Volunteering For Obama: Karlyn's Story

 "It’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential." – Barack Obama

Today, Kos wrote:Obama gained in Central PA.

This is a story of how volunteers put their lives on hold to press for those gains in Lancaster and beyond.

This account is from a friend, someone who like me, is a recovering daily newspaper reporter, one of tens of thousands who, in recent years, retired early, either with luck in being "bought out" or, with no luck, in simply being let go, without a parachute, after many years of writing, reporting and editing at those quaint things some still call daily newspapers.

The writer's first name is Karlyn. She's given permission to post this, her report of her adventures as a volunteer in Virginia, Ohio and central Pennsylvania. She'd post this herself but is on the road with unstable net connection, and is not yet a dkosser.

        LANCASTER, PA. -- Here’s a far too long account of what it’s been like working as a volunteer in the Obama campaign. As a retired/lapsed journalist, I couldn’t resist taking notes – and sharing. I was going to send this BEFORE the PA. primary, but I was way too busy to finish it, and then I was way too depressed. (I have to stop watching cable news!) This is a collection of experiences from my "drop- ins" in Northern Virginia, Columbus, Ohio and, currently, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I may try to get to some place in Indiana for a few days.

     First, let me start with one story that to me best illustrates the glorious euphoria (and insanity) of volunteering for Barack. There was a guy from the Midwest who drove to Lancaster to help for just a short time in the presidential primary here. On the day he was to head home, he got into a car accident. He called the Lancaster campaign office: "I’ve got good news and bad news," he reported. "The bad news is that I’ve wrecked my car; the good news is that I’m at the airport, I’ve rented another car, and I can stay and help an extra day!"

     How’s that for enthusiasm? There are oodles of folks – all ages, all  backgrounds, men and women, black and white and brown, who, like me, have hitched their wagons to Barack and are absolutely convinced that he offers the best chance to re-charge the country and reclaim America’s moral authority around the world.

     As I write this on Saturday morning, April 19,  there’s a lot of excitement in Lancaster (or, as I was taught to say, LANK – ih – stir) because Obama is coming to town this evening on his whistle stop train tour of Pennsylvania three days before the primary election. This is the third time he’s been in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, an area originally settled in 1718. I’m hoping to finally get a chance to see him in person.

      Update on 4/24: I DID get to see him. As a volunteer, I worked for several hours that day signing up other volunteers who showed up early for the rally, then I got herded into a special fenced off section outside the train station where Obama passed by on his way to the stage. Coming and going, he shook a lot of hands of volunteers, but I’m afraid I wasn’t aggressive enough to push my way to the front, so I had to settle for a glimpse of him from about 10 feet away. The rally drew about 8,000 people, huge for Lancaster. (And I take some comfort in the fact that Obama won in Lancaster County, a very conservative place—and the areas where I helped canvass went especially strong for Barack.)

       In Northern Virginia and Columbus, I was just one of hundreds who turned up to help in the campaign. In Lancaster, which competed for volunteers with Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Scranton in this pro-Hillary, primary state, I felt like I was really useful. The campaign office in downtown Lancaster, was a bare-bones operation. Yes, Obama has millions in campaign donations, but the bulk of it is going for mailings and  media "buys", especially to counter what has now become a pattern of last-minute negative attacks by HC. At one point a week ago, the office didn’t have enough money to get extra phone lines for phone-banking. Mayor Rick Gray, an Obama supporter, and others, including Pat, the woman who took me in (more on her later), got on the phone to friends to raise some quick emergency cash for expanded phone installations from Comcast.

       The day before the rally, I was hastily dispatched to drive to a college-based copying & printing store to fax an order for cases of bottled water for the train station crowd. The office didn’t even have a fax machine! The lone copying machine was S-L-O-W. Volunteers were encouraged to bring their own laptops and cell phones for the daily and nightly talk-up-Obama calls to voters. Basically, it works like this: The regular Obama volunteers and the two or three paid staffers hit a county about a month before the election, though a lot of advance work has gone on earlier. They set up an office, install phones and put volunteers to work phoning and canvassing registered Democrats to try to locate the Obama supporters. Canvassing means you go door-to-door in different townships or, if a city, wards, pass out campaign literature and talk up the candidate. Then, after you’ve identified the Obama supporters and the undecided, you go  back with new campaign literature to shore up support and try to tip the undecided into Barack’s camp. On the weekend before the election, you go back again. And on election day, you call and/or visit the Obama supporters to make sure they’ve voted.

      Lancaster was not an area deemed to have a lot of Obama supporters, so it didn’t get the same resources. To give you an idea of how under-funded the office was, they had to ask volunteers to bring in chairs, pre-paid phones, office supplies etc. One day, while I was rushing to type up Google maps for door-to-door canvassing packets, the mouse for the computer fell apart, permanently. The equipment was that creaky. Pat and I and many others supplied food for the volunteers via regular trips to Costco. I spent a week in Lancaster earlier this month, then had to go back to D.C. for a few days of previously scheduled commitments. I felt so guilty about leaving that I gave Leah, the volunteer office manager, about $350 worth of grocery, phone and gasoline gift cards. I came back last Wednesday to find my name on the board as a "Super" out-of-state volunteer---one of my proudest moments in life!          

     For Barack, I’ve gone door-to-door handing out campaign literature and talking to voters, especially the undecided. (If we meet folks who are for Hillary, we are instructed to be polite and not to argue with them, and we don’t.)  In Virginia, I made tons of phone calls, held signs at Metro stations and even took out the trash. In Columbus, working out of a Plumbers & Pipefitters union hall, I made signs, fetched coffee, and got up at 6 a.m. on primary day to stand in the freezing rain at a key downtown intersection, holding a Vote for Obama sign.

     In Lancaster, I made phone calls, helped prepare packets for the canvassing and put lawn signs together (rather tricky, actually!) The Obama rally in Lancaster put the canvassing behind schedule because the office had to stop everything else and prepare for his arrival, including passing out flyers downtown and calling supporters to assure a good turnout and losing most of that Saturday working at the rally.

     Let me pause here to explain why I’m such a fervent supporter. Of course, I’m horrified at what eight years of Bush have done to our country, domestically and internationally. I will vote for any Democrat (though Hillary and Bill are definitely trying my patience these days.) I would have voted for Bill if he could have run for a third term. But I took a cold, hard look at Hillary months ago—and was convinced that she could not win the general election.

     Rightly or wrongly, her fault or not, she is too polarizing. People, including my Rush-loving brother, clinch their teeth at the mention of her name. My brother would likely crawl on his hands and knees to vote against Hillary. But at Christmas time, when I told him I was supporting Obama, he actually said he found Obama "interesting." And he wrote in his name in California’s Republican primary. I doubt he’ll go with him in November – the conservatives will hold their noses and vote for McCain – but he doesn’t hate him.

I would love to see a woman as president. It would be the culmination of everything I’ve worked for as a feminist all these years. But not THIS woman. She can’t win. And if, by some chance, she did, we’d still never get anything done. The country would again be caught up in the angst of the Clintons in the White House. I trust Obama, I just do. He inspires me. I like the way he thinks. I give him immense credit for standing firm against invading Iraq, even when it was not politically popular as he prepared to run for the Senate. He is not a knee-jerk liberal. He is not a knee-jerk anything. He appeals to people of different political spectrums. He wants to change the way this country is run, from the ground up. He wants to improve health care, the education system, the environment. He wants to get rid of our increasingly have and have not society at home and restore our moral standing abroad. He wants to get us out of this damn war.  And I believe he can and will do it.

     And I’m not alone. Some of the folks I’ve met who are working hard to elect Barack:

    *Mark – who has been working free for months in Northern Virginia to organize Obama volunteers. The race was supposed to be over by Super Tuesday, Hillary was "inevitable." But when it wasn’t over, and when Virginia’s primary suddenly mattered, the ground forces for Barack were ready to go, even before their candidate had opened an office in the state. (I have no idea what Mark does for a day job.)  

    *Brian – the Purdue chemistry professor, who had a class on Saturday and a class on Monday, but who drove to Columbus early Sunday morning  so he could spend Sunday canvassing.

    *Ben – the part-time student, part-time techie consultant from Northern Virginia, who drove seven hours Friday night to Columbus, checked into a Super 8 motel and spent the weekend going door-to-door for Barack before driving back to Virginia on Sunday night.

    *Jean – an African-American woman from Washington, D.C., teaches at Howard University, who flew in to Columbus for the weekend to help canvass and later joined a car caravan of women volunteers who worked for Barack in Carlisle, PA.

    *Jim – a gay architect from Columbus. He normally takes a week off from work in November to volunteer for Democrats. "But this primary was too important. I couldn’t wait for November." I was fortunate to be on his canvassing team, which meant I didn’t have to find my way around Columbus and was able to take breaks from the cold and rain on primary day because he knew the owner of this coffee bar/café, who let our group of volunteers warm ourselves by the fireplace whenever our hands got too numb to hold our signs.

      *Trey – One of Obama’s paid (I use the term loosely) organizers. He’s 22, from Alabama, and got himself a GPS so he could move from state to state, county to county, town to town, organizing get-out-the-vote efforts in a series of rolling primaries. He met a girl he likes in Lancaster (registered her to vote) but feels guilty trying to have a personal life in the midst of the campaign.

      *Leah – I can’t say enough about Leah. She’s 31, an actress, who has been roaming the country volunteering for Obama. She’s the office manager in Lancaster, is there at all hours making sure everything gets done. Never loses her cool, even when we had to re-do all the "turf" Google maps because somebody had changed the address of the staging area for weekend canvassing. Leah’s Mom is also a volunteer.

      *Mort – The 69-year-old federal government executive from Maryland. He retired earlier this month on a Thursday, and was in the Lancaster office making calls on Friday. Before he had to take time off for Passover, he had called 500 voters.

      *Dave – The trial lawyer from Menlo Park, Calif., in his 40’s. He finished a trial, had a week off before the next one started, and flew to Lancaster (where he grew up) to volunteer in the office.

      *Austin – A youngster, probably in junior high, who was put to work  making calls to get volunteers to come to Lancaster. He was overheard leaving phone messages that volunteers were "desperately" needed to help canvass the last weekend before the primary. Bob, who oversees the out-of-state volunteers, gently suggested that he instead say the extra help was "urgently" needed.

       *Don – An "older’ Republican, who changed his registration to Democrat so he could vote for Obama. There he was, on his knees, signing up at the bottom of a long list of people eager to volunteer to help at the train station rally.

       *The retired couple from Baltimore, met and married in the Peace Corps. They camped out in their RV, came into the Lancaster office every day to help out.

      *The older African-American woman, local, never got her name. Came into the office last week to pick up some campaign signs. Of Obama she says simply, "He’s a find."

      *Glenn – Also from Baltimore, to the left of left, came up one weekend to help canvass. He has a new baby and wasn’t sure his wife could spare him again for the campaign. But there he was at the rally, as a line monitor. He drove home that night, but came back election day to get out the vote.

      *A middle-aged military veteran, never got his name either, the kind of working class white male voter who supposedly won’t take to Obama. He’s actually been on board for some time. When he saw Obama’s race speech, he said he nearly cried, and thought, "I really want this guy to be my president."

      *Karen – A social worker from New Jersey, works for a food bank. Made the three-hour drive to Lancaster. She could only stay a few days but she came back to help get out the vote on Monday and Tuesday. She, like me, was given shelter by Pat.

      PAT L.: My political soul mate. I showed up in the Lancaster office that first week in April, arrived in the afternoon, and asked Aaron, an Iraq war veteran now volunteering for Obama, if he could recommend an inexpensive hotel near-by. He asked if I wanted "support" housing. They had a list of locals willing to take in out-of-town volunteers. Pat had herself just come into the office that morning and was getting ready to leave. She turned around and said, "Would you like to stay at my place?" I figured I’d be on her sofa. Instead, I ended up with my own room and bath on her 50-acre farm about 10 minutes from downtown Lancaster. She’s from Illinois but has lived in Lancaster for 30 years. Ex-nurse, divorced, went back to school and got her doctorate, teaches at the local college. Boyfriend stays over on weekends.

    An amazing old farm house, modernized inside, and stables. From the front it looks like a farm house; from the back, huge picture windows that look out on the deer, the horses, the foxes, the birds. Her living room is bigger than my D.C. apartment. When I had to go back to DC for a few days, she just told me to keep the spare key and let myself in. We canvassed together on the Sunday and Monday before the election. Yesterday, the day after the election, we were at the office early to help shut everything down and clean up the donated office space before the fulltime volunteers and staff moved on to Indiana or North Carolina. Pat had just left her housekeeper -- and was soon running the vacuum and cleaning out the donated refrigerator. I did some of that too, and also gathered up the trash—it’s becoming my specialty!

      I have rambled on and on, for those who might wonder what I’ve been doing for Barack. It might have been longer but I’ve chosen not to comment on the type of campaign Hillary is running or all this nonsense about the Rev. Wright, bitter-gate, ties to an aging Weatherman. (We ran into a few folks who still insist Obama is a Muslim out to destroy this country.) I am holding my breath about Indiana and North Carolina. And I am happily anticipating the party I hope to throw in Washington for all the wonderful volunteers I’ve met—when they come to Washington to see Barack Obama take the oath of office.              

Just this one comment to add to Karlyn's eloquent tale. If you'd like to make calls for Barack in areas far from home and don't have an all-inclusive phone plan but still want to make calls on the cheap, visit onesuite.com where you can make calls for less than three cents a minute.