Working the Obama Phone Bank

Driving south on US 41, the grey sunk my mood lower after four hours making phone calls to Get Out the Vote and talking to fewer than ten people. I spent those hours rereading the script on the lap top screen till a sound of  bee-boop indicated that the predictive dialer hit a live one. It hit more times than ten, but people hung up once my live voice confirmed I was calling from the Obama for America campaign.

41, before the tollway was the main thoroughfare between Chicago and Milwaukee, like Gratiot was from Detroit to Lansing. Before then the area was prairie and wetlands. As I drove, I worked hard to let go of frustration and appreciate the beauty in the cattails and the deep green reeds along side the road. Some bushes and grass still dressed green and contrasted dramatically with the coco browns of the bare deciduous trees. Forget it. I couldn't help but think of the cattails as corn dogs on a stick. Forty one degrees of bone-chill and damp fit my mood perfectly. It didn't help that it was long past my usual lunch time.

I didn’t volunteer to make a call to a ninety one year old women who was grateful for a friendly voice, though she promised that she planned to vote and her son in law already agreed to drive her. I didn’t really want to learn that there was a 22 year old mother of three who said she would vote but didn’t have a clue about when where or how. If she does vote, it will be for Obama, though I am skeptical that her next call, probably from a Romney volunteer will get the same answer. I really hoped to hear enthusiastic responses. I reached one young man who told me the woman I tried to reach didn't live at that number. I told him thank you and hung up. A couple minutes later, I received a text with the correct number. She was just as gracious in talking to me about her plans to vote for the President. Two men took the time to thank me for my volunteer time and each said they worked for Obama in Iowa. 

Phone bank callers log into a website, type in personal phone number and wait for the system to call us back. Once it does, a bee-boop alert sounds and a name simultaneously pops up on the screen with the script, their name and voting place. After a call, I note the results and push Save Next, then wait for the computer to dial and dial and dial till it finds someone to pick up. The bee-boop sounds immediately when the system is running at best capacity. Today it takes two minutes, four minutes, twelve minutes, three minutes between be-hoops, then the system crashes. A manager hands a paper list to each of us using the Predictive Dialer. Few minutes are lost. The room never goes quiet, there are rows and rows of people calling from paper lists, dialing their phones manually. 

In the moments between conversations, the callers have bits of discussions. Greg who sat next to me until they discovered his phone had more bars in the back of the room, told me he owns a fancy coffee roasting shop in a Northern suburb. In 2000, he got frustrated with vote suppression. He found himself so angry in 2004 that he volunteer to make calls and again in 2008. “If someone tells you that they aren’t going to vote”, he advised me, “tell them that there are people who don’t want them to vote… say” and his voice began to sound like Clint Eastwood’s, "How does that make you feel now?”  I didn’t use that line. I did however, drink the coffee, which he donated from his shop. 

They placed Peggy next to me after Greg moved to a back table. She said she was there because “I’ve worked campaigns since I was sixteen. It’s what you do.” I didn't hear her say anything for a long time. When you keep hearing the message in one ear, “Please hold on the line”, it is easier not to fill in the void of words for someone. Her explanation finally continued, “I lived in a Republican stronghold. I felt like everyone was different than me. I had to make calls. It wasn’t till moving to Highland Park that I found people of like minds.”

The phone bank, located in a teacher's federation building, eerily reminded me of Catholic grade school, except, instead of Jesus, Mary and Joseph up front, there were two life-size cut outs of Barack and Michelle. More than once, I looked up thinking we'd had a visitation.

People at the phone bank wore uniforms of a sort. President Obama’s name or 2012 was on everything. Baseball hats and t-shirts were most prevalent. I counted men wearing dark blue 2012 golf shirts. I saw a couple fleece jackets with Obama embroidered above the heart. One slight-built young man wore orange Adidas, blue jeans and a t-shirt that read, I’m Out for Obama. One man wore a Forward t-shirt, another guy, probably a throw back to the last election wore Hope. A blond woman of a certain age, who I’d seen every time I volunteered wore a tee shirt, that said, Old Hip Women for Obama, another wore a light blue t-shirt Women for Obama. If people didn't have logo clothing, they wore buttons. Across from me a college-age woman wore a shirt that said, I Care for Obamacare... maybe she was studying to be a nurse? 

At the end of my shift the day before, I promised the husband of the woman who sat next to me making calls, that I would give his car battery a jump. It died while he waited for her in the car, listening to the Bears game. He asked me where I parked. I told him it was easy to spot… the one with the Obama bumper sticker. Haha.

On two separate occasions over Labor Day weekend, when my friend Genevieve and I drove North of Milwaukee to catch a ferry to Ludington, MI, derogatory remarks were made about my Obama bumper sticker. I first noticed that someone tried to remove my bumper sticker and a long scratch from the driver door to the back fender that weekend. Related? I'll never know.

The many expressions of campaigning for Obama are inspiring, though I am intolerant of the people who proselytized about the features and benefits of Obama. During one of my sessions, workers looked anxious when voices of two volunteers waiting to be trained got louder and louder... one seeming to want her reason for supporting him to be of higher consequence than the other's. That night I received an email that allowed me to see the number of people who already voted for Obama named Mary. I sent it to my colleague Ben, also out for Obama, though doesn't have the t-shirt. It reminds me of a time when we worked together and visited a hospital in DC. We met with hospital department heads and each introduced ourselves. First, an Anne then Mary, another Mary and another Mary. As it came around to him, he said, "My name is Ben, but, we're all Mary." Sorry, I digress.

On the day before the election, I decided to give up my credentials to the Obama rally in order to make calls to the West Coast to make sure California, Oregon et al get out to vote. Anika, the woman at the Call Bank responsible for the distribution of the coveted Election Night tickets and lanyards hugged me when I offered to return mine. Sellers remorse instantly set in. I understood the results of Greg’s use of reverse psychology. Now I wanted to go because I no longer could, though I knew I would be happier in the energy of fifty or sixty people making last ditch effort calls rather than standing in a room of 10,000 people waiting to see the man who won. With the prediction that a winner might not be immediately clear, the call center sounded much more civilized. 

Half the tables were empty by the time I arrived at the phone bank on election day. Someone said that earlier in the day, the chairs were filled, but many people left for the two hour drive into the city for the rally. I volunteered to work the shift that went until the polls closed. While we called others folded chairs,  broke down the tables, cleaned up the food tables, swept floors, rolled wires, shredded paper lists, and boxed supplies. People still sat at the front table, looking at computers and talking on the phone. A few TVs and computers with sound showed the pundits.

At the beginning of my shift we called East Coast. Someone said Wisconsin volunteers called Florida. For awhile we were calling Pennsylvania, then we got the word to call people in Ohio. We were given instructions to look at the list and only call people most likely to vote for Obama, don'w waste time or calls on any undecideds. Word was that people were being told that if they weren't already in line, that they wouldn't be able to vote. Tell them to get in line, their vote will count. The polls wouldn't close for another forty minutes there. Callers communicated all kinds of encouragement  when they reached
people in line or on their way... like they were carrying the torch for all of us. I guess they were. Pandemonium broke out when Ohio went Obama. Wisconsin lists were immediately distributed, followed by Denver.

By the time the west coast polls were closed, all but a couple tables and chairs needed to be put away. Again, it felt like a movie, a Mission Impossible con where it looks like a legitimate working business one minute and the next minute Tom Cruise is in Moscow.

I thought the managers would likely all go for drinks and watch the results or maybe head downtown once the polls were closed. To the person left in our Northern Illinois phone bank, they said they were going home to say hello to their spouses or to sleep. I got the sense that the people there at that point knew that they did their best, there was nothing left to do... from the time the polls closed till they found out the outcome. After that, one way or another they'd have another project.

I decided to volunteer for Obama when it occurred to me that Romney could win. Up till then, the best I'd done was to throw money at the campaign.My knowledge of the issues is surface and  my idealism is clouded by cynicism. I simply knew that for me, the world would be bleak if the other camp took power. I am glad I could help and I am grateful he won. I just hope he doesn't suck this term.