I spent a couple of hours today doing something I loathe, calling strangers and asking them for favors. I was trying to convince people who are identified members of moveon.org, to spend an hour calling other progressive voters between now and election day to remind them to vote. The calls I wanted them to make are going to be placed all over the nation--moveon's hoping to make fifty million calls! Yikes.
An important message and an important goal, to get out the vote. But even as I went down my list and only got hung up on twice. . . I was plagued with doubts. And that's get to be due to my personal experience of the 15! FIFTEEN!!! answering machine messages I got during the CT primaries. That's not even counting all the live humans I talked to. It got so that I hated answering the phone. Is that a process I want to be a part of?
So many of the people I talked to expressed the same view, usually in a friendly manner (moveon.org apparently has many, many lovely members. Even the people who hung up on me were pleasant, saying sorry first) They said that they hated getting those calls and therefore didn't want to make them. I said, oh, but those calls to make a difference. I said it with conviction but it was something of an act on my part.
Do they? Do they help? I don't have a clue, but I have to do something. I can't let this election go without making some sort of effort.
I'd dragged along my 16 year old son because he's interested in politics and I wanted him to see what grass-roots politics is all about. He couldn't do the script. Someone said, no, and he couldn't bring himself to try to coax an adult into thinking about it. So he did the shorter actual "get out the vote" calls to all the voters and he loved that.
I'm not sure I made a lick of difference with this particular volunteer effort, but at least I showed my kid that it's worth trying. Better for him than sitting at home playing world of warcraft.
I just wish I could think of an effort that was personally less onerous and I was more convinced would make a difference. I begged to stuff envelopes, do some filing. ANYTHING. . . sigh.
I think we're going back next week because my son had a very good time. But maybe the efficient and friendly local guy can find something more my forte. Like sticking needles up my fingernails. It might make a difference to some race after all. "it's good for the kid," I tell myself.
But . . .
Ugh.