Obámanos:

my new favorite Obama slogan to date, first seen on a bumper sticker here in North Carolina...as my friend Rochelle from Emory/Georgia says, "SIIII!! I love it!! Obamanos, Aviva!! so we don't republicananos de nuevo!!"

I am currently in Knightdale, outside of Raleigh, North Carolina.
I flew down here after Andy Zack called me on Wednesday night and asked if I was free Friday-Wednesday, because someone was organizing students to go to swing states and paying for their plane tickets through frequent flier miles. We sent our names, phone numbers, and email addresses to a stranger, and she emailed us back almost instantaneously with the email to pay $111 through Paypal to cover taxes and booking fees--and then the flight confirmation info! Coincidentally--or perhaps terrifically and magically and perfectly--I had been planning on coming to the Raleigh/Durham area last weekend during Fall break to see christine (beautiful person I met in Chile), and had cancelled on her ( and myself) the day before because I was getting nervous about unhappy train schedules and ticket prices.
There are 29 students in this group. Andy had been called by a friend, who happens to be best friend with another friend of Andy's, who Andy knows from elsewhere...anyway, Mary Dain, who is from Chapel Hill, seems to be a key organizer of the group. Almost all of the students go to UC Berkeley, and then a few are from Santa Cruz, and Andy and I are obviously east-coasters. TWENTY-SEVEN OF THEM FLEW HERE FROM CALIFORNIA.
this story just keeps getting better ( AND DEPENDING ON HOW TOMORROW GOES, THAT TREND COULD CONTINUE). we have been driving around 5 cars, all borrowed from people known by Mary and Amos, another Berkeley kid from this area (gas money is coming from campaign headquarters). We are ALL staying in Kevin's house. None of us knew Kevin previously.
Kevin is a young air-force veteran who lives with his family here in Knightdale. He and his family have been incredible to us: we are sprawled, with all of our stuff and our sleeping bags, across their beautiful house. The 5 of them have been sleeping on the floor in one bedroom to make room for us, giving us their own rooms for 4 nights (we stayed at Amos' in Chapel Hill on Night 1--his family wasn't home, but was also very generous to let us into their space.)
I don't know if it'the common cause or just that there are so many awesome people on this planet, but people have been so unbelievably generous to us. At every field office, there are boxes of snacks, (so much halloween candy), endless water bottles, drinks in coolers, bagels, donuts, fruit, and home-made meals like chicken soup, shrimp spring rolls with peanut sauce, and jerk chicken. Some of these field offices are out of peoples' garages! And all of the volunteers are in and out of the garages, and their houses, too--people are making space (and food) for strangers right and left.
Alicia, for example, has been working on the campaign for 11 months. Her 19-year old daughter is also some kind of director rightnow, working out of another "office." Alicia lent us her car within fifteen minutes of meeting us. She gives out her number to everyone, and then answers the phone, "Hi baby"--and is actually THAT sweet. AND, as someone who has been working on this campaign instead of her normal jobs for almost a year, she kept hugging us and thanking us. HER thanking US! As if we were doing so much more than coming out here on mostly-paid-for flights for 5 quick nights. everyone seems to have such appreciation for each other, volunteering time, space, energy, cars, ENTIRE HOUSES (not to say this is more important than the rest, but it IS societally understood as less share-able of a commodity, in my experience), love--and it's heartwarming.
A few days ago I heard someone call this campaign "micro-managed." I don't know which aspect they were referring to, but even with all of it's seeming chaos, I am SO inspired by the grassroots feel of all of this organizing. We all have numbers of different Field Organizers and/or other volunteers, and we all know different bits of information. Sometimes the communication lines get temporarily clogged, or we have misinformation, or bad ideas ( like when we went to the Sarah Palin rally? We were almost in when we got Mary's call, after she got a call from STATE headquarters that they didn't want us there pretending to be Mccain supporters. Fair enough... but Yelena, who I was with in line, was pulling off the Southern drawl So well! and we were making friends with the Palin supporters... and they were telling us such satisfying news without even knowing it--like, "every day I open the paper and there's a new Obama office. Where are all of the new Mccain offices? There aren't any!") Late last night, we got a call from the Regional manager of the Southeast ( of the country!!) telling us to go to Fayetteville, NC_-the same town in which some Obama-supporting tires had been slashed months ago. It was too late at night to call our Field Organizers, but this morning we all called the organizers we'd been working with yesterday, and told them that although we'd promised to show up at their offices this morning, we had been called elsewhere. They were bummed, and we were bummed, because we all feel like we're really making connections with people.
The people at the Fayetteville office were great, too. As was the space itself-- the owner of Concierge Travel has lent his office to campaign people, and it makes for quite a mix. The travel office looks like it's straight out of-- I don't even know which year. It has lots of postcards, manyof which have half-naked women. There were some really old travel posters, clearly fading and definitely no longer politically correct (mostly regarding travel to Jamaica, as far as I could tell). There was also a cage with parrots.
I'm losing energy right now--and I'm even being lazy (or smart/responsible, since I've been getting sick since the day I got here, and we were out in the rain all day today). Most of the group is out in different areas doing silent canvassing. Gabe, for example, another Berkeley kid, plans to be out from 11 until 5 AM, hanging door signs on door knobs which say, "VOTE TODAY," and include specific information about polling locations based on the precinct of that specific doorknob. Those who aren't going out on the late shift tonight are going out at 5 tomorrow morning.
Next i'll post about the crazy-cool method that organizers are using tomorrow to GET OUT THE VOTE-- finding people who haven't voted yet...by the HOUR! I'll also tell about some of the different neighborhoods we've been canvassing in, people I've talked to while doin' it, conversations about whiteness and obama, fairness, etc and... the polls tomorrow. and the results??!?!?
We've heard that Wake county, where we are in NC, could make or break the state. Let's make that the former, and turn it blueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee (a concept I explained to some young women today who were too young to vote, completely pro-Obama, and really excited to help us go around knocking on doors, telling people to vote tomorrow, and leaving door hangers.)
OBámanos!!!