I've been a MoveOn "member" since the Clinton impeachment days. I put it in quotes because I've never given them any money, and have barely attended any meetings. They've always struck me as well meaning, but a little "off" in a way I've never quite put my finger on.
Anyway, I got an email asking me to make calls for Francine Busby. So I made what I thought was going to be 30 voter ID calls. Turns out, they only count if the call goes through. So I actually had to make about 60-70 calls. A lot of the people who answered either didn't care, couldn't vote, or couldn't speak English. Hooray for democracy...
A few days later, I tried to make some GOTV calls. This quickly hit a brick wall, since this time we were calling into an 800 number, and it was calling the same people over and over again. One guy I called had been hit 4 times in 10 minutes and was furious. He demanded to speak to my supervisor.
I don't think he realized that I was just this guy, who never went to meetings, hadn't had any face to face training, didn't have a supervisor, wasn't getting paid, and wasn't even working out of a centralized call center. When you think about it, this is alternately exhilarating and terrifying.
At any rate, just for calling about 40 voters, I made it into the top 250, and won a copy of "Crashing the Gate." Go figure. I suppose now I'll have to shift some of my schedule from not attending meetings to not reading the book.