I went phone-banking for Obama yesterday (Sunday) in west Los Angeles, together with my 77 year-old mom. We arrived around 3 pm and stayed about 2 hours. Between us I'd guess we called about 70-75 folks in battleground areas, from lists we were given. But I'm not writing this because of our own very modest efforts.
I'm writing this because West L.A. Obama HQ was like nothing I've ever seen -- and I've been doing GOTV in one form or another going back more than 30 years. The entrance was thronged by new arrivals like ourselves. A caller training (which we soon joined) was being held in the parking garage, apparently because there was no other space in which to hold it. And people were also CALLING from the parking garage, because in the warren of offices themselves, one floor up, there was scarcely an inch of space that was not occupied by a phone-banking volunteer. People sat at desks, on desks, on tables, on the floor, stood in corners, even (in one instance I saw) ...(more below the fold)
...called from underneath a desk. The number of volunteers easily exceeded the number of available phones, so many folks were using their own cell phones to call (as I did). The narrow aisles between desks and cubicle areas were constantly jammed with people coming and going, to the point when sometimes you could hardly walk ten feet. We were all ages, all races. Parents called with their young kids sitting beside them, while people like my mom put their canes up by the phone as they called. Our collective voices blended into an insistent but somehow exhilirating din, as we went through our pitches: hello my name is hello are you voting for Obama hello do you know where your polling place is hello let me tell you where you can vote hello that's excellent that you voted already hello that's terrific that you are voting on Tuesday hello do you need a ride to the polls hello remember the poll hours are hello I'm a volunteer for Obama, for the campaign, hello...
It seemed impossible that we could hear ourselves talk, let alone the responses of the people we were calling. But everyone was so intensely focused on their calls, they were oblivious to the din, to being packed like sardines, to everything besides getting out each voter.
After my mom and I had gone through most of our lists, one of the coordinators came by and told us that in the past 3 hours, our site had just called FOURTEEEN THOUSAND people. A mind-boggling number.
But then perhaps not so mind-boggling. We had all endured 8 years of George Bush's assault on America, and we were sure of one thing: we were done with that. We were done with a party and its anointed candidate that had taken a nation enjoying peace and prosperity and in just a few short years plunged it into endless war and cataclysmic financial crisis. We were done with that senseless and corrosive war, done with cities drowned (both figuratively and, for New Orleans, literally) by cavalier neglect, done with giving more to those with the most while destroying our very solvency as a nation, done with the politics of fear and division, of wedge issues and swift boating. We were done with torture and the creation of an American gulag in Guantanamo, done with the shredding of the Constitution and wholesale spying without warrants, done with the total abdication by government of any responsibility to counter the feckless pursuit of a quick buck regardless of the long-term consequences, done with the abandonment of facts and science and reality itself, done with the heedless destruction of our planet. And we were done with a party and a politics that did nothing to build or nurture or even envision a better future, that had no idea how to harness or inspire the genius and talent of America, that had no words to articulate how or even that we could do better, that had no clue how to extend opportunity and security and fairness so that everyone could do their best, could achieve their highest, could pursue, with the full measure of equal rights and human dignity bestowed by our democracy, their happiness, and their hopes.
Could we somehow overcome McCain and his party’s immensely powerful special interests, and ruthless and cynical politics of deceit and division, and build that future?
In that room yesterday, humming with the sounds of many voices, you could feel the answer, as it poured out 4,660 times an hour into phone lines and cell towers literally spanning the length and breadth of America: Yes. We. Can.