Team Hillary is designed to expand and grow the grass roots support for Hillary in communities where they haven’t yet built a presence for the campaign. With over 500 staffers and 60 offices around the nation, they’ve got a strong organization built so far. But staffers can only get the word out to so many people. That’s where people like me, my friends (flying monkeys included) & neighbors come in.
The idea was to have people like me pick a public place, contact my friends, neighbors, co-workers & family and ask them to join me for an organizational meeting to talk about how we can help spread Hillary’s message, and build support for her historic run for the White House in our community. In the first conference call with the organizers, they had a Team Hillary meeting set up in each of the 50 states. By the next week’s conference call, there were over 400 meetings scheduled with thousands of participants.
I had it easy – we’ve been having monthly volunteer meetings in our county since April and now have over 500 people on our mailing list. I signed up our monthly meeting with Team Hillary, and our meeting on Saturday went really well. Make the jump for more...
We got together at the Town Hall and I think we had about 60 or 70 folks turn up to get plugged in to helping with events, working our precincts, host house parties around the debates or other events, help with visibility and staff lit tables at community festivals, march in parades and sign up other volunteers, or go down to the campaign headquarters in Virginia to volunteer. I also talked to folks about blogging when we broke up in to work groups. I did this at the last volunteers meeting and maybe 2 people stopped by to talk with me about this effort, but this time our group had at least 10 (maybe I was more convincing when I spoke briefly during the general meeting this month).
We passed out commitment cards to the people attending those Team Hillary meetings, where folks committed to volunteering at least 3 hours a week. My 30 cards didn’t make it half way ‘round the circle so I asked the rest of the people to go to the web-site and sign up there. The campaign set an initial goal of 300,000 volunteer hours committed and they reached that goal within hours of announcing this effort. They set a new goal of 500,000 volunteer hours and they reached that by the end of that first day. Now that the meetings have been held, there are now over a million volunteer hours committed – absolutely amazing!
What struck me most about the suggested agenda for these meetings was that they encouraged us to not only introduce ourselves to each other, but to tell each other a little about what brought us to that meeting that day. What was it about Hillary that attracted us to her to the point that we would want to help with her campaign?
I thought this was kind of a silly idea at first. I thought – who’d want to listen to me rattle on about my reasons for joining in on this effort. But I’ve shared a little about that here in my diaries on this site and they seemed to resonate with a handful of folks. And the more I thought about it and heard the stories of other supporters, the more I realized hey – I have a lot in common with these folks. We may tell different stories, but at some level I could relate with a lot of what the other people were talking about.
So I thought I’d take a little time to tell you what drew me to Hillary’s campaign, and invite other supporters of Hillary’s share their stories with us here. I have two stories really and each relates to one of my kids. So in thinking about this I’ve come to realize that all my efforts on behalf of Hillary is really about my children. And that’s as it should be really given Hillary’s 35+ years of work on behalf of the children of our nation...
My son was born nearly 5 years ago and by the time he was 8 weeks old, our pediatrician realized he wasn’t developing at the "normal" rate. She referred us to the genetics clinic at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where they tested him for every syndrome under the sun over the next few years. His low muscle tone, delays in hitting the regular milestones such as sitting up, walking, talking, and all that other stuff prompted us to sign him up with the Infants & Toddlers program in our county. We were lucky – our son was able to get home-visits from physical therapists, speech therapists and a special ed teacher by the time he was 18 months old, and they worked with him until he turned three. After his third birthday, we signed him up with the PEP program at a local school, where he continued to work with dedicated teachers & therapists. My sweet boy is in his third year of preschool and is making REMARKAABLE progress – we have no doubt that this early intervention will make all the difference in his young life to the point where he’ll catch up to his peers in school.
Early in her career, Hillary spearheaded a project for the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) in New Bedford, MA to reconcile the discrepancies between the number of school-aged children and school enrollment figures. She went through a school district and knocked on doors until she got her answers. She found that children with special needs – those with physical disabilities like blindness, developmental delays (like my son’s) and those in wheelchairs – were being denied schooling. She submitted the results of the survey to Congress and two years later, at the urging of the CDF, Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, which mandated that all children with physical, emotional and learning disabilities be educated in the public school system.
As Senator, Hillary helped improve the education of children with special needs by working to reauthorize the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA). She championed provisions to provide targeted help for children with behavioral and emotional disorders, to increase the pool of special education teachers, and to provide those teachers with additional professional development opportunities.
There was a time when children like my sweet boy would have been written off – he never would have gotten an education or any sort of help. But thanks in part to Hillary’s work in the mid-70s in getting the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, and her continued support for the ADA, and the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, he’s been able to attend the Infants & Toddlers, and later the PEP program in our county.
I also have a remarkably bright and beautiful daughter – she’s six and a half and is already watching this campaign unfold. In fact, she endorsed Hillary Friday evening... I asked her if she’s vote for Hillary if she were old enough and she replied with an enthusiastic YES! When I asked her why she liked Hillary she said "she seems like a really nice lady mom". What a remarkably bright girl!
She IS a bright girl and thanks to Hillary, the sky will be the limit for her and the other girls of her generation. Girls & women who’ve come before (me & my mom) grew up hearing people tell us we could be whatever we wanted to be when we grew up – even president. I think we all knew what a load of bull that was – no woman has ever held that job and that sent us a serious message (it’s really not possible). But my bright – no make that brilliant little girl will actually, FINALLY get to see someone make it to the top job. And what a POWERFUL message that will be – that yes, a girl really CAN grow up to be President. Once a woman (Hillary) finally shatters that glass ceiling, the sky will be the limit for the girls who’ll follow.
I just thank Goddess that Hillary didn’t doubt it when her dad told her she could be whatever she wanted when she grew up if she worked hard and applied herself to achieving her goals in life. Hillary’s obviously set her sites high, and I’m going to do everything I can to help her make it to the top.
For our nation.
For Hillary.
For my little girl.
And as way of saying thank you to Hillary for the remarkable and dedicated work she did on behalf of children – especially children like my sweet boy.
I’m glad I signed up our volunteers meeting as a Team Hillary event. It really got me to think about why I’m doing all this. And it’s even more important to me now that I understand who I’m doing all this for.
This has suddenly become a campaign for my kids. This election is over a year away and I’m already working it like its October 2008 and we’ve got a year to go.
I've shared some or all of these stories here before, but I never really understood just how much my work on behalf of Hillary came down to a connection with my kids. As a way of thanking Hillary for her work with the CDF and on behalf of all of our children, and for the promise she holds for little girls like my sweet daughter.
I'm so grateful for the people who put together the ideas that led to our Team Hillary meetings, and prompted me to pull everything together like this.
U P D A T E
Daria G reminded me of another of my stories and this relates to my father, and health care coverage (or in my father's case - LACK of health care coverage).
My father had all kinds of health problems. Smoking led to heart disease and emphysema, and he had Crohn's disease (an autoimmune deficiency syndrome) which put him on permanent disabilty from his job as a manager from a hardware chain in Florida. Well he confused his premium payment for his COBRA policy one month and it was 2 cents short. Dad missed the 30 day window to make good on that 2 cent shortfall, so the bastids at the Blues cancelled his policy.
It took us nearly 6 months to get his coverage reinstated (only to run out 4 months afterward) and in that time my dad wouldn't go in for his weekly shots that kept his Crohn's in check. He didn't have the money to pay & he didn't want to go in to debt. He'd eventually get so ill that he ended up in the ER where he got an infusion of medicine that cost $10,000 per treatment. Of course he didn't have that kind of money so the state of Florida got stuck with the bill.
Dad never did get health care coverage after his COBRA policy ran out. He died at the age of 61 - alone in his trailer - when his sick heart gave out.
Hillary's healthcare plan would help people like my father afford coverage. And I have a hard time thinking that a government run program would have cancelled his coverage over a 2 cent shortfall. I'm so grateful for her laser-like focus on this issue. Millions of lives will be helped if she succeeds.