Pt 2: Eyewitness to History; A Volunteer’s Experience Within the Obama Campaign

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Sunday Jan. 25/09

Pt 2: Eyewitness to History; A Volunteer’s Experience Within the Obama Campaign

Part Two: Obama Organizing Fellows: June-July 2008.

( ed. note: images will accompany this segment asap. For Inauguration Day Photos CLICK HERE. )

In April 2008, the Obama campaign sent out a notice to volunteers that they were starting an unprecedented summer internship called the Obama Organizing Fellows Program. The purpose of the program was to transition the campaign from its primary campaign victory to the general election campaign. The program was instituted in seventeen battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Minnesota, and Colorado.

I will always remember the video that Senator Obama made for the application that said the work would be hard but the experience would be something we would never forget.

I was accepted into the program and in early June attended three days of training in Narberth, Pennsylvania.

One of the first exercises of training was to talk about our personal story: where we were from, what we did, why we applied and why we supported Senator Obama. We began our experience by doing exactly what Senator Obama did in the keynote address in 2004: share our stories and express our hope not only for our candidate but also for our nation.

During training, we were split up into small group by area. My group was the Greater Media area.

Our group was fortunate enough to have an office ready for use. It was the old Baker Street Gallery on Baker Street in downtown Media. The Media team from the primary continued to pay rent for one of our staging locations.

 We moved in, talked to friends of mine for the primary and quickly got to work. Shortly after our arrival, our regional field director Abby arrived. Soon thereafter, field organizers Jessi, Julie and Andrew arrived. Andrew was my field organizer. There were seven Fellows in our office: Dawn, Peter, Helen, Iona, Daniel Brian and myself.

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We would have our morning meetings and Abby would strategize about our daily objectives, which included registering voters. We registered voters at grocery stores, Wawas—local convenience stores—parking lots of Wal-Mart, transit hubs and anywhere else we could possibly think of. It was not an easy task and occasionally we would run into hostility once people found out we were with the Obama campaign. Delaware County is majority Republican. Area.

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The highlight of the Fellows’ program was the Unite For Change house parties, which were held on June 28, 2008. The purpose of the house parties were to get citizens of all walks and political persuasion to sit down and talk about how to unite for change that the country needed to move forward.

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Each Fellow was responsible for getting twenty people, regardless of political party, to each to two house parties. One of my hosts was Bill, a councilman in Upper Providence Township. Barbara, a wonderful woman with a great husband and two beautiful children, hosted my other party.

My house parties were very different. Barbara’s was very low-key. She cooked great food and we all sat in her nice living room and had a discussion. It was a very natural conversation and it was a lot of fun. We talked about issues and how we could all come together to work for the general election. One of the major functions was to talk to Clinton supporters. There were none at Barbara’s party.

Bill’s party was very different. In the following video, Bill talks about this experience regarding his volunteer work, including the house party experience:

There were many politically active attendees to his party. The guests had many questions for us. But it was an excellent conversation and I really learned a lot from Bill’s guests.

There were Clinton supporters at Bill’s party and I will always remember Bill talking to them about their grieving process and that they were justified in being disappointed. But what we all talked about was to unite and work for the change we believed was necessary.

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We were very proud when it was announced by the campaign that Fellows in Pennsylvania registered the most voters in the Fellows’ Program.

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The Fellows’ program seemed to be a very short program. It had been eight intense weeks. We had many important things to do and in Delaware County we had many committed people, from our staff to the Fellows to local volunteers.

In July, we moved our location to our new fall office. It was on Baltimore Pike in an old Oldsmobile dealership. The lot had been vacant for quite sometime. It was an excellent location, had huge front windows and lots of space. But it took a lot of work to make into a working office.

In my next piece you will see how we made it an excellent location to conduct our work out of.

-part three coming-

~John H. McManus
  John H. McManus, a new www.GlobalPundit.Org Correspondent, was a volunteer for the Obama campaign in Delaware County, PA during the primary, an Organizing Fellow in the summer and an intern for the Pennsylvania Campaign for Change during the general election.  He is also in a label institute course with Realize Records, a musician, a songwriter, a poet, a GED tutor and an avid reader.

  ~contact us at Editor@GlobalPundit.Org

LASTLY-WOW What a week it’s been (and I do NOT mean the Inauguration) - media taking hits and layoffs like car companies - where the full-time staff who DO the work and Know how to do the jobs are let go in favour of overpaid management who barely have the qualifications to run the deep fry machine. - Please consider DONATING to help keep us afloat with operational expenses. Thanks in advance, Selah.

admin @ January 25, 2009