by Chuleenan
This weekend seems to be the most intense for Senator Obama and for his campaign. He's traveling to the battleground states and everyday, I'm getting emails from his campaign asking for another donation--on Thursday, I got an email from Joe Biden asking me to contribute $100 because "we just learned that the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee had a $20 million cash advantage on October 15th."
Friday, 8:28 am I got an email from Barack telling me "We're saving some of the best seats in the house for 5 people who have given to the campaign before -- and who decide to make a donation one last time before Sunday at midnight." And the best seats were a trip to Chicago to join Barack and thousands of others on Election Night.
Friday, 2:36 pm I got an email from David Plouffe, the campaign manager and genius organizer, saying "we're seeing a surge of support in states we didn't expect to be close contests, including Georgia and North Dakota" and that Arizona (John McCain's home state!) was now considered a battleground state. Wow.
So Plouffe wanted a donation to expand the efforts in those states and I would get a chance to be one of the 5 at the big public event. I had missed the first email plea from Barack but I did read this one and I admit that the chance to be in Chicago did the trick and I donated $50.
I did see Obama when he was in Oakland in March 2007. At that event I noticed that the twenty thousand people who attended listened very intently to every word he said. I had never seen a crowd that size be so quiet. It would be fantastic to see him once again in person.
This weekend was an absolute frenzy of activity at the San Francisco phonebanking locations. When I arrived on Saturday around 7 am I saw that some people were on their way out and it dawned on me that those folks had been there all night!
The weather was really bad on Sat. It was raining pretty hard. I worked for three hours at the Market street office, which is the San Francisco Obama field office, and then for four hours at the Howard St. phonebanking location. I was a lead phonebank captain for the first three hours and was responsible for making sure that we had enough captains to manage all the different duties -- two captains to train phonebankers, one or two on the front desk, one on cell phone checkout to give phones to people who didn't have their own, two to pass out new phone lists with numbers to call, one to pick up completed phone lists. Luckily, things weren't too busy in the early morning hours so it was easy to manage but that changed aorund 10 am.
I was shifted over to the Howard Street location where other phonebankers would be sent once it filled. Once that location started to fill up, it was busy. I was there with Kate, a phonebank captain who I've seen many times at the Market St. office when I dropped by to phonebank during my lunch hour. She's great at training people so she was training them and I was signing in people, giving them scripts, answering questions, and going downstairs to let people in. People would call me on my cell phone and then I'd have to come down to let them in and take them up the elevator. You needed an access card to open the front door and to use the elevator. The Market St. office was completely full so they were sending the spillover to Howard St. A volunteer was shuttling people to our location. Good thing we had someone driving their car because to was raining pretty hard much of that time.
Another location--one at Four Barrel cafe in the Mission district, was jam packed with 90 people! I worked at that location a couple weeks ago and I really can't picture where they put all those people. That must have been absolutely crazy.
I was on my feet for seven straight hours. My feet and my (still recovering sprained) ankle were sore by then end of that shift. I heard today that San Francisco made more than 37,000 calls yesterday!
Today I was at the Market St. office from 6:45 am to about 2 pm. It was a bit of an adventure getting to the office. When I got to the BART station around 6:05 am, I saw that the station was closed. I didn't realize that on Sunday BART doesn't start running until 8 am. Oops. I was going to be late for my shift if I couldn't figure out how to get into SF. I didn't know the bus schedules and I don't have a car.
Then I saw a young woman with a suitcase who arrived when I did. Clearly, she was in the same predicament I was in. So I asked her if she was going to SF and if she wanted to share a cab. She told me she only had about $3 cash on her. I only had about $25, which would not be enough to get us into SF. I told her was volunteering for the Obama campaign and needed to get to SF. She called a friend who agreed to pick her up and to drop me off in SF. The young woman, I forget her name now (too early in the morning!), was visiting the Bay Area. She lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio and says that she lives where there is a pocket of liberals who support Obama. I asked if she thought Obama would win Ohio. She thought it was going to be close and that it would be tough for him to win.
Today I was the lead captain at Market St. from 7 am to around 1 pm. It was really exhilarating to be there and see so many volunteers come in so early in the morning. My fellow captains were all very dedicated. We had a slightly larger team of captains and as the morning wore on we got busier and busier. By early afternoon, we had to start turning people away because we had no room for all the phonebankers! People were sitting on the floor. I think every phone bank location was maxed out. Sandy Sherman, the woman responsible for getting the phone bankers to come in, did an amazing job.
The SF office is so effective at making calls that the Obama campaign headquarters is now using it as its flexible rapid response phone bank. And that means that we get our orders directly from the war room in Chicago. They tell us which battleground state to call and when. So we switch states whenever they tell us to. The data is delivered to headquarters in real time.
Today we began by calling Florida from paper phone lists. Then we switched to Missouri using a different system called predictive dialing where a phone system calls for you and you enter the call codes using the cell phone key pad, for example, enter a 1 for someone who has already voted, 2 for someone who plans to vote on election day, etc. But that dialing system had some glitches and people were having difficulty getting through. People wanted to go back to paper lists but we weren't allowed to give any more lists out. Headquarters wanted us to continue using predictive dialing. So we wasted some time when people were sitting around waiting for the system to work properly. And some got discouraged and left, which was unfortunate.
The SF office is staffed entirely by volunteers. It is really astonishing. Some people are there nearly everyday and they're working many hours each day. I've heard that many of the positions in SF are paid positions in other states. These are very dedicated people and they are very nice to work with. Juli Uota, who schedules and trains the phonebank captains, makes everyone feel like they are making a real contribution. She and the other folks I've met seem to have the "No drama Obama" attitude. Things may get a little tense at times but there are no histrionics, which is remarkable when you consider that many of these people are operating on very little sleep.
My only regret is that I can't work more on Monday and Tuesday. I'll be there early Monday morning from 6:45 am to 9 am, then I have to go to work (my paying job). Then I'll be there again from 12 pm to 2 pm. Maybe I'll be back in the evening as well. On Election Day, I'll be there from 5:45 am to 9am. (I already mailed in my absentee ballot.) Thank God for daylight savings time so it won't feel like it's that early. Turns out it's good for my health too, decreasing the risk of heart attack.
Clearly, the Obama campaign is not letting up. Everyone is working until the last polls close. The focus is on getting out the vote. And that's what we're doing--calling registered voters in battleground states and reminding them to vote on Tuesday, asking them if they know where their polling place is, whether they need a ride to the polls, and thanking them for their support. I want to see an overwhelming electoral college win. I want to see that John King's magic map turn blue for real.
This weekend seems to be the most intense for Senator Obama and for his campaign. He's traveling to the battleground states and everyday, I'm getting emails from his campaign asking for another donation--on Thursday, I got an email from Joe Biden asking me to contribute $100 because "we just learned that the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee had a $20 million cash advantage on October 15th."
Friday, 8:28 am I got an email from Barack telling me "We're saving some of the best seats in the house for 5 people who have given to the campaign before -- and who decide to make a donation one last time before Sunday at midnight." And the best seats were a trip to Chicago to join Barack and thousands of others on Election Night.
Friday, 2:36 pm I got an email from David Plouffe, the campaign manager and genius organizer, saying "we're seeing a surge of support in states we didn't expect to be close contests, including Georgia and North Dakota" and that Arizona (John McCain's home state!) was now considered a battleground state. Wow.
So Plouffe wanted a donation to expand the efforts in those states and I would get a chance to be one of the 5 at the big public event. I had missed the first email plea from Barack but I did read this one and I admit that the chance to be in Chicago did the trick and I donated $50.
I did see Obama when he was in Oakland in March 2007. At that event I noticed that the twenty thousand people who attended listened very intently to every word he said. I had never seen a crowd that size be so quiet. It would be fantastic to see him once again in person.
This weekend was an absolute frenzy of activity at the San Francisco phonebanking locations. When I arrived on Saturday around 7 am I saw that some people were on their way out and it dawned on me that those folks had been there all night!
The weather was really bad on Sat. It was raining pretty hard. I worked for three hours at the Market street office, which is the San Francisco Obama field office, and then for four hours at the Howard St. phonebanking location. I was a lead phonebank captain for the first three hours and was responsible for making sure that we had enough captains to manage all the different duties -- two captains to train phonebankers, one or two on the front desk, one on cell phone checkout to give phones to people who didn't have their own, two to pass out new phone lists with numbers to call, one to pick up completed phone lists. Luckily, things weren't too busy in the early morning hours so it was easy to manage but that changed aorund 10 am.
I was shifted over to the Howard Street location where other phonebankers would be sent once it filled. Once that location started to fill up, it was busy. I was there with Kate, a phonebank captain who I've seen many times at the Market St. office when I dropped by to phonebank during my lunch hour. She's great at training people so she was training them and I was signing in people, giving them scripts, answering questions, and going downstairs to let people in. People would call me on my cell phone and then I'd have to come down to let them in and take them up the elevator. You needed an access card to open the front door and to use the elevator. The Market St. office was completely full so they were sending the spillover to Howard St. A volunteer was shuttling people to our location. Good thing we had someone driving their car because to was raining pretty hard much of that time.
Another location--one at Four Barrel cafe in the Mission district, was jam packed with 90 people! I worked at that location a couple weeks ago and I really can't picture where they put all those people. That must have been absolutely crazy.
I was on my feet for seven straight hours. My feet and my (still recovering sprained) ankle were sore by then end of that shift. I heard today that San Francisco made more than 37,000 calls yesterday!
Today I was at the Market St. office from 6:45 am to about 2 pm. It was a bit of an adventure getting to the office. When I got to the BART station around 6:05 am, I saw that the station was closed. I didn't realize that on Sunday BART doesn't start running until 8 am. Oops. I was going to be late for my shift if I couldn't figure out how to get into SF. I didn't know the bus schedules and I don't have a car.
Then I saw a young woman with a suitcase who arrived when I did. Clearly, she was in the same predicament I was in. So I asked her if she was going to SF and if she wanted to share a cab. She told me she only had about $3 cash on her. I only had about $25, which would not be enough to get us into SF. I told her was volunteering for the Obama campaign and needed to get to SF. She called a friend who agreed to pick her up and to drop me off in SF. The young woman, I forget her name now (too early in the morning!), was visiting the Bay Area. She lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio and says that she lives where there is a pocket of liberals who support Obama. I asked if she thought Obama would win Ohio. She thought it was going to be close and that it would be tough for him to win.
Today I was the lead captain at Market St. from 7 am to around 1 pm. It was really exhilarating to be there and see so many volunteers come in so early in the morning. My fellow captains were all very dedicated. We had a slightly larger team of captains and as the morning wore on we got busier and busier. By early afternoon, we had to start turning people away because we had no room for all the phonebankers! People were sitting on the floor. I think every phone bank location was maxed out. Sandy Sherman, the woman responsible for getting the phone bankers to come in, did an amazing job.
The SF office is so effective at making calls that the Obama campaign headquarters is now using it as its flexible rapid response phone bank. And that means that we get our orders directly from the war room in Chicago. They tell us which battleground state to call and when. So we switch states whenever they tell us to. The data is delivered to headquarters in real time.
Today we began by calling Florida from paper phone lists. Then we switched to Missouri using a different system called predictive dialing where a phone system calls for you and you enter the call codes using the cell phone key pad, for example, enter a 1 for someone who has already voted, 2 for someone who plans to vote on election day, etc. But that dialing system had some glitches and people were having difficulty getting through. People wanted to go back to paper lists but we weren't allowed to give any more lists out. Headquarters wanted us to continue using predictive dialing. So we wasted some time when people were sitting around waiting for the system to work properly. And some got discouraged and left, which was unfortunate.
The SF office is staffed entirely by volunteers. It is really astonishing. Some people are there nearly everyday and they're working many hours each day. I've heard that many of the positions in SF are paid positions in other states. These are very dedicated people and they are very nice to work with. Juli Uota, who schedules and trains the phonebank captains, makes everyone feel like they are making a real contribution. She and the other folks I've met seem to have the "No drama Obama" attitude. Things may get a little tense at times but there are no histrionics, which is remarkable when you consider that many of these people are operating on very little sleep.
My only regret is that I can't work more on Monday and Tuesday. I'll be there early Monday morning from 6:45 am to 9 am, then I have to go to work (my paying job). Then I'll be there again from 12 pm to 2 pm. Maybe I'll be back in the evening as well. On Election Day, I'll be there from 5:45 am to 9am. (I already mailed in my absentee ballot.) Thank God for daylight savings time so it won't feel like it's that early. Turns out it's good for my health too, decreasing the risk of heart attack.
Clearly, the Obama campaign is not letting up. Everyone is working until the last polls close. The focus is on getting out the vote. And that's what we're doing--calling registered voters in battleground states and reminding them to vote on Tuesday, asking them if they know where their polling place is, whether they need a ride to the polls, and thanking them for their support. I want to see an overwhelming electoral college win. I want to see that John King's magic map turn blue for real.
