Day 1: Part B

After taking a break at around 4:30 to drive back to the duplex (I think we're going to get a little sick of Geoglein Gulch Road) to get the doggy, we headed out for a quick dinner and wifi and then back to the La Plata Democratic Party office on Main Ave. That is the bee hive for all things Democrat here in Durango. Even at 7:00pm, the office is busy, with a line of volunteers sitting at plastic tables and second-hand phones making personal voter calls. No Robo-calls here, but actual humans committed to the causes of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. What amazes me is that these are not donation solicitations but actual "issues" calls where real conversations are happening. The calls are not the obligatory stump speech watered down to a script for a caller but rather intense, honest, heart-felt discussions about the issues of the election. In my eavesdropping work, I noted that many of these conversations would last upwards of 5-10 minutes...a testament to the causes, the people and the importance of communication that isn't some pre-recorded attack ad produced by a lobbyist. Impressive.

Maida and I continued work on our calls to potential election day volunteers, slotting them into roles, given out info related to various conference calls for mini "trainings" about their roles, informing people about other volunteer opportunities (right now we're pushing the campaign's mock election this Saturday which will allow volunteers to practice their roles with unexpected "dilemmas" and "situations" arriving). Then, it's a final thank you and gathering of election day contact info. We have a basic script and order of operations to get through the call, but we are also chatting, talking about the McCain visit to Durango High School on Friday at 6:00pm, etc. Again, everyone is really wonderful, happy to talk (even with babies crying in the background or if I caught them on a family vacation to the Grand Canyon, yes really this did happen).

Following each call, we enter updated information into the Google document that is the gathering spot for this info. Amazingly, as we type, up to four or five other users are entering other info into the same document. It changes, gets editted there on the spot as we're typing. It is truly a live document, capturing the energy and data that seems to run this campaign.

We finished our calls right before the 9:00pm cut off (calling later than 9pm is a no-no), entered our last info into the color-coded Google Doc that had been growing and changing all day, saved our work, and started to pack up. What our tasks would be the next day is anyone's guess.