Erci and I finally made the long trek in to Arlington (Rosslyn/Courthouse) to do some volunteer work for the Webb for Senate Campaign (phone bank for more volunteers and fixing a spreadsheet problem). It was a lot of fun, and we met fabulous people (Bruce & Beth: Sarah says “Hello”). I made about 200 calls, and got seven volunteers, and we volunteered to help one person we called clean out his flooded basement (sometimes when you call someone for help, they need more help than you do).
Most encouraging call was answered by a younger sister of a prior volunteer who jumped at the chance to work the Webb Campaign even though her sister is away at school. Most people want to work the campaign but don’t want to drive the long trek to Arlington, so the campaign is opening “branch offices” all over the state in two weeks (or as soon as people can organize them). If you are interested in hosting a branch head quarters, and have multiple phone lines and are willing to have volunteers come by regularly, get in touch with the campaign right away.
I noticed that the phone list is sorted by last name and think I want to suggest that people sort the list on telephone number instead, this will eliminate some duplication (where there are people with different last names sharing a number), but it will also allow the phone calling to go local. That has the advantage of smaller phone bills, but more importantly connects local people with local people. Most people I called wanted to get involved and I had no idea where they were. Seems we could be more effective with calls from local areas.
This revolution is going to be won or lost by our success at connecting to individual voters one at a time or in small groups. We cannot compete with Senator Allen’s immense corporate funded war chest, and he will out advertise the Webb campaign by about an order of magnitude or perhaps twice that. We have to fight a very different game, but people are ready for change and they know Allen has done nothing for them in office. The Zogby poll shows that pretty clearly. Get involved, talk to people, get everyone registered and committed to voting.
I’ll be joining the Webb crew at the Fairfax parade on Tuesday, July 4th, and volunteering with the Judy Feder Campaign on July 10th. Erci and I are also committed to working with the Commonwealth Coalition to “Vote No” on the proposed state constitutional amendment this fall (read the full text yourself, it is a thinly veiled attempt to drum up neo-con support for Senator Allen who knows he’s in trouble). Erci and I both agree that marriage in general is made stronger when more people have the right to get married, because our own marriage was saved by the support and caring ears of some gay friends of ours. We intend to do everything we can to not only defeat this sad hate-motivated amendment, but also to change the existing laws in Virginia that prevent two human beings from declaring their commitment to each other.
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