I've never reposted a diary before, but I posted this the other day about half an hour before Friday's debate started and it was, understandably, lost in the excitement of the night. I thought I'd repost it so that people could see an example of what's happening in states all across America as we work together to take our country back.
Thursday night we hosted the Grand Opening of our Grass Roots Barack Obama Campaign office in Mobile, AL. We weren't going to have a campaign office in South Alabama. The national campaign has an office in Birmingham, AL and conventional wisdom says that it's simply not feasible to have more than one office in this state. Here in Mobile we saw it a little differently. Those of us who have worked here for the last year, canvassing, making phone calls, registering voters, meeting together... we know just how energized this area is for Obama. We know too, that with Mobile less than an hour's drive from the Florida line, we're well positioned to make a real difference in this election.
For awhile our Mobile group continued to meet wherever we could find a space - the local democratic headquarters, the office of a fellow Obama supporter, even a local Chinese restaurant. We continued our canvassing and registering voters, and every single time we had a meeting or came across another supporter, we were asked the same thing: when is the Obama office going to open? Well, that wasn't going to happen if we waited for someone else to do it, so we took Obama's words to heart. He said this election was about us, not him, and he has encouraged his supporters from the beginning to go out there and do what needs to be done to change the world.
We found empty office space and convinced the landlord to let us have it rent-free for the next forty days. Our volunteers committed to funding insurance for the building, utilities, phones and internet service. They committed to supporting the office by donating office and cleaning supplies, tables & chairs, a computer and fax machine -- everything you need to run an office. And they committed to staffing the office from now until the election. We were in business!
We contacted Obama Field Officers in Florida to let them know what we were doing and that we had a large, energetic team of volunteers here in South Alabama who wanted to work with them to get out the vote in Florida as well as here in Alabama. Sara Buettner-Connelly, the Border State Coordinator in Florida immediately went into action. She set up a "Sister Cities" Program at my.barackobama.com where Mobile volunteers can phonebank directly to Pensacola, FL. She put us in touch with the GOTV Director in Pensacola, Jake Itzkowitz, so we could plan canvassing trips each weekend between now in the election.
Last night was our Grand Opening. We put notices in the local paper, posted our event on my.barackobama.com, even went on a small local radio station to invite Mobilians to attend. The response was beyond anything we could have hoped for. People began stopping by the office yesterday before we'd barely begun to hang signs.
The Grand Opening was set to begin at 6p; we had a crowd there by 5.
More than 200 people signed up to volunteer before the evening was over.
Cora, the heart and soul behind getting our office set up started us with a wonderful welcome: "I want to thank you for your support over this project. Thank you for reading our emails, passing the word. Especially thank you for making this a wonderful, wonderful open house here in Mobile. They said it would not happen. We're the only office in Southern Alabama. And so we like to say in our group, the impossible takes a little longer."
Jake Itzkowitz came over from the Pensacola, FL office to speak with the group. He made it clear that we have the power to win this election. We have the numbers in Florida alone if we can out the vote (1.4 million young or African America registered Democrats in Florida did not vote in the 2004 election). "We have a lot of work to do. We have some goals out there that are insane. It's hundreds of thousands of voter contacts a week. Literally hundreds of thousands, some 500,000 doors and phone calls every week to get where we need to be. We need all hands on deck for this. Florida, like you said, is the ballgame. We lose every other state in play and we win Florida, we win. Period. What we say in Florida is 'You change your precinct, you change your city. You change your city, you change the state. You change your state, you change the country. You change the country, you change the world.' We are this close. For our region, we are less than 200,000 votes away from changing the world."
I spoke next, but as I was on camera duty last night, there's no record of it. You're welcome ;)
Finally, we heard from Carolyn, one of the very first Barack Obama supporters in Mobile, if not the first. She told the story of how, early in 2007, she and her sister were determined to make Mobile an Obama town: "We've got to try to get his name out. But I found out that all the people that were in the different.. Democratic party people... Nobody was saying anything. Nobody would let us say anything. So I told my sister, 'I tell you what. We're gonna get on these corners. We're gonna make us some signs, and we're gonna get on these corners.' And I know some of y'all have seen us on Dauphin and I-65 waving them signs. On Airport Boulevard and Goodyear, waving those signs. On St. Stevens Rd and 45, waving those signs. Every weekend. Every weekend. Every weekend. And one day it was so hot, I think about 100 degrees probably, and this lady stopped and said 'Baby! Get out of the sun. We gonna vote for him. Just get out of the sun!'"
She gave us all chills as she explained why this was so important to her: "I think this is what makes me go the most. I think about the people that came before me, what they suffered. I know that they did not do that just for themselves. They said, 'I may not see it, but I'm going to do it for those that's coming ahead of me.' And I feel that I owe them a duty and I feel that I owe them that, to do what I'm supposed to do to get this vote out and make this nation better than it is today."
And of course, there was dancing: