Debrief

I've been out of the bloggy loop for a while.   Helping to run a voter education drive in one of the hottest counties in the country is time-consuming.  It's frustrating too from a blogging perspective because every five minutes there's something to blog about but no time to get it done.   C'est la guerre. 

The good news is that a FOX affiliate did a fantastic piece on the work we were doing, which explains the whole effort perfectly and gets me off the hook.   So if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth a bazillion.   You can watch it here.   The man interviewed is the one I work most closely with.   He's not only excellent on camera but also a great idea guy.   I'm more about details and pitfalls - the kind of the things that Idea People don't like to hear about - but we're a good team because I enjoy working with someone who is so all about possibilities.  It's fun when it isn't infuriating.   

The canvassers featured in the piece (April and Holly) are two of my favorite.  They're two to whom I could hand two huge turfs in the morning and know that I wouldn't see them again until it was covered.  In fact it was April who called in one day to ask if they could stay in the field until the turf was done.  There was also a retired Marine who had the same work ethic and took intructions like a dream.  That isn't to say that he did everything he was told without question.  There were plenty of questions, but they were all from a tactical perspective instead of from a this-is-so-far and it's-so-cold perspective. 

They weren't the only ones either.  There was a man who brought his son and grandson to work.  They managed their turf like they owned it, asking for it over and over again until it was finished.  There was a team of teenagers who, in the words of the adult who drove them around, approached their turf like a virus.  "I'd park the car and they'd jump out and hit the houses in no time."   

Based on the last week, next time I want a team made up of female activists, energized teens, union workers and retired military.  We'd have a 75% contact rate wherever we went.

We won't know how specifically effective we were this time around until the numbers come back showing us which women got out to vote.  I'm not even sure when that information will be available.  What we do know is that we worked to turn out women of all party registrations and enough people voted for progressive economic values and against the current and disastrous war policy to send a new representative from Bucks County (and parts of Philly and Montgomery County) to Washington in January.  Yay us.

The trick now is to keep all these people engaged and active over the next two years, not only so we can do some good progressive work on the ground in Bucks County, but also so that when 2008 comes, we'll all be ready to roll all over again wherever we can do the most good.   No small job.  Thank goodness for the Idea Guy.

Comments

[Thomas Nephew]

Very inspiring, very interesting, very smart. You're one of my election heroes (Nell's another). So when are you running for office?

[KathyF]

I want to say I am enormously impressed and proud of what you did. (I hate to use the word "proud" as that implies some kind of ownership, but in a general bloggy sense, it seems right.)

I was actually glad you weren't blogging, since I knew you were one-upping the bloggers. We can write all the words we want, but what you did really, really matters. Thanks, from someone who couldn't do it this time.

[eRobin]

You guys are very kind :)

[shari l]

I'm so inspired and proud of your work. Thanks for doing it.

And it all adds up, n'est-ce pas?