I was hanging posters along Broad Street near the Virginia Commonwealth University campus and popped into a couple of the mom-and-pop stores to see if they would be willing to hang our jobs poster in their window.
I walked into a sub-shop – it could have been anywhere. Long, metallic cooler case, behind it a long counter and refrigerator cases. Formica tables with aluminum chairs. Faded tourism posters, hung in thrift-store frames on the wall.
There were two adolescent boys behind the counter and an elderly man sitting at the bar doing paperwork. It was clear that he was the owner and they were his sons. Middle-Eastern appearance – Pakistani, maybe?
I introduced myself, said we had just opened an office in town and asked if I could hang the poster in his wall. I showed it to him. It read “Jobs to Elect Obama” and then in smaller print “work for health care, education, and the environment.” He told me that his daughters loved Obama and that yes, he was good, but he’s only going to be in office for 4 or 8 years. He took his pointer finger and pointed decisively at the smaller print and said “this! This is what we need to work for – implying the focus on a stronger economy by investing in America’s education system and local jobs, by providing affordable health care for every American, and ending our addiction to fossil fuels.
I couldn’t have agreed with him more. Our politicians are only as good as we demand them to be. On that night, in that fluorescent-lit subshop in rainy Richmond, this man and I saw eye to eye. We smiled at one another, the moment passed. I hung the poster, waved goodbye, and went back out in the rain to hang the next one.
Have been having a hard time sleeping through the night. Maybe it’s because the accommodations vary so much from night to night, or maybe it’s just the adrenaline from the campaign.
I go to bed just fine, but then wake up in the 3am – 4am timeframe, with work-related monkey mind. I will myself to relax my jaw, take deep breaths and then consciously relax my body with a scan that starts at the top of my crown, works across my face, down my neck to my chest, out my arms to the fingertips and then on down through the hips, legs and toes. It works if I stay focused and keep breathing. If I stray, the monkeys come back before I fall back asleep, the coil of adrenaline and excitement winds up again, and I have to start from scratch. This was true on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night.
Thursday night, after watching Obama’s speech, I slept through.
I was at the office late on Thursday night. I had sent Matt and Rich home after our evening meeting at 9:30pm, but wanted to wrap up a couple of things and get positioned for the next day. At 10:15pm I got in my car, and there was Barack on NPR, just warming up the engine of his speech. I knew I wanted to find some dive bar in this dive town, grab a beer and see what this candidate had to say.
It was pouring rain. I drove 20 mph down E. Main Street, winshiped wipers going full throttle, peering into the windows of bars looking for two things – the flicker of a TV and a neon open sign. At Honey Hoppers (or something like that) I found what I was looking for. I parked around the block, ran under the sporadic cover of shop awnings to the bar.
Three patrons and the waitress were there, smoking cigarettes (VA hasn’t passed the smoking ban yet) and laughing. They introduced themselves, I introduced myself, ordered a Sierra and asked if the kitchen was still open. The grill was closed, the fryer wasn’t. Jalapeno poppers and beer for dinner it would be.
I asked the other folks in the bar how they would feel about turning off the music and tuning into the speech. They were all game. Next thing I knew all of us were watching Barack tackle so many of the things we cared about head-on (“clean” coal and “safe” nuclear the big policy points where I differ from him) and I was talking with a lifelong Republican voter who told me this would be the first time he voted for a Democrat. And it was because he cared about global warming and the national debt. With a grin, I asked if he wanted a lawn sign. He politely refused.
There was something special about sitting there in “middle America” and watching this speech. I chatted up the waitress, who was getting her master’s degree in primary education. She had never been political, but now sees just how big a role the federal government plays in the direction of our schools and how stark a difference there would be between a McCain and an Obama administration.
I left the bar with waves and a ‘see ya next time’ and texted all my friends who were working on the election these words: “We have to win.”
So, Richmond is really cool. Who knew? Well, our friend Montana knew, but seriously, I’m so psyched about this town. There’s a financial center, a government center, funky geography with the James River winding through, awesome topography with little ridges and rises, and lots of great little shops and restaurants, and a vibrant student scene. It’s awesome!
We arrived here Wednesday night around 5pm and set up shop in the America Votes office. I think we injected some energy and life into what is otherwise a pretty sleepy office. The exciting thing is that Liz (read more below), who’s putting us up in Richmond, also helped us find office space in the same block as a bunch of other non-profits. We’ll be moving into that new space next Tuesday.
One of my favorite aspects of working on a campaign is throwing yourself out into the universe and seeing where you come down. For example, housing. Work for Progress doesn’t provide housing for the campaign, so everyone on staff activates all of their networks – whether work, Frisbee or family – to find places for organizers to stay. In Richmond, Matt, Rich and I (The other two directors) stayed with Liz, a friend of the director of the Falls Church office, Mary, whom she met while working on the primary campaign in South Carolina.
Liz and her housemates all went to William and Mary, and decided to start their own environmental nonprofit out of school, called the Backporch Initiative. They did some great work and adventuring over the past year, and are now trying to figure out the direction of the group and their role in it. They live together in a wonderful apartment near the intersection of 17th and E. Main St. in Richmond – old building, high ceilings, awesome back deck. Apparently Keene Shoes sponsored their organization, and in exchange for financial support the shoe company wanted to do a photo shoot on their back deck. The lights that were strung for the photo shoot are still there.
The first night we got to Liz’s around 10pm, and she had pasta and fresh sauce waiting for us. I realized it was my first warm dinner since I started on the campaign, and it tasted so good. I think we probably came across like stray kittens gracious to have a bowl of warm milk (it had been raining and we had been postering, so that probably enhanced the impression).
Liz and I sat out back, drank wine, she smoked cigarettes and I bummed a drag here and there, and we talked about how to balance organizing and living a rich, balanced and fulfilling life…
it’s 11:20pm. a couple more e-mails to write to prep for tomorrow and then off to bed on nate and jenny’s couch. (jenny’s mom is here this week so she’s got the guest room.)
i’m tired tonight. i need to do better planning in order to do my job more effectively. i am starting to figure out what needs to happen when, but there are still lots of unknowns.
i’m working to insulate the CDs (the canvass directors – the people running the actual offices) and AD’s (assistant directors who help run the office) from the unknowns as much as possible. today i wrote a 30 minute by 30 minute schedule for 8 different staff people, and then we had 3 huddles throughout the day to check in about the schedule. it kind of feels like wiping baby butts… but at the same time, that’s what it’s going to take to get people thinking efficiently about how they’re using their time and maximizing the product.
because the reality is that we have 70 days to win this election.
the polls in va are a statistical tie. 5% of voters say they are undecided. that’s the 5% we are talking to in our door-to-door outreach.
in other words, if we can get these offices big enough and with enough staff, we can have a critical impact. but we have to hire enough staff to actually go out and do the work, and that’s been the challenge nationwide this week. we’re not growing as quickly as we need to. we’ve got ads in newspapers, posters, fliers, craigslist and are getting creative about clipboarding on campuses and asking folks to interview that same morning… the calls are starting to come into the offices which is a key step. first we need to generate volume. then we focus on retention. one thing at a time.
i’m planning to head to richmond tomorrow and will stay there through thursday to get that office up and running. anyone know anyone in richmond that i can crash with for a few days?
Little Ms. prolific blogger seems to have stolen this stage — probably for the better, as I haven’t exactly been keeping up.
A consumerist update: the new silver Xootr Swift folding bicycle (a gift that we’re calling a wedding/birthday gift — wedding money, bought near our birthdays) is on its way to the 611. Actually, it’s on its way to my school address (avoiding the chance of a big cardboard box being stolen from our front porch during the day), where the inaugural ride will be cruising up to Hampden. “Why?”, you may ask. Well, it fits both of us, can be brought on planes, trains, and automobiles with ease, gives us a second bicycle with gears (Baltimore County here we come!) and, as one of the larger-framed folding bikes, rides pretty much like a hybrid bike without the wobble that accompanies some of the smaller folding bikes. For the curious — it’s pronouced “Zooter”.
Two interesting pieces about the Biden choice: (1) he’s poor (by politician standards) — making <$200K/year, which might give him additional street cred in this political atmosphere which rewards the hard knocked life; and, (2) something that I’ve read in a few places and hadn’t thought about much is how the choice of Biden may handicap McCain a bit in terms of his choice. The thought is that Biden would outshine someone like Romney in a vice presidential debate (especially when it comes to foreign policy — but also who’s more in touch?) and some of McCain’s other top choices who are strong on foreign policy (like Tom Ridge) have major “downsides” (like being pro-choice). Thanks to electoral-vote.com for providing these tidbits.
Alarm at 6. Up at 6.10am. Smoothie. Toast. Toddy coffee clean-up. Fed the worms, who by the way caught up nicely on all the food scraps we had overwhelmed them with the previous week. (Worms are so cool. Anyone reading this blog who lives in an urban environment as is still throwing away food waste is majorly missing the boat.)
I’ve been a stickler about packing my own food to eat. First of all, it’s hard to find time on the campaign to pop out of the office for food, and when you do, it’s shitty food like pizza or subs or something else prepared… and anyone who’s been around me and my belly when I eat cheap quickly prepared food knows that it’s a bad idea.
So, I’ve got the little “playmate” cooler filled with rosemary ham from the wine source, hard-boiled eggs – left over from nick’s overzealous egg production for Chesapeake, cucumbers from the garden, corn from the CSA, green peppers, etc… whenever I get hungry I just reach in my little goody box and know there’s something there that will sustain me. One of those nice things about getting older is that you know what you need.
I conducted career interviews from 9-10:30am. Then met with the new directors, had an RD call, and went out and canvassed from 3-8pm.
It was fun out there today. Cool neighborhood and being able to both sign up members and ask people who they were voting for and work to persuade them that obama is the right choice was really fun and gratifying. And then I think about how in a few weeks we will have literally thousands of staff doing the exact same thing in swing precincts around the country, I get really excited.
Some highlights from tonight – the die-hard obama fan who had about 6 different obama lawnsigns in her yard, sitting down on her front-stoop with me, talking with me about how she had colo-rectal cancer last year and how upset she is that her tax dollars are going to fund a misguided war in iraq instead of increasing colo-rectal cancer screenings.
Other highlight was Theodore, a McCain fan, who then steered me into his kitchen and introduced me as a wacko liberal to his wife, who diligently signed up as a member of Progressive Future and explained that she couldn’t volunteer on election day because she already committed to driving elderly folks to the polls. Then she offered me some of her roma tomatoes… mental note ,bring a bag for garden goodies on turf with me.
And then there was john, and his bernese mountain dog rosebud. John became a member, volunteer, and signed up for a house visit with JR for tomorrow at 4:30pm. And he gave me a glass of water, a bathroom and a list of the political leanings of all his neighbors… the guy in the big yellow house at the end of his block was Bill Richardson’s ad guy… but he wasn’t on my target list… good thing. If bill richardson’s campaign staff is on my “undecided” target list, we’ve got some serious list problems.
Then a databasing conference call at 10pm – apparently the Falls Church office has 20 hours of databasing to get done tomorrow so that we can analyze the effectiveness of our list sorting. Tonight, I had 19 obama, 11 McCain and 9 undecideds. We’ll hit the undecideds another 2 times between now and election day.
I spent Saturday traveling. Woke at 2:50am Denver time, caught a bus at 3:30am, arrived at the airport at 4:30am, slept at the gate for 1.5 hours and then slept on the plane for another 2.5. camped out in charlotte long enough to grab food and move files from nick’s computer (which he had graciously loaned me) to the rental computer… which, for the record has a battery life of 15 minutes. Ugh…
As they say in Green Corps, resolve to solve. As they say on godiva, suck it up, jojo.
Paul picked me up at the airport in his ancient “I can’t believe it passes emissions testing” Acura, and swung by mill valley to pick up the CSA and other goodies… like yellow watermelon. Yum.Then on to the wine source for their beer tasting and rosemary ham. Yum!
Went home for a couple of hours, hung the laundry, worked on some wedding thank you cards (only 20 more to go! –thank you amazing friends!) sent almost a cool grand’s worth of requisitions to the financial department in boston, prepped the Toddy cold coffee system to make some delicious iced-coffee-espresso concentrate and then swung over to a colleague’s house for a potluck. Good to see the Baltimore environmental community again. I already felt removed from the whole thing, but several of my colleagues there are taking a leave of absence like me to work on the election project, so I’ll see them soon in Denver for training.
After the potluck, back home. Packed. Missed Nick. Read some New Yorker and Economist and lights out at 10:30. Alarm clock set for 6am.
Woke up at 7am Denver time, bright-eyed and bushy tailed. Put on my godiva uniform – why train in anything else? – and sought out a running path through Denver. The weather was gorgeous – high 60s, no cloud in the sky, that great Colorado sun slowly creeping up the horizon.
I took a leisurly pace. After all, the purpose of this morning’s run was to flush the plane ride and airport sitting out of my system and get my body ready for a day of hotel conference room sitting.
RD meeting at 8:30am at the corner bakery. I’m always a little amused that these meetings aren’t more urgent and business-like. Instead it’s like a group of old friends getting together and comparing notes and impressions and giving one another feedback. I imagine it’s kind of what a junta meeting is like on an ultimate team. As the campaign progresses we will likely become more and more disciplined with these meetings, but for the time being they’re pretty relaxed.
The rest of the day was checking in with VA and doing big-picture thinking about the campaign.
One of the big picture ideas that really arrived home with me was what the costs are if Obama doesn’t win this election. The first thing that will happen is widespread disillusionment with the political process. The tens of thousands of people who have become hopeful, motivated and political through this election, will say “fuck it” and move back to the land and reject the political process.
The second thing is that the isolation of classes will continue and worsen. Progressives will cluster in nyc and berkeley, talking about how 60% of the country is hopeless and ignorant. Meanwhile conservatives will hunker down in the heartland. Each group of people will continue to turn to their news sources of choice that reinforce their values, elect candidates that reinforce their values and not go beyond themselves and their comfort zone. The divided america will continue.
Lastly, racism will feel insurmountable.
The speaker of this analysis recalled the Nixon blowout over McGovern in 1972, which he said made a whole generation of progressives afraid to be bold.
So, there’s much more at stake than 4 years of policy. There’s a whole generation. 2+ months to go…
1)Set up falls church for strong recruitment & persuasion canvassing
2)Set up office space & phones in roanoke and falls church
3)Logistics for new staff
Last night’s RD (Regional Director, of which I am one) call went until 1pm. Up at 7am, packed up my stuff out of Nate and Jenny’s basement, drove to Kinkos to fax in my cell-phone contract and then called T-mobile to change my plan. By the time I got my ice coffee at Natalia’s, the little independent pastry shop (incredible looking pastries!) in Falls Church, the new unlimited calling and texting plan was up and running. Yeehaw!
Office meeting at 8:45am, meeting with Mary at 9, check in with Casey and Matt, the new staff who are driving to Falls Church, and on the road to Baltimore by the time the 10am RD call begins. (I gotta get that bluetooth hooked up if on-road conference calls can’t be avoided.)
I get to the 611 at 11:10am. Swap dirty clothes for clean clothes, rescue several peaches before they turn into fruit fly fodder, chat up our neighbor Miss Helen, grab some notecards and by 11:45 I’m out the door to Manu the Mechanic. I drop off the green Sentra to get a new turn-signal light installed and walk to the light rail. 1 hour later, I’m at BWI. USAirways – the airline that charges you for peanuts and has managed to screw up travel plans the past 3 times I’ve flown on it… Cross your fingers.
BWI has no internet. Maybe Philly has free WiFi and I can download the relevant google.doc that I need there.
In the meantime, I’m a bit of a sitting duck. Patience is a virtue. So is sleep. So is the Atlantic Monthly… So is writing my plan for next week, all of which can be done without internet service.
Had cereal with jenny and rowan, who was alternately popping cheerios into her chubby and radiant grin, and throwing them on the floor. She was quite struck with the rubbermaid playmate cooler I use to carry my food around in. I do best when I provide myself with food, rather than trying to buy something, which will just upset my tummy.
No canvassing today.
My priorities were to help the falls church canvass roll out phase 2 of our canvassing, get phones & office space set up in our first 3 offices and getting my own organizational systems and phone established.
Priority #1 – rolling out phase 2 – persuading swing voters to support obama. By the time last night’s conference call had wrapped up at 12:38am we had not yet figured out the sorting of walk lists. At 10am, we had another call, and the lists had not yet been rolled out. MI and NH were done. PA and VA were next. New lists never came and when we tried to create our own walklists and just talk with every voter, using a different script depending on their party affiliation, we learned the hard way that VA doesn’t register voters by party. Neither does MI, it turns out.
So, we’ll have to find another way to limit the lists. If this was the only thing national folks had to do, we’d have new lists within a couple of hours. However, I think there’s a chance that we’ll be going with the previous “only engage with progressives” type of canvassing again tomorrow, because national probably is split between getting bigger states better lists ASAP and getting all the states on the same trajectory.I’ll advocate for VA getting good lists ASAP.
Feel like I might be taking control away from mary a little bit. It’s good that I’m leaving tomorrow. My plan is to have her empower Brad and Leana and Jennifer as much as she can. Work hard to get them to buy into the goals, get Leana set-up a recruitment day on Saturday.
The second thing was office set-up. Falls church is almost set. Phones will be up 9/4 at the latest and am one phone call away from having DSL. Roanoke – have office, need phone order finalized. Close to set-up. Richmond – one call in to landlord. Norfolk/VA Beach – nothing. Tonight will go off to Wireless hub to research office space.
My own systems – fighting hard for a fair cell phone reimbursement. I like to think I’ve made a fair proposal. We’ll see how they respond. Hope to finalize that tomorrow.
