Portland news
As many of you know from late night phone chats or snippets of daytime conversation, I have spent the last month on the streets of Portland, Oregon. Upon finishing graduate school with a masters in environmental science, I asked myself, "what is the best thing I can do for my country, the world, and the environment?" Finding myself with a bit of flexibility, a bit of time and a whole lot of education right before the most important election of my lifetime, I could not look past the most challenging but obvious answer: Get Bush out of office. So I came, joining dozens of other volunteers, to the battleground state of Oregon, where in 2000, Gore won by less that 0.44% of the vote (about 6000 votes). I have been working with the League of Conservation Voters, a non-partisan environmental organization, who tracks Congressional voting records on environmental, public health, and energy issues. They score each member of Congress and endorses candidates, regardless of their party affiliation, based on their voting records in order to separate fact from rhetoric. In a major grassroots campaign, we are pecifically targeting swing voters in these four states by the time-tested most persuasive method of winning votes- canvassing.
Six days a week, volunteers, like myself, strategically go out and knock on doors of swing voters and talk to them about the issues most important to them. We go to urban neighborhoods, suburban culdesacs, retirement homes, and trailer parks and engage in dialogue with individuals, face to face, person to person, about why they might want to consider voting for John Kerry and John Edwards. And, when we catch a flicker of dissatisfaction from an otherwise strong Bush supporter, we encourage them to give Kerry a thought. To all of these voters, we will return two more times between now and the election.
Every single day I talk to people whose political interest shift during our conversation, whose faith in the political process is restored... I'm serious, even strong Bush supporters thank me for being out there doing this (?!) I talk to State senators, to single moms, to Spanish speakers, to 95 year old women, to 18 year olds, to business men, to soccer moms, to teachers, etc.
This is an important election and many of you have donated or considered donating money to the Kerry campaign, the Democratic National Committee, or Move-On. We are one of the only organizations in the country who is not fundraising, mainly because most of the funds go toward running television ads which are only so effective. Face to face communication and building those relationships is really the power behind the movement to take back the White House, and that is what we are doing. Nobody would go out every single day, 70 hours a week, sometimes in 110 degree heat for any amount of money, so we are all volunteers out here.
This weekend, we passed our 100,000 door marker. Considering the Oregon could go either way by a few thousand votes, it appears that we are having some influence. I would love to see any of you out here for a week or more in the fall to plug in and volunteer. Please e-mail or call me if you want to come out- Portland is a great place to visit while doing something useful.
XOXO Betony
Six days a week, volunteers, like myself, strategically go out and knock on doors of swing voters and talk to them about the issues most important to them. We go to urban neighborhoods, suburban culdesacs, retirement homes, and trailer parks and engage in dialogue with individuals, face to face, person to person, about why they might want to consider voting for John Kerry and John Edwards. And, when we catch a flicker of dissatisfaction from an otherwise strong Bush supporter, we encourage them to give Kerry a thought. To all of these voters, we will return two more times between now and the election.
Every single day I talk to people whose political interest shift during our conversation, whose faith in the political process is restored... I'm serious, even strong Bush supporters thank me for being out there doing this (?!) I talk to State senators, to single moms, to Spanish speakers, to 95 year old women, to 18 year olds, to business men, to soccer moms, to teachers, etc.
This is an important election and many of you have donated or considered donating money to the Kerry campaign, the Democratic National Committee, or Move-On. We are one of the only organizations in the country who is not fundraising, mainly because most of the funds go toward running television ads which are only so effective. Face to face communication and building those relationships is really the power behind the movement to take back the White House, and that is what we are doing. Nobody would go out every single day, 70 hours a week, sometimes in 110 degree heat for any amount of money, so we are all volunteers out here.
This weekend, we passed our 100,000 door marker. Considering the Oregon could go either way by a few thousand votes, it appears that we are having some influence. I would love to see any of you out here for a week or more in the fall to plug in and volunteer. Please e-mail or call me if you want to come out- Portland is a great place to visit while doing something useful.
XOXO Betony
posted by Betony at 11:35 AM
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