According to Sarah, there is a phone banker from our Aspinwall office who yesterday treated herself to a full size candy bar after every single sheet of calls she finished. (There are maybe 12 calls on a sheet.)
And speaking of candy, did you see this news story about the Pittsburgh resident* who denied candy to trick-or-treaters who were children of Obama supporters?
And speaking of Obama supporters…what a cast of characters Anne and I are working with in Etna, PA!
There’s 82-year-old Saul, a wheelchair-bound, oxygen tank-toting WWII veteran phone banker who gets saucy with the ladies in between calls. (He invited a 90-year-old canvasser (!) to have a seat on his lap.) Saul was the last volunteer to leave tonight; it took us and his wife (who has mobility issues herself) 15 minutes to get him into the van when he finally headed out. And he’ll be back at 10am.
Since I started volunteering with the Obama campaign in Allegheny County, PA, it’s been tough to sit down and pull my thoughts together to report on what’s happening. From now on, I think I’ll just check in as frequently as possible with brief high points (and maybe low ones, too) to give a little taste of what life and work are like here.
A few weeks ago, at the end of “Camp Obama,” a two-day training in NYC, a couple hundred newly minted Deputy Field Organizers did a bit of reflection and shared our key learnings with the group. The idea was to recap and refresh before we all headed to the great swing state of Pennsylvania.
People wrote about everything from the nuts and bolts of voter contact (phone banking, canvassing) to the feelings of optimism that permeated the whole weekend.
Let’s turn our attention back to Barack, shall we? And maybe have some honest conversation about where he—not to mention the man behind the lipstick curtain—stand on the issues?
Jill Miller Zimon from Writes Like She Talks is posting a reason to vote for Obama and Biden every single day between now and the election.
What are your favorite other recent sources of news and commentary on the ISSUES and the CANDIDATES?
I have to admit that I stopped paying full attention to this presidential race weeks ago. My vote is decided, has been since Kucinich faded out really. This is the part of the campaign where candidates start reaching out for new votes and singing new tunes. I worry that the more I listen, the less I will be able to like Barack. So I stopped following the speeches and stops, barely batted an eye through the Biden nomination. It’s cool, whatevs. Just stay pro-choice and healthy, Barack. You’ll have me wrapped around your finger.
The event that startled me from my apolitical dream-state was the Republican VP pick. There is so much talk about Sarah Palin going on right now, I don’t think what I have to say is very original. But it is personal. I am a woman who jumps into conversations about gender, who considers working toward equal opportunity for all people an important daily activity, who entertains gossip for camp value but pays attentions to issues of social justice whenever they surface. But suddenly, the Palin announcement made me care about who impregnated who when and then tried to hide it. I even looked at family pictures and pondered belly bumps! I can’t believe that I engaged in the pettiness and the woman blaming. In a few short days, the dirtiness of politics corrupted my feminism, and I resent that.
