Deborah Lipp

A couple of weeks ago, I participated in a MoveOn event called Call for Change. I’ll be doing this again in a couple of weeks, and I highly recommend it. I had a lot of concerns about doing political phoning, and every one of those concerns was answered.

• First, it was fun. I was meeting other political progressives in my area, and you know, it’s relaxing to just bitch about the state of this country without clenching for the inevitable counter-attack.
• Second, it was well-organized. There was very little figuring out what to do. Everything was provided for us in a clear and understandable way.
• One thing that bothers me is, as a New Yorker, I’m in the bluest of blue states. So there’s the preaching to the choir factor. Well, MoveOn had us phoning into a swing district. I have free weekends on my cell plan, so the fact that I was calling Pennsylvania didn’t bother me, and I was reaching an area where there was an opportunity to make a change.

The calls were non-confrontational. We were essentially gathering phone numbers of Democratic and potentially-Democratic voters so that get-out-the-vote calls could be made nearer election day. When we reached conservatives, we were instructed to thank them politely and hang up. Meanwhile, for the undecided and ignorant, we were feeding them the Democratic name and the idea that they could vote for him.

The whole thing took about three hours on a Saturday afternoon, and I was done by six. So…easy! I recommend the experience.