Hi there! Long time reader, first time writer :)
Somewhere in the last week, after trying to lull myself to sleep with the gentle terror of reading RNC wrap-up stories, I snapped.
Okay, maybe “snapped” is a little harsh, but I definitely made some sort of popping noise. I grabbed my phone and sent my wife a text message:
Tomorrow, I’m going to volunteer to make phone calls for Biden.
I can’t tell you why that night was any different than the daily parade of horrors and atrocities we’ve started calling “normal” in this country, but I just couldn’t take another day of hoping. If I didn’t actually do something, and the current occupant landed another four-year stint of… whatever you’d call what he’s doing to us, I’d never forgive myself.
I don’t have a strong track record of volunteering. I’ve always been more of a “send a check” kinda guy. And that’s not to downplay the importance of financial support, but I realized that no matter how many times I clicked the “Donate now!” button, it wasn’t making me feel any better.
The last time I did any kind of real political volunteer work was back in 2004, going door to door in the drizzle of semi-rural Washington state to GOTV for Kerry. I remember going to bed the night of the election thinking we’d won, and waking up realizing we’d lost.
Good times.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I signed up last week to make calls. My mental model was something along the lines of this:
Me: Hi, I’m calling from the—
Trump Voter: OWN THE LIBS! TRUMP RULES! BWA HA HA HA!
Me: (crying in fetal position)
But I knew that however uncomfortable it was going to be, the alternative was worse. I signed up for a Call Crew training slot, put it on my calendar, and spent the intervening days arguing with myself over whether I should back out or not.
Spoiler alert: I didn’t.
I was one of 1000 people that called in on Zoom for the orientation, which is actually one of the smaller groups that logged in for the training that week — the session a day before had closer to 3000 callers. Those numbers alone stoked my optimism a bit.
The training was painless, if a little rushed. The trainer ran us through all of the reasons it was important to support a phone GOTV effort, made a few “demo” calls to another organizer (who played the role of a Biden supporter, an undecided voter, and a Trump supporter, in that order), and showed us the online tools we’d be relying on to make calls.
Of the three sections, the “online tools” section was the one I wished we’d spent more time on, and clearly a lot of people in the Zoom call felt the same way. But most people had a can-do attitude about it, and it was made clear to us that we could take the tools for a “test drive” before making any real calls, which helped settle nerves a bit.
I signed myself up for a slot starting at 8:30am (my local time) this morning. I logged on at 8:00am to spend a little time warming up to the tools, and then I dove in. The campaign’s automated system did all of the dialing and screening for me, so all I needed to do was wait for the signal and start working through the talking points.
My first call picked up — straight to voicemail. No problem. I clicked the appropriate button on the call system to log that result, and the system queued me up for another call.
This time I got a person — a woman who sounded tired and a little defeated, even through a simple hello.
I introduced myself, then asked how she was doing. Her answer knocked me for a loop.
Not great. We had to bury my brother over the weekend.
I was ready for people to be angry. I was ready for cynicism, insults, apathy.
I was not ready for this. “We had to bury my brother over the weekend” is not one of the things they cover in the talking points.
I told her how sorry I was, and we chatted for a moment. She told me that she was voting for Joe, and she sounded angry about where things in this country were going. I thanked her for her time, apologized again for bothering her on such a sad day, and clicked off.
I spent another hour on the system, making calls. A few of them were just simple hang-ups. A few voicemail messages. A couple were clever automated telemarketer response systems that pretend to be a person who is listening/paying attention, just to string the caller along.
But mostly, I talked to people. I talked to a few people who were already fired up to vote for Biden/Harris, who hated what Trump was doing to this country and couldn’t bear the idea of four more years.
I talked to a couple of undecided voters, and I listened to their concerns — how they were tired of voting for one side or the other, and feeling like it never made a real difference.
I talked to a woman in her 90s who said she never decided who to vote for until the day before the election, and reminisced with me about the people she’d voted for in the past.
I got a few “I’m sorry, I don’t have time for this” type responses. I thanked them for taking my call and wished them a great day.
But the calls I’ll remember most are the ones that went on for much longer than I ever expected. I listened to people talk about how anxious they felt, about how frustrated they were with their neighbors who were still rabid Trump supporters despite everything that had been happening. I talked to people about their lives, about starting new jobs after being laid off, about a home town we happened to share. This was all after the talking points, after already getting their promise to vote blue down the ballot. People just wanting to be heard.
After an hour, I’m not sure how many calls I’d made (my browser window refreshed itself once or twice, resetting my call tally.) But the good experiences far, far outweighed the bad. I signed people up to volunteer, to make calls just like the ones I was making. A couple people thanked me for doing what I was doing. It was pretty humbling.
Maybe you’ve thought about making calls, too. I had to think for a long time before I made the jump.
But I can tell you, the water is fine.
If you’re worried about angry Trump supporters chewing you out, you should know that you’re calling people who are already on a screened calling list. For the most part, it’s about getting commitments to vote, or recruiting people to join as a volunteer.
If you’re worried about not knowing what to say, there’s a step-by-step tool that walks you through the talking points. You’ll be a little stiff at first, but as you get more calls under your belt, it’ll start to feel more and more natural.
If you’re worried about bothering people or intruding on their lives, just remember what's at stake in this election. Be kind. Be genuine. And if they don’t want to hear it, be gracious. Say thank you, log the call, and move on to the next.
If you’re worried about people seeing your phone number or name and getting your personal info, don’t be — the calling tool puts a wall between you and the person you’re calling.
If you’re worried you don’t have the time to get involved, know that you get to call at your pace, on your schedule. Even if all you have is 15 minutes here and there, you can log on, make some calls, and log right back off again. Every little bit helps. It feels way better than scrolling Facebook :)
If you’re thinking of making calls, but it just sounds too scary, too unknown, too anything — I’ve been where you are. I get it. And I can tell you, my idea of how uncomfortable it was going to be was just that — an idea. Not reality.
Like I said, this was just my first time. Maybe the next one will be rougher.
But the hour I spent making calls this morning left me feeling more optimistic and energized than I have in a long, long time.
Sign up to help GOTV! It's good for what ails ya :)
