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true believers, part four

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SOTU drinking game, 2008 - 2008-01-27
little light - 2007-12-19
hamburger phone - 2007-12-18
why 'grease' is a perfect LA movie - 2007-12-17
recipe: barley treasure - 2007-10-12

2004-01-28 - 2:04 p.m.

saturday evening - never no time to play

i always seem to be in the wrong room. if we are called into the front room, i'm usually in the large training room. if i'm meant to be in the training room, i usually manage to be in the coat room or the bathroom. as i play chess with michael, everyone is gathering in the front room to meet the special guest speaker. by the time i figure this out, i am relegated to a position at the back of the room. since there are no chairs anywhere, it doesn't really matter. all the coveted wall spaces are occupied. lukewarm cheese pizza is being passed around. i choke down a piece, not knowing when i will get another chance to eat.

with some fanfare, a high-ranking wintern introduces a small black woman. i can't hear what he's saying, but michael has already tipped me off that the woman is carol mosely-braun. i don't have a television and didn't really know what she looks like. but i've been impressed with her performances in the democratic debates (which i've listened to on the radio). she definitely has the most beautiful voice of any of the contenders. she gave up her race for the democratic party nomination after iowa and has thrown her support behind governor dean.

ms. mosely-braun gives a short but rousing pep talk and answers a few questions. one volunteer from DC asks how the DC for dean organization can tailor their message to the african american voters in her community. with the utmost diplomacy (she doesn't sound one bit exasperated) ms. mosely-braun gives the most considered and sensible advice i will hear all weekend: don't tailor your message to african americans. if you have a clear message, african american voters will respond to it, and so will everyone else. i am obviously paraphrasing here, but her words are perfectly chosen, and she brings the entire room to its feet in appreciation. she leaves gracefully before the crowd can begin to poke at her. i'll bet she is going somewhere with a shower and a hot meal.

we are instructed in the 'dean clap'. winterns use the dean clap the way camp counselors use camp songs to get the attention of a large group of kids. basically, the 'dean clap' is a series of slow claps in unison (about 60bpm) which speed up in frequency until they cumulate in general applause. we are encouraged to perform the 'dean clap' after any speaker we want to applaud. it is not clear to me whether this is a new hampshire for dean thing or if it has spread throughout the national dean campaign. i reluctantly participate in the 'dean clap' each time it is asked of me. the 'dean clap' makes me feel like a such a tool.

joanna lets me know that she has alerted the housing coordinator wintern about our lack of adequate housing. i find him and impress upon him the need for a shower. katie let us know in no uncertain terms that we should take all our belongings with us when we left her crash pad this morning because we would definitely not be returning tonight. so we don't know where we are staying. the housing wintern takes my name, insists on spelling out my entire last name. so far he is my favorite wintern.

its about 5p, and volunteers are herded into small groups to go out on canvassing missions. this seems to be a coveted detail among the youngest volunteers, they are anxious to go out and share their personal stories with the good voters of new hampshire. the memory of the bitter, bitter cold is still fresh on my skin and i can't fathom going back outside. when a phone bank is announced, i jump at the chance to stay inside. joanna comes with me, looking exasperated and tired. she has had little to eat today, and fears her toe may be broken. it's obviously causing her some pain and she's limping a little as we are herded towards the training room.

we are walked through a script for the phones. the phone calls are very much like the canvassing missions. we will be doing a script called 'persuasion' where we call undecided voters and try to press the case for governor dean. we are to use the same numerical codes to qualify our interactions with the voters. the folks we will be calling have been previously contacted by the campaign. canvassers have left campaign literature at their homes, we are calling to get the voters' reaction to this literature. more wintern personal stories are shared. i supress the desire to roll my eyes as a good-looking young man from northhampton tells how he was moved to drop out of his last year of college to help the dean campaign full time. he asks us whether we have cellphones, especially cellphones with free night-and-weekend minutes. a few people volunteer to make calls on their own phones. i have free nights and weekends, but i don't want to use my own phone. its not holding a charge in the cold weather and is getting terrible reception in salem. plus, i just don't want to. i'm broken off into a small group that is led to the phone banks.

the phone banks are just the regular campaign offices where we gathered when we first arrived on friday night. there don't seem to be too many phones around and the wintern who is leading us tries desperately to plug ancient phones into every available jack. another wintern attempts to further prep us on the persuasion script but he doesn't get the volunteers' attention. the plan changes mid-stream and the people we will be calling have never been contacted by the campaign. they are 'nulls', people who have somehow avoided the coding numbers of the database. it is likely that this requires a heroic effort in primary season new hampshire. these people probably never answer their phones. i have no problem calling a few hundred answering machines and busy signals. but there still aren't enough phones, so i am spared even this indignity.

our wintern hands me a couple of bottles of tempera paint and a foam paintbrush. she tells me that the alternative activity if i don't get on the phones is to paint campaign slogans onto posterboard. i am delighted, and tell the wintern i am a professional artist. she puts me in charge and tells joanna to follow me back to the training room to paint signs. joanna balks and says that she hates painting. she trades duties with mindy, a graphic designer who is thrilled to get off the phones.

wintern rob has collected a few other aimless volunteers in yet another furniture-less, unheated room behind the training room. there are one or two more paintbrushes and another bottle of tempera. posterboard is spread all over the floor. wintern rob provides us with a list of towns in the area and tells us to make signs that look handmade and can be placed near polling places. mindy and kristin are thrilled and get right to work. i use the foam brush and a paper bowl to mix a dark purple out of the only colors we have been provided (red and blue). a few more volunteers join us and we brief them on our assignment. mindy is really going to town, creating a watercolor ralph steadman-like poster that says 'hope not fear' (the latest slogan from dean headquarters). we definitely have the cushiest detail. periodically winterns appear and order us to do something else, but we pretend we don't hear them.

eventually, we run out of posterboard. rob swears some more is on the way. all the artists are looking to me as though i were in charge so i tell them our job is done and they should go find something else to do. i find mathew and chuck in the training room snacking on delicious-smelling vegetarian indian food. mathew is kind enough to share his chana masala with me and i gratefully wolf it down in about three bites. chuck is hilarious and tells us how after the eagles lost the divisional playoffs and dean came in third in iowa, his wife told him to drive to new hampshire, because she knew that living with him under those conditions would be unbearable. after a while the wintern from northhampton ambles over to quiz us about why we are not accomplishing some dean-related task. he orders us to the phone banks. i explain that i just came from there and that there aren't enough phones to go around. i start to tell him about making posters but he is insistent that he must assign us a task. our relative idleness is obviously offending him. chuck manages to convince him that we can take some down time and it won't affect dean's chances in new hampshire one way or another. he eventually relents in frustration.

see photos of my weekend for dean on my fotolog.

stay tuned for further installments!