I'm off to get a president elected!

I've been in Richmond, VA since Tuesday night volunteering with the Obama campaign here. We are at the tail end of convention week and it's been crazy. The campaign office is huge. There are about 25 paid staff (13 field organizers, a media person, IT, graphics person, office manager, etc.) By paid, I mean stipend. $1250/month. The field organizers are told that their hours will be 9 AM - 9 PM Mon - Fri and 10-6 on Sat and Sun. To accomplish the tasks set out for them, it's more like 9AM - 2AM weekdays and perhaps breaking at midnight on weekends. They are an interesting crew of people who think that this is the most important thing to be doing at this moment, but they are getting burned out. I see them passing out from exhaustion periodically.

So what happens in the campaign office? There are volunteers coming in constantly. There are usually 10 - 40 volunteers there greeting people, phone banking, heading out to canvas or register voters, bringing in food for the staff, entering data collected during phone banking, canvasses, and events. Virginia is a very mixed state, so they have to track each voter individually in their database unlike in Seattle where you can assume that almost everyone is democratic. They have a database called Votebuilder that is used all over the country. In that you can look up registered voters, port them to your personal database, add information on when they have been contacted, whether they are interested in volunteering, their presidential and gubernatorial preference, etc. There is a constant churn of activity. Then there are the activities of the people in the paid staff office. They are issuing press releases, creating graphics for ad campaigns, constantly blogging on facebook and other sites, doing accounting, keeping the infrastructure running, etc. Most of these people are professionals who have decided to take time off from their regular jobs to do what they feel is very important.

Coming into Richmond has been a challenge. The campaign is busy enough and has enough volunteers that they don't have time to coddle people like me. They had volunteers to house people, but didn't get me the person's contact info until half way through my first day in Richmond. On my first day, Mark Harper's friend (who I crashed with until the campaign gave me contact info for my host) took me in and I phone banked all day. On my second day, I spent half of my second day here finding my way to the office via foot though a park with a river that was in flood and covering a lot of the paths and via bus during a storm. Then I bought a map, a beater 3-speed bicycle, a stamp, envelopes, and cough drops. I was so excited to get the bike. 2 miles is now a short distance instead of a long trek! Plus, it sparked a conversation with this hilarious guy in the grocery store who started a folk music radio station and told me where to go contra dancing. I'm probably going to meet him Tuesday for a concert.

It's hard to get to know people in the campaign office because everyone is frantic and often on the phone. The field organizer I've spent the most time with is a cool guy, Rudy from Chicago. He decided to take a leave of absence from his job as a lawyer in Chicago to work for Obama in Virginia. His parents thought he was crazy until they saw Obama's acceptance speech and started to see where local organizing can get you. He's super friendly, keeps a positive attitude even though he's beat, and still believes he's doing the right thing.

I'm so glad I'm a volunteer not paid staff. I can paint signs instead of phone banking if I feel like it. I can leave at 9 so I can go do something in the evening. I don't get untenable deadlines daily. And they feel like they have to be nice to me. Today I'm off to explore Richmond.