Election 2008_Ohio.

Election 2008_Ohio Photos

Election Night_Obama photostream

Election Night_Obama

Reflections on Cleveland (pre-Election Night).

Now sitting back in my room at Wellesley, it’s difficult to properly convey what exactly made this Ohio trip so worthwhile.  Because it’s hard to fully describe the people I met.

Among staff, I mostly interacted with Alex Songer, girl from Georgia who dropped out of high school her senior year, Nana efua, recently graduated from Oberlin, Matthew Kozik, our competent FO recently graduated from Michigan Law School and in the final day or two, Jasmine Marrow from San Francisco.

It’s silly trying to document every moment, but at the same time I’m afraid that I’ll forget.

Canvassing Moments:

Canvassing in sleet and snow on Tuesday 28 October was definitely something.  My turf was in the Garfield Heights area, which I knew nothing about.  Wasn’t until later, when I was assigning turf to our volunteers, that I learned that a handful of locals refuse to canvass in that area because of racial tensions.  Regardless, canvassing went smoothly enough for me.  In fact, met a black man, Dale McClain while canvassing his house.  First of all, he expressed surprise at seeing a ‘cute Asian chick’ in the neighborhood and proceeded to tell me which streets to hit, which to avoid.  Being part of Vote Corps, we canvass alone and we canvass the entire area we’re given.  I told him as much.  After his house, went on to his neighbor’s, at which point Mr. McClain comes out onto his porch and tells me that they’ve since moved.  So I continue on my way.  Few doors down, I turn and see Mr. McClain wrapped in a heavy white scarf, which is half-covering his face and a thick winter jacket heading down the street.  He says that ‘cute Asian chicks’ shouldn’t be out canvassing the area in snow on their own so he decides to follow me and stand on the sidewalk as I go up to houses.  I’m pretty sure that as result, I reached 20 fewer doors than I could have, shrug.  One nice older lady did give me a pair of gardening gloves 🙂

Spent Halloween canvassing essentially the entire day.  For the last two hours or so I canvassed with a Ms. Beverly-something in the Bedford Heights area.  There were a ton of cops out patrolling the area, which, honestly, made me slightly nervous since it was completely dark by 7p and I was just kind of standing on the street corner waiting for Beverly to finish and to come pick me up.

Edward-the-Red-Head

Absolutely transformed call time.  The strategy?  Be honest, be transparent, talk for 30 seconds straight before letting the other end get a word in edgewise.  Take control of the conversation so that they must hear me/us out before getting a chance to say yes or no.  It really doesn’t sound like a big deal, but the number of volunteer commitments we landed after the Edward-tutorial v. before was pretty phenomenal.

New Yorkers

I love New Yorkers.  They are ridiculous.  We had a group of New Yorkers who came in to volunteer every day from Friday through Tuesday and they absolutely saved us.  They arrived promptly at 9:30 am and would canvass until dark…7 to 7:30 pm.  One canvassing pair was especially phenomenal: Sean Cahill and Janet Weinberg (or Weisenberg?).  Janet uses a wheelchair, yet they hit more doors than anyone else.  Super reliable.  Also Patrick and Lizzie.  There were two or three more.  Basically they pulled through on Election Day for us.

Mary Hills

Was our White Team Captain.  Amazing woman.  Tremendously resourceful, she went to Tuskeegee (I think) with a Ph.D. from elsewhere.  I believe that she lost a son in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Thanks to her union connections, she managed to get everything we needed-chairs, tables, food galore-sans cost.  On Election Day, she made sure that coffee was brewed nonstop from 5 am through 7 30 pm.

More on Election Day in a bit!

GOTV: Wednesday through Tuesday 4 Nov.

GOTV officially began Wednesday 29 October and ran through Election Day.

The general structure:

• Regional Field Director (1): coordinate all Region 23 GOTV efforts
• Field Organizers (Matthew, Carly, Aaron, Angela, Haowei, Katie)
• Staging Location Directors (Alex, Kayla, Abe, Jake)
• Blue Team Captains, Red Team Captains, White Team Captains
• Blue Team Volunteers: Canvassers & Phone bankers
• Red Team Volunteers: Line Managers, Poll Observers, Houdinis
• White Team Volunteers: Comfort Captains & Runners

My role in GOTV was essentially Blue Team Captain / Deputy SLD to Alex who reported to Matthew.  Thank goodness I had a competent SLD and FO!  The general GOTV schedule:

• 8:00-9:15  Make volunteer confirmation calls
• 9:15-10:00  Volunteer Shift #1-distribute walk packs, setup and train volunteers
• 10:15  Report numbers from Shift #1
• 10:30-12:00  Make volunteer confirmation / recruitment calls
• 12:15-1:00  Volunteer Shift #2
• 1:15  Report numbers from Shift #2
• 1:30-3:00  Make volunteer confirmation / recruitment calls AND/OR go canvassing until 7p
• 3:15-4:30  Volunteer Shift #3
• 4:45  Report final numbers and tally
• 5:00-9:00  Make volunteer confirmation / recruitment calls OR…
• 5:00-12:00 (or 1 or 2)  Cut turf for walk packs, setup folders for volunteers, tally doors

Vote Corps, final day.

Yesterday was my second full day of canvassing.  Oh OH.  Rain and sleet and wind and running around knocking on doors.  We started out around 1p and got back around 730p.  Managed to knock 136 doors, probably could have done more.

Met one lady who was super excited about Obama.  She invited me in and I asked her whether she was an Obama supporter.  She then turns to her little girl, who is probably three, and asks the girl, “Who’s going to be the next president!”  The little girl replies, “Barack Obama!!”  Cute kid, right answer.

I’m impressed by the people who are willing to volunteer, who are super excited about this election and Barack Obama specifically.  As Vote Corps, what we do is talk to sporadic voters who sometimes get involved in the political process, sometimes not.  Everyone I have talked to has been intending to vote or has already voted.  What will happen to this enthusiasm if he doesn’t win?

Honestly though, at this point, it seems impossible that Obama will not win this year.  At this point it’s virtually his to lose.  I’d love to see a huge win, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Nevada, Colorado, and maybe for good measure Georgia 😛  A big popular vote win would be fantastic too, haha.

Had an evening meeting with an organizer who has been working the campaign for a year or more.  Edward-the-Red-Head I’ll call him.  He’s British and is coordinating hotspots, I suppose.  He’s been in North Carolina, West Philly, among others.  He talked about strategy and how to recruit, etc.  It sounded rather like a war.  Region 22 being Ground Zero, lol.  OK time for calls!  Will update later.

Shaker Heights, OH.

Taking my leave from Wellesley in t-2.5 hours!  OK so I still have 700 words or so on that essay, but honestly I’m getting nowhere on it.  I think I’ll work on it at the airport and on the plane.  I checked, the airport in Philadelphia has free wireless for college students 🙂

Still can’t quite believe that I’m heading out to Ohio, lol.  Well, I’ve been spending so much time tracking this election, about time to take action, eh?  It’ll be a great experience, regardless, though I might be seriously, seriously screwed for the semester.  Oh well, a sacrifice.  This is the one and only election I’ll experience as a college student-now’s the time to simply pick up and go.  When else will I have such a great opportunity?  Carpe diem, yeah?

Of course I’m nervous.  I’ve never done campaign work before.  Canvassing?  Phonebanking?  Telling people why they should go out and vote, why their vote matters, why they ought not be cynical about politics?  I’m really excited.  As I told Brittany and Abhi, I haven’t been so anticipatory waiting for a response since, well, college acceptance letters.  Those shattered my confidence for a good while.  I’ve not been nearly so excited in a long time.  Certainly not at Wellesley.  I’m curious to meet the people-both the Obama crazies who have been spending 15 hours/day, 7 days/week for who-knows-how-long, the ones who no longer keep track of the days of the week and the Ohioans who will, fingers crossed, carry the state for Obama 🙂  Stoked!