My name is Brian Lindenau. I'm a 5th-year Microelectronic Engineering student at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY. I am the Campus Coordinator for the RIT chapter of Students for Barack Obama, but I use that title loosely, as I don't feel like I've done a whole lot to earn it. I'm writing this diary to share one of the most incredible weekends I've had in a long time. A weekend I spent in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, volunteering for Barack Obama.
It's a busy time of year for college students. We're coming up on our final weeks of our last semester of the year. Finals are slowly but surely creeping towards us, and those of us who are graduating are busy figuring out what they are going to do when we get into the real world.
So, in this setting, I received an email from Seth Stein, who helps run the Students for Barack Obama chapter over at the University of Rochester. The email outlined an ambitious plan to bus as many students as possible to the Philadelphia area April 11-13 from all over the Northeast. Needless to say i was firmly on board with the plan; however, we immediately ran into logistical problems. The buses fell through, and so did most of the students. Seth was still planning on going down, as his parents live in the Philly area. He assured me that we would be utilized and we would have a free place to stay.
I was still determined to go. I had been aching to volunteer for the campaign, but things never really worked out in the past, and I felt like this was an opportunity I couldn't pass up. My roommate, Adam, was also still on board, and I managed to convince a classmate of mine, Graham, to come as well. We decided that we would drive down, and that we would take Adam's vanagon.
Adam had convinced his girlfriend, Nan, a student at SUNY-New Paltz, to take a bus to Philadelphia and meet us there. I also convinced some friends of mine, Eric and Phil, who had already graduated and were now living in NYC, to take a bus to Philly as well. It was shaping up to be a pretty good weekend.
On Thursday, the day before we were supposed to leave, I received a call from Seth. He informed me that there were 2 students, Christina and Nate, from Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY that wanted to go, but didn't have a ride. I told Seth we would be happy to pick them up on the way. I also received an email from Anne Kolker, the SFBO State Coordinator for PA, expressing her desire to have us work out the the Bucks County HQ in Doylestown, PA. I agreed because I knew this was an important county for Barack.
Day 1 - Friday, April 11
I had been watching my email like a hawk all morning because I had still not heard back from the campaign on where we would be staying. We left Rochester at about 2pm and headed to Geneva, still not knowing exactly where we would be staying. We met Christina and Nate for the first time in front of the library at Hobart College.
Nate, Christina and Graham in the vanagon (clockwise from left)
We finally received our housing assignment about an hour later, and I was fairly surprised as I was reading the email on my phone. The email began by listing an address and an "Emergency Contact" number, and went on to detail how to acquire a key to the house. I got the impression that no one was currently living in the house. I read the email over again. I was thinking, "Is this guy really going to let us into this house without ever meeting us, and then have us stay there all weekend alone?" I was awestruck. I read the email to the rest of the car. We couldn't help but smile and laugh. We couldn't believe it.
We hit some bad traffic in Scranton caused by some construction. We were worried the vanagon was going to overheat. It was about this time I received a phone call from Dave about the house. He told me that he left the lights on for us, and he had managed to find some towels for us. He explained apologetically that there was no bedding or food at the house, but he left us some spaghetti in case we were hungry when we got in. He said that he lived 30 minutes away, and to call him if we needed anything. I thanked him repeatedly and hung up. I was thinking, "This is really surreal." Around this time, I also received a call from the Field Organizer for Bucks County, named Julius. He was making sure we found a place to stay, and was looking forward to working with us this weekend. So, after freaking out a little bit before we left, I was starting to fell pretty good about the situation. Things were starting to fall in place.
We got into Philly late, and it was raining pretty heavily. We managed to find Phil and Eric, thanks to our Garmin GPS unit (which proved to be invaluable during our trip), and then made our way over to a different bus station to scoop up Nan. We now had 8 people crammed in the vanagon, something that we would repeat manytimes over the weekend. We still had another hour of driving to do in order to get to the house we were staying at, but we didn't really notice. We were in high spirits due to our reunion with our friends.
We started to get close to the house, and we quickly realized it was going to be in a pretty rural area. It was about 1am at this point, and the road the house was on was extremely dark, with wisps of fog rolling across the street. Phil said it reminded him of a horror movie (car full of college kids in the woods). We all laughed.
When we pulled up to the house, we couldn't believe it. It was a very nice home on a sizable piece of land, and it only got better when we went inside. It had 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, all with new carpeting, and the rest of the house had nice hardwood floors. The house was completely empty except for a folding table in the dining room and a couch in the living room. We found the spaghetti that was left for us, and we also found a coffee maker, a tin of coffee, a bag of sugar, and the refrigerator stocked with 2 cases of water, a case of Pepsi, and a pint of half-and-half. Unreal. We were absolutely blown away. I just kept walking around saying, "This is amazing."
We grabbed our sleeping bags and crashed. We had a long day ahead of us.
Day 2 - Saturday, April 12
We woke up the next morning and headed over to the Doylestown office. The fog had rolled in overnight, and we had a good time staring out at the beautiful scenery as we drove. We arrived at the HQ and all 8 of us poured out of the van. We met Julius and a nice lady sitting at a desk (I forgot her name. Sorry!). He explained to us, and another group of students from Maryland, that we would be canvassing that day, and he was sending us down to Warminster, to a staging location in a hotel where we would find another organizer named Cliff. We grabbed some rally signs on the way out, and decided to decorate the van. We were now officially driving an Obama bus.
Julius on the left.
The whole crew: (left to right) Eric, Phil, Me, Graham, Adam, Nan, Christina, Nate
We met Cliff at the staging location where we would receive our canvassing training. We managed to beat the other group of college kids to the hotel (thanks, Garmin!), so Cliff began to tell us a little bit about himself while we were waiting.
Cliff on the right
Cliff is a lawyer from San Francisco. He'd never been a part of a campaign before. He explained to us that he was sitting at home when Sen. Obama gave his speech after the New Hampshire primary and was moved, but the final straw came when the camera began to pan the crowd and he saw a friend of his from law school. A friend that did not live in New Hampshire. He decided at that point that he needed to get off the couch and do something, so he took 1 month off and became an extended volunteer for the campaign in Pennsylvania. We began to ask him some questions about how the campaign worked, and which people were volunteers and which were paid staffers. After talking about this for awhile, he made a comment that stuck with me. I'll use quotes here, but it's more like paraphrasing what he said.
"I asked Julius (a paid staffer, and Cliff's boss) what my job title was, you know just because I was curious. He told me, "Field Organizer." I said, "Well, Julius, that's your title." He said, "Yeah, but you're doing organizing, right? So you're a Field Organizer." That's what I love about this campaign."
After our training, we headed out to knock on doors. I've never been part of a campaign before but I couldn't help but think how organized this all was. We had every resource we needed and everything was extremely efficient. We were split up into pairs (Adam & Nan, Eric & Phil, Nate & Christina, and Graham & I), and we quickly learned that this wasn't the most friendly neighborhood for Obama. I'll sum up some anecdotes below.
Graham and I's first house was an elderly couple. The lady informed us that they weren't voting for Obama, and proceeded to say "You young folks have a lot to learn about that man."
Adam was talking to an elderly lady through a screen door, when she stated, with a concerned tone, "Don't you see what he's doing?"
Adam: "Yes."
Lady: "Open your eyes!" (repeatedly)
Adam: "Ok. Thank you. Have a nice day."
Nan was enjoying talking to a lady who appeared to be an Obama supporter ("I really like him") until she stated that she couldn't get over the fact that he was a "baby murderer" and was going to write him a letter.
I was approached on the street by an elderly man (who I wasn't trying to talk to) who said, "Who do you support? Obama? How can you volunteer for that asshole? [rambling] Wright...[rambling]...After all those years in that church...[more rambling]...you can still support him after that?"
Me: "Yes."
Man: [starts to ramble again]
Me: "i don't really see it the same way you do."
Man: [rambling + walking away]
Me: "Have a nice day, sir."
On a more positive note, Nate and Christina ran into some kids selling crystal light. They bought some, and got free refills (their mom was an Obama supporter)
I may have managed to flip an undecided. I had a fairly long conversation with a nice lady about electability, and how Bucks county had just turned blue.
Lady: "I hear all these Republicans switched parties just to vote for Hillary because that's who they want to run against."
Me: "Well, there might be a little bit of that, but I think it's more due to Republicans wanting to vote for Obama. I think he has a much better cross-over appeal and has a better chance of beating McCain in the fall."
Lady: "Yeah. I think so too. I guess I'm for Obama."
We came back to Cliff to drop off our packets, and told some of our horror stories. He apologized and assured us that this doesn't usually happen. We grabbed some calzones and beer (well-deserved, in my opinion) at a restaurant next door, and then headed back to the house. We were pretty exhausted.
When we got back to the house, we spent some time relaxing and looking around the property. Bucks County is really a beautiful area, even in early spring before the leaves have come out.
A little later in the day, I received a call from Seth Stein, the original organizer of the event. He invited all 8 of us over to his house for a barbecue. Now, I had never met Seth before. We had talked over the phone quite a few times trying to organize various events, but I had never actually met him before, and he certainly didn't know anyone else I was with. We all piled in the van and headed over to Seth's house.
We pulled up to a very nice house in an upper-class neighborhood. We were greeted by Seth's father, who answered the door with "McCain Headquarters." We all laughed, and he invited us inside. We did the round of handshakes, and he asked us where we were from, which proved to be a pretty difficult question to answer (New Paltz, NYC, Rochester, Geneva). He directed us into the kitchen, where we found Mrs. Stein scrambling about the kitchen, laying out hamburger buns, chips, and drinks. She began to apologize saying that Seth hadn't told her people would be coming over, but we stopped her and said everything looked great. Mrs. Stein proved to be an extremely nice lady, always smiling and laughing. Hamburgers and hot dogs began to stream in from the grill.
At this point Seth came into the room and we finally met. He had brought a few friends, John and Arthur. After serving us a mountain of hamburgers and hot dogs, Mrs. Stein began asking us if we had enough food, and asked us if she should order some pizzas. Everybody spoke up at once, "Oh, I don't think so. Really. This is great." We were all just looking at each other smiling. We just couldn't believe all this hospitality. It was amazing. These were people we had never met. Our only connection with each other was Barack Obama.
Seth, John, and Arthur began to explain the work they had done that day. They had handed out flyers at Temple for a rally that was happening the next day, and then dropped off some absentee ballots. At Temple, they had the chance to hang out with Bill Bradley.
After eating, we headed downstairs to play some ping pong, and ended up watching a movie. Seth invited all of us to stay at the house that night, but we declined. We headed back to the house after the movie, and thanked the Steins for all their hospitality.
During the car ride home, I started to write down some of the things that had happened that day. I managed to capture some of the comments in the car while I was taking notes.
Christina: "I was thinking about this morning, and it feels like it was 3 days ago."
Adam: "This is one of the coolest things I have ever done."
Nan: "This is turning into an epic road trip."
We got back to the house and crashed.
Day 3 - Sunday, April 13
We showed up at the Doylestown office in the morning, and actually beat Julius there. He apologized for our negative experience in Warminster, and he decided to send us out to "friendlier" turf in Doylestown. We had a much better time around Doylestown, and identified quite a few Obama supporters. Some quick anecdotes:
Adam thinks he switched an undecided when he told them about driving down all the way from NY.
I had an interesting conversation through a window with a lady painting her house. She works for a pharmaceutical company and was worried about Obama's tough talk about the pharmaceutical industry.
Lady: "So does he think they make too much money?"
Me: "Well, it's more about curbing their influence in the decision making process. He thinks there's an imbalance of power when it comes to the pharmaceutical companies and health care policy."
Lady: "And what does Hillary think?"
Me: "Well...she accepts their money. I'll just leave it at that."
Lady: "Ok. I'm for Obama then."
Adam knocked on a joker's door:
Adam: "Have you decided who you're going to support?"
Man: "Yeah. Ron Paul."
Adam: "Oh."
Man: "I'm just kidding. I'm for Obama."
I approached a house with a young boy out front hitting a baseball on a string. her mother answered the door and told me the whole household was voting Obama, then turned to her son and said, "Who are you voting for, honey?" The boy stopped swinging and raised his bat in the air and yelled, "OOOOBAMAAAAAA!!"
We headed back to the Doylestown office to drop off our packets, with the intent of getting out of there quickly so we could hit the road. When we got there we were sitting around tallying up our sheets, when Julius came in and introduced us to a man named Marshall Ganz. I had no idea who he was, but the way he was introduced, I got the feeling Julius respected him quite a bit. He sat down with us and began to ask each one of us who we were, and why we supported Obama. We went all the way around the circle, and he just listened intently to each one of us. When, it was his turn, he started to tell us about himself. Turns out he's a lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Wow, I thought. But that was just the start. Turns out he specializes in organizing. He worked with the civil rights movement in Mississippi, with Cesar Chavez and the United Food Workers, and with the Bobby Kennedy campaign in 1968.
At this point, Julius popped in to take a coffee order. Marshall and Adam were the only ones who wanted coffee, and Julius stepped out.
He began to talk about Hillel, and his three questions, which I had never heard before.
"If I am not for myself, who will be for me?"
"And if I am for myself alone, what am I?"
"And if not now, when?"
He drew parallels between these three questions and Obama's 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote. He explained that Barack started by explaining who he was and what he was all about, then proceeded to talk about unifying the nation around common principles, and finally ended with a call to action. We were all silent as he was explaining this, hanging on every word.
He then went on to talk about the tragedy of Bobby Kennedy in 1968. He felt as though this nation was on the right track back then, until Bobby got shot. He felt we veered off onto the wrong path after that, and have never quite found our way again. He began to explain that it was almost 40 years exactly since that day in California, and proceeded to ask us if we knew any significance about that number. We shook our heads. He said that that's how long the Israelites spent wandering in the desert. So, 40 years later, after wandering through the desert of Nixon, Reagan, and Bush, Barack will put us back on the right path. The Joshua Generation.
It was getting late, and we said our goodbyes to Marshall and Julius. They thanked us for coming out, and we thanked them for everything. As we were heading back to the car, we were all talking about Marshall. It was pretty amazing getting a chance to speak in such an intimate setting with him. I overheard Adam say, "I can't believe I was part of the same coffee order as that guy."
We headed back to the house, packed up, and headed out. We dropped Phil, Eric, and Nan off at the bus station, and the rest of us started the long drive back to the Rochester area. It was about this time that I had some time to reflect on the whole weekend. First of all, the organization of the campaign was amazing. It was a total horizontal approach, where they basically gave us the tools we needed to actually help the campaign, without actually telling us what to do. Secondly, the hospitality we received was nothing short of incredible. Everywhere we went, we were received with kindness and generosity. Finally, it was something we could all be proud of. I've read so many diaries about Obama's ground game, and now I can finally say that I was one of the pairs of boots on the ground.
We dropped off Nate and Christina in Geneva a few hours later. Two freshman who started the weekend as strangers were now our friends. I felt a little twinge as we were driving away. I felt like they had become part of our crew.
Phil was talking to me towards the end of the weekend, before we dropped him off, and he said something that I think sums this all up perfectly.
"This is what we want America to be."