my door-to-door buddy, and I each had a canvassing packet. You might find a detailed description of each packet tedious to read. If so, it would be because everything was so organized and detailed. Nevertheless, please bear with me. Inside each packet were the following items:

1) A map of the area to be canvassed, with little dots for each home. The dots were arranged according to which side of the street they were on! Donald would cover the even-numbered houses while I covered the odd-numbered houses.

2) A single sheet of paper for each street we were to cover. Each sheet contained entries for each person we were to visit. The houses were in order of their street number. For each person, we had the following information:

a) Name, address, and phone number.

b) Gender and age.

c) Check boxes for the following: not home; inaccessible; and a few I cannot recall.

d) Check boxes for “supporter” and “non-supporter”.

e) Boxes for “voted”, “(would) volunteer”, and “needs ride”.

f) Where multiple registered voters lived at the same address, a solid grey separated the people, unlike the solid black line separating distinct addresses.

3) A sheet of paper on which we had written our partner’s name and cell phone number, and the cell phone number of our fearless leader, Adam.

4) A sheet of paper outlining our script.

5) Campaign brochures in the form of door-hangers.

The houses we were to target covered a wide area. There were a few dense clusters of houses, but there were also some houses and apartments spread over a larger area. I have included our map, minus the dots for houses. However, I do not think the resolution is high enough for you to easily read the street names, so I will not enumerate the streets.

Despite the phenomenal degree of organization that went into these packets, I was immediately lost. My anxiety about the whole experience was keeping me from comprehending the map. I was too worried about what to say to the human beings who might answer our knocks!

Donald graciously accepted my plea to do the first few houses together while I “learned the ropes”. Donald was keenly aware of the need for efficiency, but he put this aside for the moment in order to help me through this difficult initial period. Once or twice, he tested the waters in the interest of splitting up to be more efficient, but it was a long time before I was ready to do this on my own.

Among our first ten houses, we encountered a person or two who “didn’t want any”; a number of people who were “not home”; and a Latino woman who desperately wanted to vote, but who’d just gotten her green card and had been unable to register in time. Fortunately, her husband or boyfriend was registered, although he could not read English (this doesn’t even make sense to me). We explained in detail how she could help him to vote, when the time came.

I gained my first bit of self confidence simply by knocking on doors, entering screened in porches to reach doors, and pitching in when we helped the Latino woman. However, I was utterly hopeless with the map; I couldn’t keep straight whether the house numbers were going up or down as we walked; and couldn’t process how far apart houses were based on their numbers.

One of my two barriers, besides being directionally challenged, were that for at least half an hour, I didn’t realize that I had a map of my own! I thought we only had one map and that it was Donald’s! Once I realized that I had my own map, I was able to take some ownership of the process of knowing where we were.

The other barrier was that although the houses were every bit as close together as the houses in my neighborhood, the house numbers made them seem as if they must be very far apart! In my neighborhood, my house number is 219, and my next-door neighbor’s number is 221. In this neighborhood, the numbers were improbably far apart. I never did take the time to figure out how far apart the house numbers were. Doing so might have helped me cope better!

After the initial contact we made with people, we hit many houses where no one was home. I took that opportunity to offer to carry my own weight and give it a go on my own. I figured I could always team back up with Donald if I got overwhelmed.

Fortunately, the only time I needed to team back up with Donald was when many people “belonged” to him by virtue of an apartment building having at an even-numbered address. Although he did the first one with me at his side, I later offered to help by splitting the people with him. It was important for the person without the data sheet to keep track of the results of each encounter.

While I was still stumbling around helplessly, I was sure that Donald must think that I was an idiot. I knew that he would at least consider the possibility that I might not be stupid because he knows my husband, who is quite intelligent. I was secretly glad that Donald was a friend and not a stranger. I was more comfortable having a friend see me in an utterly useless and incompetent state.

As I began to get the hang of it, I explained to him that it was largely a matter of confidence. I started out with none, but I built it up. If he had not been as patient, it would have been much more difficult for me to do so. Thanks to him, I became somewhat effective, and would repeat the experience!

Next is the story of how our canvassing went.

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