I'm still meeting people every day, but let me tell you about some of the folks I work with and have met so far. There are two paid staff – Field Organizers- who work out of our office, Dan and Ben. I’m assigned to Ben, and I’m called a Deputy Field Organizer (still figuring out what that means). Ben’s totally cute- he just graduated from Amherst in May, is from CT, and has been working on the campaign since the spring. He’s been in Montgomery County for about 4 months, and opened up our Lansdale office 2 weeks ago. He’s very sharp and works very hard, usually from about 9am until about midnight, everyday except Sunday when we don’t open until noon. He’s very nice and friendly, though a bit serious compared to Dan, the other Field Organizer, who’s a few years older, grew up in NYC, and is really funny. His joking sense of humor might be what gets us all to the finish line without losing it. Both guys are working non-stop, and both constantly look like they could use a shower, hot meal, 24 hours of sleep, and a haircut. They are being housed by a nice Lansdale volunteer named Kathy, who reminds me of my mom about 10 years ago. In fact, Kathy’s daughter has just graduated college, is looking to go into the field of international development, and is headed to Kenya in December.
And of course there’s Sheila (lady at left in photo)! Sheila is sort of a full-time volunteer from Long Island and is in charge of volunteers. She’s the best saleswoman I’ve ever met. No one so much as walks through the door without her talking them into volunteering for at least an hour in our office. You just can’t say no to this woman! She’s not Jewish, but has that perfect stereotypical NY Jewish mom persona. Only instead of insisting you take another helping of dinner, you find yourself spending hours calling random people and convincing them to vote for Obama. It’s genius, frankly.
I’m still figuring out how it all works (and part of the point of this blog is to give all of you a window to the inside workings of the campaign), but basically the Lansdale office just has Ben and Dan as paid staff, and everyone else is a volunteer. They do a lot with out-of-state volunteers who sign up to give large blocks of time to the campaign, like Sheila, and will pretty much go anywhere they are sent. I guess out-of-state-ers are less likely to get distracted by real life, and so can just work flat out full-time + for the days they are here. I signed up to work on the campaign in a number of places, basically just sending my CV and a cover letter explaining my situation, and filled out a few applications online. Technically I am an out-of-state volunteer, assigned to Lansdale, but actually they did it on purpose because I know the area, already have housing and transport, and can fulfill a need for more full-time volunteers that they had in my area. We just had a married couple from Texas come to Lansdale for 4 days to volunteer. I guess the idea is that Texas is considered less of a priority right now than Pennsylvania, so their time is best used here. I was talking to one of the team lead volunteers, Kelly, who told me that there are all kinds of people in non-swing states who come to swing states like PA to volunteer (in the coming weeks, apparently we’ll be flooded with them), but sometimes people will even volunteer frequent flyer miles or things like that, to pay for out-of-state volunteers to come. Team lead volunteers are usually Lansdale residents who do a lot of regular volunteering, but usually have a job or family, so can’t work every day, all day, like I’m hoping to do for the majority of the month I’m home. Many of these Lansdale team lead volunteers have been working for Obama since the early days of the primary, and really have some great stories.
In the coming weeks, I’ll try to tell more stories about the great people I’m meeting here.
