East Bay Exhortation Sensation: Phone Banking for Moveon.Org

This is an offical, authenticated exhortation to East Bay folks everywhere. Well, East Bay folks in the East Bay.
Short version: The last two nights I went to the MoveOn office in Oakland. These folks have their act together. It’s fun, easy, and unintimidating. You can volunteer any day, any time o’ day between 9 and 9. If you’re in the Bay Area and have two hours in the day or evening between now and election day, let me exhort you to come on down — do some of the easiest, most effective volunteering you’ll find this season and be part of a huge effort that might actually make a difference. Where: 360 22nd Street, Suite 210, Oakland CA (tween B’Way and Webster). Call Adam: 857-383-0736 for more info.
Longer Version:
This was my first time working with MoveOn. I’d done phone work before and found it a little gruelling — an impossibly long list of folks in my neighborhood who almost universally didn’t want to be called. Still, we have 9 days left to go and I figured it was time to eat some gruel.
Instead metaphorically I ate, I dunno, let’s say BBQ brisket, like the kind you can get down at Flints or mebbe Everett and Jones.
From the Oakland office we’re calling other MoveOn members and asking them to give an hour of their time as a home phone volunteers. It’s a system designed to create a massive, coordinated, hyper-effective phone bank. MoveOn’s created this slick, simple web-based system that let’s people call infrequent dem voters in the key targeted districts from the comfort of their easy chairs.
In the last two nights I called around 270 MoveOn members. Most weren’t home. About 30-40 answered and passed or say “ok, send me more info.” Most were progressives. Some were Republicans. But every one of them was either nice, pleasant, or at the very least harmless.
Ten people agreed on the spot to give an hour or more of their time in the next four days. Some agreed to give as much as seven hours in the next week. Add it up and you get a great multiplier — my 6 hours turned into 20-40 hours of targeted phone calls.
The word at the MoveOn office was that more than 70,000 people were now part of this effort. It’s the sort of army we need to push back against the other side’s get out the vote infrasturcture.
Which is all to say: I’ll be back there on Thursday. If you haven’t already volunteered, you’ll be hard pressed to find an easier, more efficient, more effective way to get involved and do you bit to help get this ole country of ours back on track.
And needless to say, if you’re not in the East Bay, please consider yourself likewise exhorted to phonebank from home, from house parties, or from your local MoveOn office — see moveon.org for the details.
-Cecil