The Hundredth Phone Call

[Guest guest]

Election time.

 

Just received this e-mail, which may be interesting to some of you.

 

Kind regards

Sepp

 

 

 

" Paul Loeb " <loeb

Wed, 20 Oct 2004 22:17:52 -0700

[paulloeb-articles] Loeb article--The Hundredth Phone Call

 

This is probably the last piece I'll send before the election, but I thought

it might help keep you and others going during these critical final weeks.

Do please pass it on to any lists where it might be useful.

 

PL

From <http://www.workingforchange.com/>www.Workingforchange.com

THE HUNDREDTH PHONE CALL

By Paul Rogat Loeb

 

We never quite know when that last bit of effort will make the difference.

On the eve of the 2000 election, I distributed door-hangers for a closely

fought US Senate race in Washington State. I walked four precincts, and by

the four hundredth house, was cold, tired, and thought of quitting. Climbing

stair after stair on block after block, I kept hearing the classic Nirvana

line, " Grandma take me home. " But there were more houses to visit, more

materials to give out, more people to talk with, when they were in. So I

continued till the end, though my voice was already raw from spending every

night the previous week calling endless phone lists to recruit more

volunteers. On Election Day, there were 15,000-20,000 of us statewide,

holding up signs during morning rush hour, calling and recalling voters who

hadn't cast their ballots, watching the polls to check off who had voted. As

a result of everything we did, and all our previous efforts, not only did Al

Gore carry the state by an ample margin, but after a recount, Democrat Maria

Cantwell defeated hard-right Republican Senator Slade Gorton by 2,229 votes

out of more than 2.5 million cast. If each volunteer accounted for just a

fraction of a vote, our actions changed the outcome.

 

It's easy to think of our individual efforts as so insignificant and

inconsequential that they're hardly worth the effort. But when enough of us

act in small ways, our combined impact can change history. That's true even

when our actions seem mundane and prosaic, yielding minuscule fruits for the

labor we put in. We can spend an entire day calling voters, distributing

literature, knocking on doors, and signing people up for rides to the

polls-and produce only a handful of additional votes. Yet if 15,000 others

do the same, or 50,000, or several million, working all across America, our

impact can be literally world changing. That was true last election, where a

hundred additional volunteers could have swung Florida even with all the

Republican machinations. It's never been more true than in this

neck-and-neck race.

 

We've done part of the key work already. Grassroots canvassers have

registered record-breaking numbers of likely Democratic voters, particularly

in key battleground states. Americans Coming Together (ACT), which has

coordinated many of the progressive efforts, together with MoveOn, expects

to end up with 2.5 million new voters. Rock the Vote, less partisan, has

registered close to a million young voters. The League of Independent Voters

has been registering young voters at bars and clubs-then going back again

with guides to an entire slate of progressive local and national candidates.

A Cleveland professor had her students register voters at a jail where

people were awaiting trial, working with a local prisoner's rights group

that registered 700 new voters. In Miami, the League of Independent Voters

put out a CD with songs about the issues by local hip-hop artists and placed

their local and national endorsements inside. It's been decades since so

many people involved themselves in progressive electoral activism.

 

But the Republicans are also registering voters, particularly through

fundamentalist churches. They're organized, well-funded, and have skillfully

cultivated a politics of backlash and fear. Combining both parties, a

million new voters have registered in Florida alone. Since new registrants

traditionally turn out far less often than those for whom voting is routine,

how many and which voters show up will depend on what the rest of us do,

from now through the election.

 

We can never predict the precise impact of these actions. A few years ago, a

young environmental activist registered 300 voters at her Connecticut

college, then saw her congressman win by 27 votes. Before she began, she so

doubted her efforts would make a difference that she almost didn't try. My

model for an engaged volunteer effort comes from 1992, the last time we

ended the reign of a Bush. On that Election Day, I joined five other

volunteers helping get out the vote in a precinct 25 miles south of my

Seattle home, in a suburban swing district that also affected a key

congressional race. Thanks to roughly 50,000 volunteers, we had a similar

presence in nearly every remotely Democratic area of the state. Our efforts

turned out enough supporters that we not only helped carry Washington for

Clinton and Gore, but also elected our first woman senator, captured eight

out of nine House seats for the Democrats, and elected a strong populist

governor.

 

Yet two years later, 1994, Washington state's volunteers stayed home, as did

their counterparts nationwide. There weren't enough to canvass even the most

liberal precincts in the heart of Seattle. Dismal voter turnout allowed

Republicans to recapture all but two of nine Congressional seats, elect a

regressive Republican to the Senate, and make Newt Gingrich Speaker of the

House. The same thing happened in 2002. Grassroots support melted away in

the face of anger at Democratic capitulation on Iraq, and Republicans won

race after race by the narrowest of margins. Had those voters who'd turned

out the previous election just participated, surveys in both cases suggested

the results would have been reversed.

 

For the moment, enough of us are united enough against Bush's destructive

arrogance that we'll have decent numbers of volunteers. And most of us will

recognize that just as when French voters united behind conservative Jacques

Chirac to reject the threat of the ulra-rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen, this is

no time for above-it-all purism, like voting for Ralph Nader. But do we

recognize how much our individual electoral actions can matter when they're

sufficiently multiplied? What would happen if every environmentalist or

union member, every MoveOn member, everyone who feels that Bush has led this

country down destructive paths, worked in some way to get out the vote? Or

worked with groups like the Election Protection Coalition to ensure that

every eligible voter gets the chance to vote and that every vote is counted.

It's easier if we live in a swing state, or can travel to one-we simply sign

up with ACT or the local Democratic Party and plug in wherever most useful.

But even if we don't, we can still contribute money for critical field

efforts, and once we've done that, and then join phone banks being run by

MoveOnPAC and ACT, calling swing state voters to help convince them to turn

out.

 

Most of us reading this essay will vote. And maybe our friends will as well.

But in a politically divided nation, victory will go to the side that turns

out the greatest numbers of their most marginal supporters, including those

who doubt their vote will matter. Particularly when reaching out to those

poorer and more transient constituencies that traditionally vote half as

often or less than the wealthier ones, getting people to polls isn't

something that can't be done by just running more ads. We have to make the

phone calls, knock on the doors, and keep track of who has voted so we can

remind people as many times as necessary that their vote could make the key

difference. This election will be won with presence and persistence.

 

Though we know this abstractly, what would happen if we recognized that our

actions matter precisely because we're joined by so many others? Our efforts

could make that recognition a reality. We've anguished for four years over

this administration's destructive actions. Now it's time to act.

 

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A

Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, just published by Basic Books.

Habitat for Humanity founder Millard Fuller writes " Paul Loeb brings hope

for a better world in a time when we so urgently need it. " Barbara

Ehrenreich says, " For anyone worn down by four years of Bushism, The

Impossible Will Take a Little While is a bracing double cappuccino! " And

Bonnie Raitt writes, " This inspiring collection is such a song of hope in

these difficult times. " Loeb is also the author of Soul of a Citizen. See

www.theimpossible.org

 

 

 

__________

 

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them, please email sympa with the subject line:

 

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--

 

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http://www.padrak.com/alt/911DD.html