Safe Arrival: The World's Biggest Little City

I left Berkeley, CA this afternoon (from the East Bay Headquarters) and picked up my fabulous carpooler Ella.

Ella and I both grew up in cities on the East Coast, and so nether of us had experienced many State Fairs and we were both so excited to check it out!

Before I left on this trip, I had lunch with my dear friend Sarah and she was laughing at me because I was gushing about how exotic and amazing the state fair sounds to me ("They have championship wiener dog races, Sarah--actual statewide CHAMPIONSHIPS!!!" I exclaimed). She was amazed at how little I had been exposed to this culture which was quite "boring" and familiar to her and how truly fascinated I was by the very things she thought were totally lame....

Me: "What exactly is a tractor pull, anyway?"

Sarah (whipping out her trusty blackberry): "You know, that's something I've always avoided since it sounded so boring; but you're excited and now I'm curious-- Let's look it up"
(this is one reason I love Sarah--one reason among many)

Sarah (quoting wikipedia): "A competition using tractors and large trucks to pull a heavy drag along a 'track': tractor pulling is very popular in rural areas. Usually the drag offers progressively greater resistance as it is pulled. It can be a great spectacle, and although the vehicle produces a great deal of noise and smoke and throws dirt everywhere, it doesn't actually travel very far."

Then Sarah and I cracked up laughing and I nearly had corn chowder come out of my nose--not pretty!

So now I am seriously fired up and ready for tractors!

We made it to Reno after about 4 hours of driving and went straight to the Obama office. It was a nice space, with lots of little offices and a larger meeting area. They were running a training which looked very interesting and was quite well-attended, but we rushed off excitedly to the Nevada State Fair.

So Ella and I arrived at the fair and we didn't see any tractors, but we did see a bunch of horses and cows and sheep and snakes and cool rides and guys in cowboy hats and Republicans and corn dogs and even some vegetables! We took a short stroll around to get oriented and had a snack (OK, truth be told: Ella had the veggies and I had a hot dog--a guilty pleasure but perfect at the fair).

We registered voters at the booth shared by the Obama folks and the Washoe County Democrats. The women staffing the booth were so kind to us and spent time talking us through the Nevada voter reg process and pointed out some important things that are different from California. For example, in CA when a felon finishes his parole, s/he is automatically eligible to register to vote, but in Nevada people have to request something allowing them to reregister to vote after a felony conviction and it takes several months to be approved. Another example of a difference is that in Nevada there is "Early Voting" which starts October 18th, which we don't have in California. And they have slightly different forms here...

Anyway, tons of fun!! and more to come. Just wanted to let you all know I'm safe and sound, sleeping in a family home in Sparks (outside Reno, kind of a suburb I guess--very nice neighborhood with beautiful houses and yards). My host family is so nice and gracious--they are Obama supporters and they actually volunteered at a recent event that Obama had for invited guests (250 people I think) from the labor/union community). One of my favorite things about the Obama campaign is the opportunity to meet such amazing and excellent human beings--no one joins this movement for the glory or to feed their ego--we do it because we are moved to do so. We are all just doing our part of the work that we all know needs to be done. Tonight I will fall asleep feeling profoundly grateful and proud to be part of this positive change.

East Bay Field Office OPEN!!

This Saturday--100 days before the Presidential Election--the East Bay Obama Field office officially opened! More than 350 people attended the opening!!

We had an incredible volunteer meeting this week with 125 people wanting to volunteer for the campaign!! People brought all kinds of amazing food to share, and signed up for different volunteer opportunities with the East Bay team. Random folks wandered in off the street and stayed for the meeting. Some people even asked to register to vote, since they were walking by and saw the door was open... It was amazing, and the office is now up and running!!

The Office is open 9-5 weekdays

3225 Adeline in Oakland
(2 blocks from Ashby BART)
click here for more info

ON SUNDAY from 2-8pm, the office will be open for phone-banking.

New Mexico is TOTALLY in play (even Karl Rove is predicting an Obama win in New Mexico by 6%), and the local organizers there need OUR help to identify the most important voters for them to court. We'll call New Mexico undecided voters (to get a sense of who is really on the fence and might be swayed, and who is already on board with Obama and who isn't worth calling again). Folks are invited to drop by and make some calls with us.

(we don't have phones yet so bring your cell phone).

Last Sunday, we made 1000 calls to New Mexico and it was really fun. We have a bell to ring when you reach an Obama supporter--and there are a lot more of them out there than you might expect! Come find out for yourself!!!!

Vote for Change!

Voter Registration is the next important priority for the Obama campaign. You can register to vote without leaving this site if you scroll over on the left side to a red banner from "Rock the Vote." If you click on it, the voter reg form will pop up right now, and without even leaving this blog you will be registered to vote in about 2 minutes!!

All American-born and naturalized citizens who are 18 on or before November 4, 2008 and who are not currently imprisoned or on parole for a felony are eligible to register to vote.

People with a felony conviction ARE able to vote if they are not currently in prison or on parole (if they are on probation, they CAN vote). Many convicted felons don't know this: they may be surprised and elated to hear that they have NOT lost the right to take part in our democracy and vote for our leaders. People on parole can register others to vote, and that can be a great way for them to get engaged with the political process while they wait for their parole to end. Someone told me tonight that in some of the primaries the efforts of parolees to register their friends to vote had a powerful impact and record numbers of first-time voters were registered by parolees.

In California,

October 20
is the last day

to register to vote!!

You can't register
on election day!

I attended a voter registration training yesterday morning and learned a lot about registering voters. It is important to become familiar with the rules and regulations, but really it is pretty simple. You can learn more at the official California Secretary of State Voter Registration Website (and you can download the 50+ page guidelines: Secretary of State's Guide to Voter Registration).

Here are some of the main points:

1. Anyone can register voters (you don't have to be a citizen or 18+, and you can be a parolee)
2. Any person can get 50 voter registration forms from their local county election official. In my local county of Alameda, the Oakland Courthouse is the place to go (1225 Fallon St Room G-1; Hours 8:30am-5pm; Phone: 510-272-6973)
   
3. To get more than 50 forms: Complete and submit a Statement of Distribution Form and a plan of distribution to the Secretary of State, mailed or faxed to:
   

California Secretary of State
Elections Division
1500 11th Street, 5th Floor
Sacramento, CA 95814
Fax: (916) 653-3214
Phone: (916) 657-2166.

If you want to register voters in another state, you can contact that state for registration forms, but you can also click here to download the universal form that people in any state can use to register to vote in any other state (you just mail the form in and the gov't sends the registration to the correct state). This is great to have for voter registration on college campuses or tourist areas, since out-of-state voters cannot use the state-specific forms, and students may want to register to vote at their home address rather than their school address.

Tips & Tricks

• Highlight the voter reg forms so that the required items stand out
  
• Have some forms highlighted and folded up for people who want to fill it out later

• Have 2 clipboards so you can serve more than one person at a time
• Write a message like "REGISTER TO VOTE!" or "ROCK THE VOTE" on the backside of the clipboards, so people can see it as you are walking around
  
• Voter Reg Cards are too long to fit on even a legal sized clipboard, but if you just fold along the perforation between the registration part and the instructions part (which gets detached anyway when you mail the forms in), the forms will fit perfectly on a regular size (8x11) clipboard

• Bring Extra Pens--You must use Black or Blue INK only
• Attach your pen to your clipboard with ribbon, string, or elastics

• Give out stickers or buttons or some little trinket to people who register
• Go to places where people are waiting already (long bathroom lines, at the carwash or laundromat or pharmacy, lines at amusement parks or concerts, etc)
• Go to fun places such as sporting events, concerts, parks in summer, outdoor events, festivals, and conventions
  
• Before you start registering voters, check with the place to make sure it is OK for you to be there (and if it is OK to display your candidate's stuff or whether it must be nonpartisan)

I did a voter registration event in Oakland today where we went to the Oakland A's game and registered people who were "tailgating" in the parking lot! it was so great!! People had barbecues and chairs and they were hanging out together for hours before the game started.


When I got there, I was teamed up
with a new friend:

my awesome partner
Ruth
(Ruth + Ruby = perfect team).



We went around together, talking with folks, registering them to vote, and giving out Obama stickers. It was a lot of fun!

I even got to sign up one voter for the very first time. She is a naturalized citizen from Vietnam and she was grateful for the ease with which she was able to register to vote at a baseball game. I hadn't thought of the significance of it before, but baseball is the American national pastime and voting is a patriotic duty/right--so it kind of makes sense that you would register to vote at the baseball game.

There were other volunteers registering voters, and the group of us got about 25 people registered today.

I got 4 people registered myself (and handed out probably 5 more reg forms to people who wanted to do it later).

I registered some people waiting in line for the port-o-potty and one of them joked to the other that he would tell his grandchildren, "I registered to vote while I was waiting to take a piss at an A's game!"

We offered everyone in the potty-line Obama stickers and most people took them. Several asked sweetly, "Could I possibly just have 1 more?" I gave those people 4 or 5 stickers, and I gave extra to anyone who was super-excited (lots of people). I told them, "Stick it where someone will see it!" I ran out of stickers--I had more than 100 when I left home this morning.

Anyway people were generally jazzed about being able to register to vote while sitting out in the beautiful sun, eating burgers and drinking beer, with someone to help them if they were confused.

This was the last voter I registered, on my way back to BART. A proud Oakland A's fan, he was super-excited because he's going to Australia to study abroad but he wants to be able to vote in the November election. He's leaving on Wednesday, so we almost missed him!

What does that say about the urgency of now?

A'Cuppa Obama

Tonight I had the privilege of attending a great community organizing meeting for our local Rockridge/Temescal (CA) Neighborhood Group! We met at this fantastic tea shoppe called "A'Cuppa Tea" on College Ave.

There were probably about 20 people there, including a couple folks whom I'd met at the last house meeting I attended. So it felt like a familiar and comfortable group... even though I walked in a little late (after mini-adventures in parkingland!).

The meeting was really well-moderated by Paul Delehanty and the other organizers. They followed the agenda and gave people room to speak and be heard. They focused on the most important values of the campaign: respect, empower, include. They inspired us to do the same through their words and through modeling these attitudes with their own actions.

Barack Obama's campaign provides the ideal venue for a coalition of groups and individuals to work together, because we have one common goal: electing Barack Obama as US President.

We have a lot of overlap (such as taking care of the economy, the environment, housing, healthcare, Iraq, local politics, etc) in our topical priorities, but the most important goal (the prize to keep our eyes on) is the White House.

One of the most exciting parts of this meeting was the discussion about the voter registration part of the campaign: Vote for Change! Obama's campaign is working to get hundreds of thousands of new voters registered, especially among people eho have been disenfranchised by the existing system.

People who have traditionally been excluded from the political process (such as persons with felony convictions--who CAN vote in California!) or who have been marginalized (women, African-Americans, people living in poverty, speakers of other languages-especially Spanish) are registering to vote in record numbers for this election. This is exciting, and there were lots of plans for upcoming voter registration events. I'm going to go to one on July 12th that involves "tailgating" the Oakland A's (which I've never done before). It's always good to try something new!

We ended the meeting by putting our hands in the middle of our circle and affirming together: "Yes We Can!"

One of the reasons I believe in Barack Obama's campaign for Presidency is that he has given us a reason to get together. His campaign has created opportunities for neighbors to meet one another and organize for meaningful changes in our own lives and communities.