Yes We Did.

November 6, 2008 on 4:12 am | In Uncategorized | No Comments

Yesterday I took the day off of work to help with the Obama campaign’s final push to the polls.

Working with an office filled with volunteers I made phone calls to Virginia and Iowa and New Mexico. I was completely paranoid all day yesterday. While I called voter after voter I was determined the avoid any news and just stay focused on trying to touch as many voters as possible.

People filtered into the office all day long, some looking for signs, T-shirts and buttons – just wanting to walk away from the day with a small piece of this campaign that meant so much to them.

More than that, I watched volunteers people coming in with their lunch hour off, just there with a cell phone and the drive to help, making phone calls and skipping lunch. It was an amazing day.

The volunteers were energized, calling at a feverish pace and the room that they filled was nearly overwhelmed with the chatter of their voices. As the day labored on, I noticed the chatter was slowly getting more and more quiet as exhaustion began to set-in. Afterall, these people had been their since early morning, with nothing but water, donuts and snack foods to keep them going and they were bound to get tired.

About an hour before the polls closed in Virginia, one of the Obama organizers, the amazing Chella, came in with call sheets to Virginia. “Polls close in Virginia in an hour, we need to get through all of these names before that happens!” She declared.

I watched the room suddenly become reenergized with the chants of “Fired UP! Ready to go!”

And the chatter returned to its early morning volume.

More than 15,000 phone calls were made that day from that location.

That evening I was at the Election watch party and I ran into 2 volunteers who had been phone-banking with me throughout the day. These ladies were total troopers and made phone calls outside even when the temperature and humidity made it uncomfortable to do so.

I told them, “Aren’t you glad you stayed and made those phone calls to Virginia now?”

They both declared how much fun they had making the calls and how they were so happy to have taken the time to do it.

It was at that point that the giant screen displaying CNN election results came out with a projection.

Barack Obama had won Virginia.

The state we had rushed to finish calling during the day.

We all cheered.

A minute passed and CNN released “Breaking News” – Barack Obama had won the Presidency.

It was absolutely amazing. I watched the faces of these women shift and they looked at me as if to say, “We helped do that??”

After a round of hugs I came to realize how much this election, this campaign was about ordinary people doing something that they had never done before – taking stake in the politics of their future.

Today, I hear the media saying “President-Elect Obama” and there’s a part of me that can hardly believe it’s true. Like many people I wonder what comes next, how will I fill my days and weekends without this amazing campaign to donate my time and efforts to?

I have no doubt that President-Elect Obama will use this amazing grassroots network that he has built to help ignite change in communities across this country of ours and I look forward to helping make more change here at home and for Americans everywhere.

This is a brave new day and the possibilities that lie ahead of us are endless.

Take heart and enjoy this day because we all have a stake in it and it’s up to us to make certain what comes next is as powerful as this campaign for change has been.