Volunteer Oliver C. emailed us about his experiences volunteering in Ohio over the weekend...

Last weekend I piled into a car with four friends and drove nine hours (googlemaps had promised it would take six) through the Allegheny Mountains, during a snowstorm, to volunteer for Senator Obama in Cleveland, Ohio.  We got checked into our hotel around 1:30 AM Saturday morning and spent the next 36 hours renting vans, driving around Cleveland, buying bulk supplies of food and water and visiting a dozen campaign offices and staging locations.  It was like taking a very intense crash course in the Obama Movement and it is everything it is said to be. 
I’ve worked on campaigns before but I’ve never seen anything like this.  It’s a new style of politics.  It’s unifying.  It’s positive. It’s bringing new people into the process and it feels, finally, like something is changing. I believed the campaign was doing those things before I volunteered, but it’s very different to experience it directly...

Saturday morning we reported for duty at Obama’s Cleveland Headquarters... We weren’t in the office long before a friendly but efficient organizer named Lauren gave us our marching orders.  We were to drive to the airport, pick up a dozen vans, drop them off at various staging locations around the city and then…go shopping.  Election Day volunteers needed food, she explained, and it was our job to buy all of it.

We went to two supermarkets and purchased enough soda (pop), water, chips and granola bars to feed every one of Senator Obama’s 1 million donors...

Something else happened at both stores I will never forget.  As you might imagine, our bulk purchases attracted some attention.  People would come up and ask what we were doing.  When we explained, they ask to volunteer.  

Keep in mind that campaigns spend a lot of time and effort on volunteer recruitment.  It takes months of outreach and relationship building to assemble a team of people willing to donate so much of their time.  Volunteers are the heart and soul of any campaign and while many offer their help without cajoling from staff, but it’s rare to have someone appear out of the blue and offer to help without at least being asked.  Apparently not on the Obama campaign.   Here is how the conversation went between an employee of one of the supermarkets we visited and Roz Skozen, an Obama staffer:

Woman: Why on earth are you guys buying all this food?  

Roz: We’re with the Obama campaign.  This is for our Election Day volunteers.

Woman (smiling):  Obama.  How can I help?

Roz: Oh, thank you so much for offering.  That’s great.  We have doors to knock on.  Phone calls to make.  Well, what are you willing to do?  

Woman: Anything.


Roz and the new GOTV volunteer.

This happened more than once in the two hours we were out buying food.  Perfect strangers.  Mostly folks who have probably never worked on a campaign.  This is what Senator Obama is referring to when he talks about a new kind of politics...

Help us win Ohio. Make some calls tonight. This campaign is fueled by us. My.BarackObama.com/call.