Dry Run GOTV Day 2 - Lessons Learned!

Okay so I guess a clear pattern is that I’m always behind in updating this blog. So...to close out last weekend, I’ll say that Sunday dawned sunny and cool and overall a beautiful day. We figured out our system better, and I was even able to sneak out and have lunch with my nephew, sister and mom, which was a small make-up for the fact that I won’t be able to take my nephew trick-or-treating like I originally promised, as I’ll be stuck in the office most of Halloween evening doing the Friday night prep work for our big GOTV weekend. We had a great team meeting at the end of the night, where we all processed the weekend and discussed key things we wanted to change for GOTV, or remaining issues or questions we had. We hit our targets considerably better than the day before, and overall, felt good about what was ahead of us.

The funny part of Sunday evening is that both Ben and Dan really grumbled about having the meeting, but myself and a few others insisted. When at various points during the meeting both Ben and Dan were getting up to take calls and me and Kelly were left to run the meeting, it dawned on me the irony of our team’s structure. We had three early 20-something men as paid field organizer staff, with three 30-something (and older) women as deputy field organizers/volunteers, and all the rest of the core leadership team (except one) of about 12 people as older women. (I say older but it is a range- mid-30s and up- and most of them have kids who are grown, but a few have younger kids too.). It makes sense that a campaign would recruit young people to be paid staff, since I’m sure they are getting paid peanuts and don’t have families or other jobs to deal with. And I was trying to figure out why the volunteers were all women, most of whom are empowered, reliable, dedicated types, and I’m not sure about that one. All of our husbands are good men, and Obama supporters, but somehow don’t have the zeal for volunteering on the campaign like we do. They all seem happy holding down the fort at home, which I am so glad my husband is willingly doing while I “work” 7 days a week, 14 hrs a day. Of course Kelly on the other hand is not so sure, when she came home the other day to her six-year-old eating a dinner of Nilla wafers with jelly on them!

Anyway, it made me think a lot about my own job in Thailand (and previously in Sri Lanka), and the assumptions that we also often make about volunteers. We staff our provincial offices with young, energetic field officers who often don’t have a lot of experience, but are reliable, and trainable. And yet they are expected to go into communities and work with volunteers who are well-established, experienced and considerably their senior. In many cases, they are supposed to be directing, training, or coaching these volunteers. And then we expect the volunteers to take on all this extra stuff themselves, and more or less do things our way. We do try to use participatory processes to integrate better into local ways of doing things, but its tough. Kelly was telling me a little bit about what it was like after the primary when she and Kathy and a few of the others single-handedly ran the staging area for Obama this spring, with no help from the campaign. Then the campaign came in with their way of doing things and their systems and plans (and 23-year old paid staff!) and ruffled everyone’s feathers who had been working on their own there since the beginning. I was thinking to myself, “Well I’ll be damned, that sounds familiar!”